I stared through the kitchen window at Greg kneeling in the dirt.
There are moments when fear arrives dramatically, and there are moments when it comes as a quiet rearrangement of ordinary facts. A missing blanket. A husband leaving bed. A whispered declaration of love. A hole in the ground.
Individually, each could have meant almost nothing.
Together, they were terrifying.
I opened the back door.
“Greg.”
He spun around.
The shovel struck the wooden garden border with a sharp crack, and dirt scattered across his pajama pants.
“Laura!”
“What are you doing?”
His eyes widened. “Keep your voice down.”
That answer did not improve the situation.
I stepped onto the cold patio stones. “You disappear from our bed in the middle of the night, I hear you talking to somebody downstairs, and now you’re digging in the backyard. Why exactly should I keep my voice down?”
“Because you’ll frighten her.”
I stopped.
“Her?”
Greg looked at the bundle in his arm.
The blanket moved.
Every thought in my head vanished.
“What is that?”
“Laura—”
“Show me.”
He hesitated.
“Greg.”
Slowly, he folded back one corner of the blue blanket.
A tiny gray face emerged.
Two dark, irritated eyes looked up at me.
I stared.
The creature opened its mouth and produced a squeak so small it barely seemed capable of coming from anything alive.
“A kitten?”
Greg nodded.
I looked at the animal, then at him, then at the hole.
“A kitten.”
“Yes.”
“You were downstairs saying ‘Daddy loves you’ to a kitten?”
His expression suggested that, stated that way, his behavior might indeed require some explanation.
The kitten squeaked again.
Greg immediately lowered his face toward it. “You’re okay.”
Then, even more softly, he added, “Susan.”
I blinked.
“Susan?”
“Yes.”
“You named her Susan?”
He shifted uncomfortably.
“After my mother.”
“Your mother has been dead for twelve years.”
“I’m aware.”
“And you named a gray kitten after her?”
Greg frowned. “She was a very dignified woman.”
I looked at the kitten. The kitten appeared to be trying to eat a loose strand of blue yarn.
“Greg.”
“All right. Maybe the resemblance isn’t physical.”
Under different circumstances, I might have laughed.
Then I saw the hole again.
My stomach tightened.
“Why are you digging?”
He looked confused.
I pointed. “There. Why are you digging a hole while holding a kitten?”
Understanding reached him.
“Oh. No.”
“No what?”
“I’m not burying her.”
“I can see that, Greg. You’re holding her.”
“I’m not burying anything.”
“Then explain the hole.”
He put the shovel down.
“Listen.”
“To what?”
“Just listen.”
I folded my arms, but then something beneath the wooden garden edging made a faint scratching sound.
A second later came a thin cry.
My anger disappeared.
“What was that?”
Greg pointed toward a narrow dark opening beneath the border.
“Another kitten.”
I crouched.
The opening was barely wider than my wrist. Loose soil surrounded it.
“There are two?”
“At least two. I think only two, but I’m not completely certain.”
Another cry came from underneath the dirt.
Greg’s whole posture changed. The embarrassed husband vanished, replaced by someone intensely focused.
“Susan was close enough for me to reach,” he said. “The other one crawled farther underneath. I’m widening the entrance from the side so I don’t collapse the soil on top of it.”
I looked at the shovel.
Then at the kitten.
Then at Michael’s blanket.
Questions crowded against one another.
“How long have they been here?”
“I found them yesterday.”
“And their mother?”
“I haven’t seen her.”
“Where did they come from?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Laura—”
“And why is our son’s baby blanket wrapped around Susan?”
“We can talk about everything after I get the other one out.”
“No.”
He closed his eyes briefly.
“Please.”
“No. You’ve been leaving our bed for three weeks.”
“I know.”
“You lied about your back.”
He glanced away.
“You told me Michael’s blanket had been donated.”
“That was not my finest improvisation.”
“You expect me to find that funny?”
“No.”
“Good.”
The kitten moved again.
Greg automatically adjusted the blanket around her.
The tenderness of that gesture unsettled me more than the lie.
I had seen those hands support newborn heads. I had watched him walk endless circles through our old hallway with Michael against his shoulder. I remembered Greg asleep upright in the rocking chair with Emma tucked beneath his chin, terrified that moving would wake her.
Those years had seemed endless while we lived them.
Then they ended.
I pushed the thought aside.
“Give her to me.”
Greg looked surprised.
“You said you need both hands.”
His expression softened with relief.
He stood carefully and transferred the tiny bundle into my arms.
“Support her underneath.”
“I raised two children with you.”
“She’s smaller.”
“Thank you for the warning.”
The kitten weighed almost nothing.
That surprised me.
Beneath the blanket was a fragile concentration of warmth, bone, and fur. She shifted against my palm, gave an indignant squeak, then pressed her face into the fold of wool.
Suddenly I understood at least one thing.
Whatever Greg had done, the blanket was keeping her warm.
He returned to the flower bed.
Instead of digging directly toward the sound, he scraped away dirt several inches to one side. Every movement was painfully slow.
“Where did you learn to do that?”
He stopped.
“What?”
“That. You clearly know what you’re doing.”
“I watched a few videos.”
“At two in the morning?”
“Laura.”
“That wasn’t an answer.”
The hidden kitten cried again.
Greg bent closer.
“I know. I know. Give me a minute.”
The words were intended for the kitten, not me.
I watched him.
There was something practiced in the way he worked.
Not expert, exactly.
Familiar.
That realization joined the growing pile of things I did not understand.
After several minutes, Greg put the shovel aside and began removing soil with his fingers.
His nails filled with dirt.
The knees of his pajamas turned brown.
“Flashlight,” he said.
I found his small flashlight near the border and aimed it into the opening.
Something gray shifted inside.
“There.”
“I see it.”
Greg flattened himself against the ground and reached beneath the timber.
The kitten retreated.
“Don’t chase it,” I whispered.
“I’m not.”
“You’re reaching directly toward it.”
“Would you like to do this?”
“No.”
“Then perhaps allow the man lying face-first in a flower bed at two-thirty in the morning to concentrate.”
I almost smiled despite myself.
Then the kitten cried sharply.
Greg went still.
“Easy.”
He withdrew his hand and changed position.
For another ten minutes, we worked in near silence.
I held Susan.
Greg widened the opening.
The second kitten protested from underground with surprising determination.
Finally Greg pushed his arm beneath the edging almost to his elbow.
His face tightened.
“Got you.”
He slowly pulled backward.
A tiny gray body appeared in his hand.
The kitten came out furious, filthy, and alive.
Greg sat back hard in the dirt.
For one second he simply stared at it.
Then his shoulders dropped.
“Oh, thank God.”
His voice broke slightly.
I looked at him.
Greg had cried when each of our children was born. He had cried at his mother’s funeral. I had seen his eyes fill when Michael left for university, though he denied it afterward.
Now tears stood openly in them.
Over a kitten he claimed to have discovered yesterday.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Fine.”
The answer came too quickly.
He rubbed his face with the cleanest part of his sleeve and stood.
“Let’s get them inside.”
I followed him through the kitchen.
As we entered the hallway, Greg turned toward the guest room.
I expected to see the same room I had passed a hundred times.
Instead, when he switched on the lamp, I realized my husband’s secret was much larger than two kittens.
Click here to continue reading: PART 3: The Guest Room Revealed Six Months of My Husband’s Secret Life, but His Most Painful Reason Was Still Something He Couldn’t Say
For Three Weeks Greg Left Our Bed After Midnight, and One Missing Family Keepsake Made His Explanation Impossible to Believe
Part 2 of 24
