Promise Not to Tell: A Novel by Jennifer McMahon

accuse me of manipulating him, which maybe I was on some subconscious level. Jamie didn’t believe in accidents. The truth was, neither did I. I also didn’t believe that our shaky marriage could survive news of a pregnancy. And we had decided ( yes, we this time) that we were going to try to make things work. I still loved him—loud shirts, roaming eye, and all. I’m kind of a sucker that way—once I love someone, I can’t seem to turn it off.
    I was the one who had made the mistake, so it only seemed right that I should be the one to fix it—on my own.
    I had the abortion on a Friday afternoon and spent the weekend in bed, cramped up, swallowing Motrin. I told Jamie I had the flu.
    That Monday night when I dragged myself into the hospital, Tiny introduced herself to me and asked me the question. We were alone in her room during bed check.
    “Tell me, what’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?”
    All I could think about was the abortion; I ached to tell someone, to share the burden. Whatever I confessed to Tiny would be forgotten in five minutes.
    But, of course, that was not the worst thing I had ever done.
    “I betrayed my best friend and then she died.” I found myself saying the words without thinking them through. I just blurted it out.
    “Did you kill her?” Tiny wanted to know.
    “I wasn’t the one who strangled her, no, but I’m partially to blame. If that day had gone differently, then, I don’t know, maybe…”
    “Do you think she blames you?”
    “No.” I shook my head, remembered who I was talking to. “She’s dead, Patsy.”
    “The dead can blame.”
    I stared at this enormous woman. Her eyes, nose, and mouth were too small for her moon face.
    “The dead can blame,” she repeated.
     
     
     
    I BEGAN LEAVING AN OPEN CAN of tuna and a saucer of milk on the front porch to lure Magpie back. Each morning, the tuna and milk were gone, but there was no sign of Magpie. Little sneak. She was playing us for all we were worth.
    “Why’d you get rid of the cat?” my mother continued to ask.
    Because she kept asking the same questions over and over.
    “First the cat, then me. I’m not going to a home!” Then she would begin to cry the cat’s name in sick desperation.
    I upped the dosage of her medication. Sometimes it seemed to work; sometimes it seemed to have no effect on her at all.
     
     
     
    O NE EVENING , three days after she’d disappeared, I was putting Magpie’s treats out by the front door when a banged-up blue Chevy pickup arrived. Out stepped a man I recognized immediately, in spite of his ragged appearance.
    Out of old habit, I felt that electric tingle, only this time it seemed a little more dangerous, like touching a downed power line to see if it was live.
    “It’s true then,” he said, grinning as he hopped down from the cab of the truck. “Kate came home.”
    “How’re you doing, Nicky?”
    He took a few steps forward and I could see how he was doing. He looked a little drunk. He’d put on some weight and was in bad need of a shave and a haircut. Twenty-some years older than he was when I last saw him, but he still had the same gravelly voice and loping walk. His hair was pale and his skin dark. He wore a grease-stained John Deere baseball cap, clean T-shirt, red-and-black-checked hunting jacket, and jeans. He smiled his sly fox smile and my chest warmed. Like I already said, once I love someone, it’s for life. In spite of everything. Crazy, I know.
    I hadn’t been in a serious relationship since Jamie finally left me five years ago for a young surgeon. She was pregnant, he explained, and he wanted a family. Sick with the irony of the situation, I broke down and told him about the abortion.
    “You could have had a family,” I spat. “You could have an eleven-year-old child right now. There’s your fucking family!”
    I knew, once I said it, once I saw his face, that the fate of our marriage was sealed. He would never forgive me. I was the one who ruined