It didn’t help I’d had too much to drink at the last church social, she said, turning her cup around on the table. Everyone thought I was a drunk and I’d neglected my son.
I reached out and took her hand then. It was cool and soft in my own.
She sat looking at our hands. She took a deep breath.
David’s business wasn’t doing well. Hadn’t been for a while. He’d gotten a loan from his parents for a start-up, taken on his best friend as a business partner against their wishes. On certain days he’d come home in dark moods, unspeaking for hours, silence filling up their house until she said something that would set him off. He’d never hit her, she asserted. She wanted to make that clear. The abuse was verbal, emotional, only bruising on the inside. So much better, I thought.
I wanted to ask you here to say I’m sorry for the other day in the kitchen. Everything had been piling up, and I don’t know why the dam broke then and there during the party, but I’m sorry I did what I did. She didn’t look at me when she said it, but I was still holding her hand. Everyone had a breaking point—I knew that. But I wasn’t sure if that’s what this was. For a moment my response balanced on an edge, then tipped over with the heavy beating of my pulse.
I’m not sorry, I said. And she looked at me.
The summer storm was in her eyes again. Could’ve swept me away. I would’ve let it.
Instead she slowly drew her hand back.
We sat for a while more, not talking, just finishing our coffees. I paid when we rose from our seats and stepped out under the café’s awning. We were alone in the rain, and I felt I should say something more, some sentiment to put her at ease, let her know she could talk to me whenever she needed. Before I could say anything, she told me she’d rented a room at the motel just down the street. Her eyes met mine and slipped away. She was trembling.
We drove in my car.
The room was dark and warm when we went inside. She was another shadow, stepping close, wet clothes under my fingertips. She kissed me for the second time, much longer than in the kitchen. Over the pounding of my heart, I asked her if she was sure.
She was.
“Penny for your thoughts.” Dad nudged my side, and I quit looking at the phone hanging on the wall. Came back from six months ago and started scrubbing egg yolk off a plate.
“I’d be ripping you off,” I said, completing our ancient back-and-forth. He dried the dishes as I washed them. The sun shone over the mountains and hit the church’s steeple.
When the dishes were done, we went grocery shopping. Kel and the girls were coming over later for a cookout, and we needed steak and beer. While I pushed the cart and Dad loaded it, I thought of ways to reach out to Rachel. All of them were risky. Who knew if or when our observer was watching? If I spoke to her, it would have to be 100 percent private or completely out in the open, just two neighbors chatting for a few seconds. Nothing to see here, move along.
There was a bulletin board at the exit of the grocery store. I grabbed a few job opening flyers. In the car, Dad said, “You thinking of quitting writing?”
“No. Just might need a little supplemental income. Last book hasn’t earned out yet.”
He frowned. “You’re still working on the new one, though, right?”
“Yep.”
“Then things might still be okay.”
I gave him a smile. Dad was a romantic too. “They might.”
As we were putting the groceries away, my phone pinged, and my blood pressure spiked. Rachel had never called my cell or texted, always ringing Dad’s if she wanted to get ahold of me, but I knew it would be her. She would be distraught, furious, filled with regret. Or maybe it was our observer, stepping into the light just enough to make another demand.
It was Kel.
Did you hear about Mary Shelby?
No. What happened?
She died two days ago.
I sat down and waited until I could speak again to tell Dad.
4
You guide your car around the curves, up over hills, through a majesty of trees and sunlit spring grass in a daze.
You pass over a bridge, torrents of white water and rocks beneath, past an elementary school, past an overgrown cemetery, past a monument you’ve seen a hundred times and never stopped to actually see what it was a monument to.
You drive on automatic because a woman you wanted so badly to call Mother is no longer in the world.
I watched the scenery pass by and thought about second chances, about missed opportunities and clarity that only came with memory and looking back. Disbelief was a cloud around me. Since Kel’s text, I hadn’t felt like anything was real. The note and now Mary’s death were contrived. Something none of my editors would accept in a manuscript.