Lily smiles when she sees me hovering just inside the door, waiting for her to finish up with Colin. She tips her head and waves, and I see the concern in her eyes, the question. She’s wondering what I’m doing here. Our classrooms are in different halls, though they’re on the same floor. Still, it’s not that easy to get from one room to the other, not in the four minutes the kids are allotted for passing periods. It’s not that often that I stop by Lily’s room during the day.
“Nina. Hi,” she says, coming to me as Colin Miner returns to his seat.
“Hey.” Up close, Lily doesn’t look as perfect as she did from a distance. She looks beat, as if I’m one to talk. There are bags under her eyes and she wears only one earring, the same small silver hoop with a drop pearl that she wears every day. “Can I talk to you for a quick sec? In private?” I ask.
“Yeah, of course. Just give me a minute,” she says.
The bell rings and the last few kids run in and to their seats, practically diving into them. Lily gets the kids started, and then she and I step into the hall, where she pulls the door to, but not closed, so that it doesn’t lock on her and so that she can keep an eye on what’s happening inside the classroom. “What’s going on?” she asks.
“You’re missing an earring,” I tell her.
Her fingers go to her earlobes, touching them. “Oh,” Lily says, her expression changing. She looks sad, upset I think, that she lost the earring. “Thanks,” she says, frowning as she takes the other earring out, fastens the back and folds it into her hand. “Is everything okay?” she asks, crossing her arms against the mock neck sweater.
“No,” I say, “I don’t think so.” I don’t mean for them to, but my eyes fill with tears. I’m not one to cry. But I’m so tired and the lack of sleep as well as what’s happening with Jake is a lethal combination. Lily is sympathetic and crying is contagious; for a second, Lily looks like she could cry too.
“Nina,” she says. Lily unknots her arms and reaches for my hand, squeezing it. I squeeze back. “What is it?” she asks. “What’s wrong?”
I don’t hold back because it’s Lily. Lily and I have been friends for years and not just work friends, but real friends. We tell each other practically everything. Lily isn’t one to judge. It’s not like she and Christian have the perfect marriage, because no one does. Everyone fights sometimes. Every marriage goes through hard times.
“Jake and I got into a stupid argument the other night. Stupid but nasty. I said some things I shouldn’t have said. He did too, really hurtful things. It’s not like we haven’t fought before. But this was different, worse.”
“Why?” she asks, willing to talk despite having a classroom of teenagers waiting on her. I’m grateful for that.
“Because, Lily,” I say, hesitating a beat, almost ashamed to admit it, even to Lily, and because saying it out loud makes it real, “he didn’t come home last night.”
Lily’s mouth parts. Her eyes get wide. She lets go of my hand, her arms going to hang stiffly at her sides. It’s unintentional, I think, because she realizes quickly that she’s made this very obvious reaction and she tries reversing it because she doesn’t want to make me feel worse than I already do.
“Oh God, Nina. I’m so sorry,” she says, blinkingly slowly, and then she hides her surprise behind a sympathetic smile and reaches again for my hand.
“It’s bad, isn’t it?” I ask. “That he didn’t come home.” Lily goes to shake her head, to say no, when I ask, “Has Christian ever not come home?” hoping her answer is yes. I mean, it can’t be that uncommon. People fight. Feelings get hurt. It’s not like you want to see that person the next day and pretend everything is okay. You need time for the situation to defuse. If he had come home, Jake and I would probably have just wound up fighting again because our emotions were still high. What good would that have done?
Lily is brutally honest. “No,” she says. “I’m sorry. I almost wish the answer was yes. But no, he hasn’t ever not come home. But that’s just Christian, Nina. He’s always the first to cave when we fight. I don’t even know that he’s always sorry when he says he is. He just hates conflict. He would do anything to avoid it.”
That’s sweet. It sounds like Christian. Christian is a good guy. But it makes me feel exponentially worse about myself and about my situation with Jake. I wish Lily would have just lied and said the answer was yes to appease me. How would I have known it wasn’t true?
“Have you tried calling him?” she asks.
“Yes. Many times. It goes to voice mail.”
“What were you fighting about?” she asks, but before I can explain, there is an eruption of noise from inside the classroom. Someone must have done something, and the class exploded into raucous laughter. A few kids are out of their seats and almost no one is doing what Lily asked them to do.
“Listen,” she says, “I have to get back to my class. Let’s talk about this later, okay?” She gives my hand a final squeeze, and I say yes, of course, that I’m sorry to have kept her so long.
But later, at the end of the day when I go back to Lily’s classroom to talk it out, she’s already gone.
CHRISTIAN
It’s two twenty in the afternoon when Lily texts. I’m in the middle of a meeting. A handful of us sit around a conference table working on a survey for a client. I look down at my phone. Lily’s text reads:
Can you leave early? Can you meet me at home? If not, that’s ok.
This is so classic Lily, to not want to put anyone out.
“Hey,” I say to my colleagues, still staring down at Lily’s text and thinking the worst again, that Lily has lost the baby, if not yesterday then today. I push my chair back and stand up, glad this isn’t a meeting with a client. It’s not a huge deal if I leave. “I hate to do this,” I say, packing up my things and pushing my chair in, “but I’ve got to run.”
I’m in my car, pulling out of the parking lot within five minutes. Two minutes later, I’m heading eastbound on 88, where my speedometer reaches eighty-five miles per hour.
Lily is in the leather chair again when I come in. It’s a swivel chair. Today it’s turned to face the garage door, so she sees me arrive, having to use my key to unlock the door because it’s locked, which it never is. We always leave that door unlocked. Lily must have locked it by mistake.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” I ask, tossing my keys on the island and practically running to her. As expected, the day got warm. As soon as the sun came out, the temperatures rose by thirty degrees. Now the sun streams in the wall of windows on the back of the house, falling across Lily’s lap. She’s stripped down to a tank top and leggings because of the heat, and sits with her legs pulled into her, cross-legged in the chair.
There are scratches on her arm and shoulder, some quite deep. This is the first time I’m seeing them. “What happened?” I ask, lowering myself to the floor, running a finger over them before gazing benevolently up at her, into her eyes. “Did you fall?”