…”Great job keeping our secret, buddy! Mom doesn’t need to know Dad isn’t at work. — Uncle Mike”
Dad isn’t at work.
I didn’t wake my husband. I called in late to my own job and drove straight to Jack’s school. The office manager pulled up the pickup log while I stood at the counter. Fourteen times since August, Jack had been signed out by “Michael Dunn.” There was an authorization form on file, giving him permission. It had my signature on it. I’d never seen it before.
The principal took it very seriously. Within the hour, Mike’s name was removed from the list, and the school had a new rule for Jack: nobody but me or my husband, with photo ID, every time.
Then I went home and put the drawing on the kitchen table in front of my husband.
He read the green pen line, and all the color went out of his face. He sat down. And then he told me.
He’d been laid off in July. He hadn’t told me because he was ashamed, and because he kept thinking he’d find something new before I noticed. He’d been leaving the house every morning in a tie and spending his days at the library, sending out applications. And some afternoons, at a casino forty minutes away, trying to “make up the difference.” Mike was a guy from his old office who’d been laid off the same week. My husband paid him fifty dollars a time to pick Jack up and keep him busy until “work” was over.
He swore Mike had never been anything but kind to Jack. Later, a police officer I spoke to agreed, after talking to Mike and to Jack. But that wasn’t the point, and I told my husband so. He’d forged my name. He’d handed our son to a man I’d never met. And he’d taught our seven-year-old to keep secrets from me.
That was the part I couldn’t get past. That night, I sat on Jack’s bed and told him something I should have told him a long time ago. “In our family, there are surprises, like birthday presents. But there are no secrets from Mom. Ever. If a grown-up tells you to keep a secret from me, that’s how you know to tell me right away. You’ll never be in trouble for it.”
He thought about it seriously. Then he said, “Okay. Dad also has a lottery ticket in the glove box.” I laughed for the first time in two days.
My husband is in a program for gambling now, and he found a job in January. We go to counseling every Tuesday. I don’t know yet where we’ll end up.
But Jack drew a new picture in art class last week. Our house, our car, and three people holding hands. Above them, in crooked letters: “No secrets.” He put it on the fridge himself.
