I waited, an intuition of what was coming keeping me quiet for nearly a minute while she struggled.
“He never hit me, but he threatened to. He said things . . . that really frightened me. That’s why I left my cell behind when we went to Sadie’s. I was afraid he’d track us somehow.” She grimaced and took a deep breath. “Sometimes I could feel the anger coming off him like heat, and I was afraid for me and the kids. I don’t know why I didn’t tell you. It was like if I didn’t say it, it wouldn’t really be real. It was like a nightmare: if you can get enough distance from it, then it fades more and more.” A tear slipped free of her eye and slid down the side of her nose. She swiped it away. “Oh God, I should’ve done something sooner. If I would’ve left him, Joey would’ve never—”
“He would’ve gotten custody,” I said quietly. “He would’ve used all his power and carried on just like he wanted to. People like David usually do. Don’t blame yourself. You’re going to hear this a lot in the next year or so, but I mean it. This wasn’t your fault.”
She leaned into me then, and I put an arm around her. When she finally sat back, her face was blotchy and tear streaked, but a clarity had entered her gaze. “I wasn’t ready.”
I nodded. “I know.”
“You . . . you were everything I needed, everything David wasn’t, and it scared the hell out of me. When you said . . . that . . . when you told me and asked if we could be together, it terrified me, Andy. It scared me because of how much I wanted to say it back. How much I wanted to say yes.”
My heart surged. A thousand suns flaring. I waited until I knew my voice would be steady, then said, “That’s why you left the note in my door.”
Her eyes flashed up to mine, and I could almost see the shock wave roll through her. “How did you . . . when did you . . .”
“Last night. I was at home thinking about everything. Taking it all apart and putting it back together. I’d thought the note had been the catalyst for everything that came after. I thought I was the reason you were missing, but it was just a coincidence. Bad timing, I guess.”
She uttered a shaky laugh. “I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t have it in me to tell you I didn’t want to see you anymore, mostly because it wasn’t the truth. So I took the coward’s way out and left you the note one night when I knew you were at your dad’s. It was easier than breaking your heart. Easier than breaking mine.”
I took her hand and kissed it, held it to my chest. “Not broken.” She smiled. “But there is one thing I have to tell you.”
“What’s that?”
“The next time you write a semi-threatening blackmail note, let me read it over first. It was a little melodramatic.”
She laughed again. Music to my ears.
32
You fall back into a routine, the old adage that people can get used to anything proving true once again.
You get up in the morning, work on the edits of the book that was bought for a very nice advance from a new publisher you’ve never placed anything with before. You make lunch for your father and note a few more idiosyncrasies in his behavior, the scoreboard ticking another span of points for the disease that will eventually win the game. The way things are progressing, you’re almost certain it won’t go into overtime.
You while away most afternoons tinkering with a new idea that may or may not become a novel. Maybe a short story—no, a novel. Who knows? You make dinner and spend the evening watching some television, maybe sitting outside under the stars and sipping a beer with your old man. Sometimes your sister and her kids come over too. The girls’ laughter is good for you.
You keep in regular correspondence with your brother, who is still—to be honest—kind of a dick. But you can talk to him now for more than a few minutes without wanting a drink or to hit something, and that’s progress, as they say.
You take long walks before bed, leaving the Loop behind and traveling around the pond in the nearby park. You like the way the last light holds on the water until it’s gone, as if the sun left a little bit of itself there and won’t pick it back up until morning. Then you go home and get in bed and think until sleep finally pulls you under.
You do this all summer.
I don’t know who organized the event. It was something Mary would’ve typically done for a church function, but of course Mary was no longer here, and the church had been in a period of upheaval for months.