"What did he say?" Ethan's eyes meet mine as I take my seat, and my expression must answer his question because he murmurs, "Dear God."
"Yeah."
We sit in silence for a long moment before he says, "Are you willing to tell me about it?"
I look up, surprised. "Of course. She's your niece, after all."
He shakes his head slowly. "A girl. I have a niece. You have a daughter. I can't get my head around it."
I give a grim laugh. "Trust me, you're not the only one."
"So how did he know about it? I can't believe she told him."
"She didn't. They were trying to have a baby themselves, as I'm sure you knew."
"Nope."
I stare at him, surprised, and he says, "I figured they probably would eventually but no, I didn't know they were actively... you know."
I'm still surprised that Donna kept it a secret from her own brother, her only living family, but I go on. "It wasn't happening for them, and some idiot nurse at the fertility clinic they went to said something about secondary infertility. Ryan asked what that meant and she said--"
"It's about not being able to get pregnant a second time."
"Yeah, how'd you know?"
"Coworker of mine's going through it now. It's terrible."
"I bet. Anyhow, that's how Ryan found out Donna already had a child. Her doctor knew about it and must have included it in her file when he sent them to the clinic."
"Didn't Donna realize Ryan would find out?"
"I asked that. He said she told him she'd asked to have a note put in her file that her husband didn't know but that either didn't happen or the nurse missed it."
He winces. "Hell of a way to find out."
Especially when you thought you and your wife were both having sex for the first time on your wedding night. Donna had stolen that moment from Ryan, and I'd heard the pain in his voice as he said, "I couldn't believe she'd kept something so important from me. She knew how I felt about it. I'd thought she felt the same way but apparently not."
To Ethan, I say, "Yeah. I think it really upset him."
"Well, obviously. So then what?"
"I guess he gave her a pretty hard time about it. About keeping it from him and all that."
Ryan had actually said, "I told her I didn't know who she was any more. And she said she didn't either." I wasn't going to tell Ethan, because I didn't think it mattered, but suddenly I do tell him because Donna was his sister and he deserves to know.
He flinches. "She built her life, her adult life anyhow, on being upright and moral. The--" He stares at me. "The teen abstinence thing. Ryan must have been so confused."
I nod. "He said he challenged her on that too and she said, 'Who better than me to know how bad it is for teens to have sex?'"
Ethan grimaces. "I guess so. Does he have any idea where the baby ended up?"
"I asked him every way I could think of and he said no every time. Donna wouldn't tell him much. She didn't want to talk about it, didn't even want to think about it. She was terrified, though, that she'd come home one day and find her on the doorstep."
Shaking his head, my brother says, "I had no idea. All those times I saw her, and I had no idea she was dealing with all that. She must have been torn right down the middle over it all."
Torn into her and me. "Ethan. You're so right. Torn down the middle. We are two people. I'm who she would have been if the whole mess hadn't happened."
He leans back in his chair and looks at me. "You're not Donna, that's for sure."
I blink, surprised and a little hurt. "Why do you say that?"
"I haven't had such an open conversation with Donna in... ever. She always had her walls up, making sure she didn't say too much. I thought she was just like that with me, but now I doubt it. But you, you'll talk to me. Tell me things. To be honest, it's kind of refreshing."
I nod, glad he doesn't hate me for taking his sister away. "I've heard that from Ryan and other people, that I'm more open."
"Donna was hiding, all the time." He looks at me sadly. "Can't have been much of a life."
Nope. No wonder she ran away from it.
We sit quietly for a long moment, both considering the pain and fear Donna must have lived in, then he says, "Anything else? Does he know when she was born? Or her name?"
"Her birthday is February twenty-seventh, not even a week before the last ECT treatment. She'd have been..." My throat tightens and I have to clear it before I finish the sentence. "She turned fourteen this year."
Ethan blinks hard, and I look away to give him time to recover and also to make sure he doesn't make me start crying. I can not imagine how agonizing that day must have been for Donna. Every day, frankly, but the date the child she gave up was born?
"She must have been thinking so hard about the baby," Ethan says quietly. "Right before the treatment. Could that be why..."
I shrug. "I'll ask my therapist but I can kind of see it. If she was thinking about it, and that definitely seems likely to me, maybe those memories got disconnected by the treatment."
He frowns. "Disconnected?"
I explain how the memories, according to Doctor Ferraro, are still stored but I've lost the key to get at them, and he says, "Makes sense, I guess. And the name? Did he know?"
When I asked that question Ryan paused for a painfully long time, and it hit me that it might have been Kate. Could she really have planned to reuse the name she gave her first child for the one she wanted to have with Ryan? But no. I have to clear my throat again. "It's Grace." I open my wallet and show him the fortune his sister carried around. "There's one like this in Donna's desk drawer too."
"Live with grace," he reads from the paper. "She couldn't live with her but she couldn't let her go either. Kate, you're breaking my heart. My poor sister."
"I know. It's no wonder she ran away, is it? How did she survive it?"
"Brick walls everywhere. Keeping everyone out. I have to admit, while I'm horrified for Donna I do feel for Ryan too. It can't have been easy finding out your wife kept something like that from you."
I'm not sure how to respond to this. I did push Ryan on his reaction and he admitted that he'd been furious for a while but claimed he'd eventually been able to understand and accept it. I couldn't see how, frankly, and I told him so, which led to him saying he'd done his best. But not long after, Donna had gone downhill like a race car with no brakes, dropping so deep into depression that even ECT hadn't brought her out. So his best hadn't been good enough, his attempt at forgiving Donna hadn't gone far enough. And he knew it.
"I think," I say, "that it changed everything for them. Forever."
"And you two?" He studies me. "Has it changed things for you?"
The tears I've been fighting all evening rise again. "I don't know. I'm beyond angry that he didn't tell me before. It might have brought everything back for me. But then again, it didn't bring it back, and now that I know how dreadful everything was for them both I can see why he kept it to himself and why he didn't want to see me. I'm a reminder of what went wrong, what he did wrong. When he sees me, he sees how far Donna ran to get away from him."
"So, that's it? You're getting divorced?"
I sniff. "I don't know. I guess so." Though a throat tight with tears, I say, "But I love him. I don't remember any of the bad times and I love him. But he'll always remember them so I guess..." I have to bite my lip to keep myself under control.
He gives my hand an awkward pat. "Too bad the ECT didn't erase his memories too, eh?"
"Yeah. Too bad."
**
Thank you so much for reading, and I hope you’re enjoying Kate's story. The next chapter will be uploaded on Tuesday! :) (Please note - I'm working really hard on another book and am behind on comments here - but I hugely appreciate them! :)
You can also check out my completed book "Life, Love, and a Polar Bear Tattoo" here on Wattpad, or download it for free from most retailers.
If you can't wait for another chapter of "Blank Slate Kate", you can pick up the book for just $3.99 right now - visit http://heatherwardell.com/book-blankslatekate.shtml for the buy links! :)