Aside:

Imagine with me, if you will, that Rounette, soon after realizing her own feelings for Red, confided something in him. It would have been perfect pillow talk, this story, filled with the kind of vulnerability and sadness that bonds people. It was the kind of story that would make a partner profess anything in response. In this story, she would provide her reasons for treading cautiously into a new relationship. She would tell Red the story of her second marriage to a man named Rocco, who was a long-haul trucker for all the years she was with him. Maybe she wasn't meant for marriage, she might have said to Red, because she enjoyed the longs stretches of freedom while he was on the road. It hadn't been a happy marriage, and they eventually divorced. When Rocco later drowned in the St. John's River in Florida, Rounette learned that he had had a wife and children in New York all the while he was married to her. Trust was no longer something that came easily to her.

Now imagine that you are Red hearing this story for the first time. You have fallen in love, against your better judgment perhaps. You have made plans with this woman, made hopeful third-time's-a-charm jokes to reassure yourself. You are ready to share the pain of your past and usher in a new future with a clean slate. And then there's this story. 

To understand how none of Rounette's family knew about Lillian and the boys, I had to come to some kind of understanding of how Red could have kept their existence a secret. Then I learned Rounette's story and things became clearer to me: If Red wanted to move forward, perhaps not just with Rounette but with his life in general, he would have to allow the past to remain where it was. And a slate can only be cleaned by erasing it.