He looked at her as if she were a stranger, and she lowered her eyes. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“There’s nothing you can say now. Your silence these last four years has said everything I need to know.”

“I have said I’m sorry every way I know how. It was a mistake not to tell you, I admit that. But can’t you see how difficult it is for me to live with this?” Would he make her pay the rest of her life for one lie of omission? A seed of anger began to take root inside her. “I won’t keep begging you to understand me.”

He leaned against the wall, his head turned up to the ceiling. “Then I guess that’s that.”

“I guess it is then,” she said, her face drawing up like crumpled paper. She repositioned herself on the bed so her back was to him and he couldn’t see her face. “I’m heading to Ganton for Christmas to spend some time with Mama and Eli. It’s been a while and I need to see them.”

She hadn’t known that’s what she wanted to do until the words spilled out of her. When she glanced back at Xavier, his face clouded with confusion and then hardened, his eyes darkening in spite of his laughter.

“You haven’t gone home for any holidays since we’ve known each other. I had to beg you to have our wedding in Ganton, and even then, you wouldn’t let me in the house. And now, you decide to go home for Christmas?” A hard laugh that turned into a snort escaped his lips. “I don’t think I even know you.”

Heat seared Ruth’s face as if he’d pressed an iron to it. Tears pooled in her eyes, but she refused to shed them. How had they gotten here? The one man she thought she could lean on no matter what, the way she had with Papa, stood just a few feet away from her yet felt so far away.

Without a word, she left Xavier alone in their bedroom and stomped off to one of the guest rooms. Together, they had decorated it with a steel platform bed and a slate-gray accent wall. A gas fireplace added warmth. Xavier had said it would be a perfect room for Mama when she came to visit. Ruth had agreed quietly, knowing her grandmother would consider it excessive and would likely never set foot in their home anyway. Running her fingers along the threading of the duvet cover, Ruth took a few deep breaths. Next, she opened the curtains and peered out at the black night.

Their Bronzeville neighborhood stared back at her with all its growing pains, both beautiful and awkward at the same time. This place was usually all jazz, but sometimes blues, too, and late on nights like this, you could still hear the roar of race riots from the turn of the century and, in the background, the soulful sway of jazz in dance halls. Vacant lots stood stubbornly ugly next to sculptures and grand architecture, the Obamas’ home in Hyde Park only a ten-minute drive away.

Ruth needed a sign, some guarantee that what she was about to embark upon would turn out okay. On good days, she had imagined her son loved and happy. But there were those nights, especially recently, when she woke up wet with sweat, thinking he was unhappy and struggling. She had no idea what she might find back home or if she would have a marriage to return to. But she saw now what she had to do. It was time for her to own up to her choices. The lies and the secrets had gone on for much too long.

She would go home and confront Mama. She would get answers about her son.

Seven

Ruth

As she crossed into Indiana, windmills turned as far as Ruth could see. Silos painted red and dusted with snow looked like fat peppermint sticks. Her damp palms slid on the steering wheel as she passed one mile marker after the next on the way to Ganton.

She had no desire to uproot her son, to snatch him from the soil where he’d been planted. Maybe that’s why she had stayed away so long and hadn’t made any effort to find him before now. Having a son was like holding a puzzle piece that didn’t fit, no matter how many times you looked at the picture on the box. Still, not being in his life tore at something inside her, a rupture that time and marriage couldn’t stitch together again.

Without any real plan, Ruth considered what she needed to do once she got to Ganton. First, she had to convince Mama to give her the name she’d withheld all these years “for all the right reasons.” Her reasons. Her ideas about what was best for Ruth.

Shame stung her as she truly accepted how long she’d stayed away, and how she’d allowed herself to be bullied. Now, as she drove past the open fields of farm country, she remembered the life she’d once loved in Ganton. And there had been much to love, really. The water tower that grazed the sky, watching over them, tall and proud. The covered bridge she and Eli climbed up and lay on to get the best view of the stars at night. The rows of tall corn she crouched in as a little girl for games of hide-and-seek with her friends.

Driving into Ganton, Ruth noticed the frost skimming the top of the Wabash River, and she pulled her car over to the water’s banks. She got out and walked gingerly across the ice to the river’s edge where she and Papa had once strolled, her tiny hand enveloped in his larger, callused one. So many times they’d walked to his favorite fishing spot. She had often been impatient to feel that tug on the line and Papa would remind her, Got to give it time, baby girl. They’ll bite when they’re good and ready. They had fished together for years until Papa got sick.

Squatting, Ruth removed her glove and slid her left hand over the smooth ice that would melt in the spring. She remembered helping Papa pull the old lawn chairs from the trunk of his car, and then they’d sit here for hours in the kind of quiet that didn’t need filling, just the two of them, without Mama or Eli. Pride shone in his eyes, her telling him about her good grades in science and math. That look he gave her was one Ruth drank down as if she’d been languishing in a desert. He’d say, Study hard and get that piece of paper, girl. That’s going to be your ticket to the big leagues someday. Then nothing can stop you. Papa is proud of his baby girl.