The Husband's Secret

Cecilia watches YouTube videos of the Berlin Wall coming down with Esther. She cries, and when Esther asks why she’s crying, she says it’s because the people in the footage are so happy. Esther thinks it’s weird that Cecilia cries at happy endings, but Cecilia thinks that it’s the relief of knowing everything has worked out. John-Paul solicitously offers her tea, and she declines harshly. She knows the children are watching and confused, but she is frustrated and tired of his sheepish, pleading behavior.

Connor and Tess talk about Felicity and Will. Connor has made them pasta, which they eat in bed. Connor says he remembers Felicity and that she was intimidating. He refers to her and Will’s relationship as an affair, and Tess says it’s not, explaining, “they just fell in love. It’s all very pure and romantic” (271). Connor asks what Tess thinks is going to happen, and Tess says she doesn’t know. In the span of three days, she’s gone from thinking her marriage was good to sleeping with an ex-boyfriend.

Tess asks Connor why he’s still single, and he explains that he was in a long-term relationship once, but it didn’t work out. To explain further, he asks if Tess remembers the murder of Janie Crowley. He was the last person to see her alive, a fact he’s never told Tess or any of his other girlfriends. He admits that his mother lied to give him an alibi—she said she’d been home with him at 5:00pm that day, but he’d actually been home alone. The guilt of that false alibi stayed with him and, in some ways, attached itself to Janie’s murder. He explains that he’s now in therapy to deal with the issues the murder and his guilt initiated. He says his therapist thinks he’s sabotaging his relationships out of guilt. He refers to himself lightly as “damaged” (278). Tess says she’s sorry about Janie and his sister dying and for breaking up with him the way she did. Connor admits that he pined for her a little after she left but says he’s long since forgiven her, though he always wondered what could have been. 

Cecilia tells John-Paul she is sure his mother knows about what he did to Janie Crowley. At first, John-Paul accuses Cecilia of having told Virginia, but Cecilia explains that she could tell by the nature of their conversation. He says she must have imagined it, which angers Cecilia. She reflects on his inflexibility and other flaws, thinking that they were all perfectly acceptable when he was a “gentle, law-abiding husband and father,” but they were worse “now that these faults belonged to a murderer” (280). John-Paul, now believing Cecilia, says that she looks at him differently now and pleads for her to see him again as she used to: “I’m still me, Cecilia. I promise you” (283). Cecilia doesn’t answer but curses when she remembers that Polly and Esther need Easter hats for the parade tomorrow morning.

On April 6, 1984, Janie meets John-Paul at a train station. He smooths down his hair nervously when he sees her arrive, and she’s surprised to see that it appears to be an insecure gesture, like he may be nervous about seeing her. She realizes that she chose Connor as a boyfriend not because she liked him more than John-Paul, but because she was afraid that she liked John-Paul too much—more than he could ever like her back. She thinks briefly that she is making the wrong choice:

A tiny speck of her, a tiny speck of the woman she could have become, thought, Come on, Janie, you’re being a coward. You like him more than Connor. Choose him. This could be big. This could be huge. This could be love (285).

Instead, she makes her voice hard and cold and tells him they need to talk.

On Thursday morning, Cecilia attends the Easter hat parade at St. Angela’s. Esther and Polly will be participating, but Isabel, now in grade six, has aged out of the tradition. Instead, she and two friends watch from the balcony with the older children. Cecilia sits with the other mothers and attempts to behave normally, participating in their banter and gentle snobbery. She wonders if she’s over-doing it in her hysteria. She thinks: “I’m Cecilia Fitzpatrick, and my husband is a murderer, and look at me, talking and chatting and laughing and hugging my kids. You’d never know” (289). She thinks that this is what living a lie will be: pretending everything is fine but never feeling much above or below “fine.” She’s back in the swing of her life, though, taking care of the business of being a wife and a mother, which she feels good about.

One of the children’s Easter hats falls off his head, causing one of the other children to lose her own hat. The boy cries for his mother, and Cecilia thinks that she, too, would like her mother. She feels an overwhelming desire to have someone to talk to about her situation. When she imagines trying to tell her friend Mahalia, though, she can only imagine that her friend will tell her John-Paul must confess. When she imagines telling her parents, she can picture only their confusion and dismay and possible health consequences. She thinks, “You had to weigh up the greater good. Life wasn’t black-and-white. Confessing wouldn’t bring back Janie. It would achieve nothing” (295). Still, if she were Rachel Crowley, she would want her daughter’s killer punished—even if that man had grown up to be a father and upstanding community member.