But not today.
Your mom and I have decided to take some time apart, I’d explained to Garrett, Hope, and Maggie over pumpkin pie the evening before. I’ve been staying with Todd while we figure it out. Please know that we love you three more than anything, and that this is not remotely your fault.
Heather, stiff as a board next to me, had chortled and veered off script. Your father seems to have gotten himself into some legal trouble. The next word was a whisper, under her breath. Again.
It had been a terrible night; Garrett was stoic, but the girls were full of tears and confusion and begged me to sleep on the sofa instead of going back to Todd’s.
I wake up with a pain in the middle of my back and clean the whole kitchen. I make coffee and wait for the kids to get up so I can say goodbye. As Garrett, Hopie, and Mags stumble downstairs, three caffeine-dependent young adults, I realize they’re not kids at all. In a stupor of pride that they’re mine, that I created them, I watch them fix their coffees. There’s Garrett, with his long, lean build and sleepy eyes, the same blue color as my own. Hope has those little freckles on her nose and her honey-brown curls, the hair she’s always battled. I hate that she doesn’t know how beautiful she is. And then there’s Maggie, my baby, the spitting image of her mother. In certain lights, the resemblance is more than I can handle. It takes me back in time. I am in awe of the three of them, of these perfect creatures that are half of me.
Imagining how they’re going to feel when they discover the full truth of what I’ve done—when they find out I’m going to prison for it—is more than I can stand. It’s my whole heart gone. Even if I wanted to tell them the truth, I can’t. I can’t tell anyone. Heather has me backed into a corner.
I will my mind to a state of blankness when I hug them goodbye. My throat is tight and there’s no way to edge out the pain. I tell them I’ll call later. I say we’ll make a plan to grab dinner or see a movie before the weekend is over. But their sadness is far less discernible after a good night’s sleep; the girls’ faces are dry, and my children nod ambiguously and watch me leave the house as if they’re not sure they know me at all.
I’ve borrowed Todd’s car—a leased Ford Mustang—and on the drive back to his condo I feel so depressed I can barely stand it. I want to stop in for a Scotch at a gritty-looking bar on the way—I can almost taste the chemical bite of the liquor on my tongue, the way it would numb the horror inside me so efficiently, so quickly. But it’s a scar, not a scab, and I keep on driving.
Rain begins to fall on the roof of the Mustang, and I do what I always do lately when I find myself craving a drink. I let myself think about Skye’s sunny face, about the easy happiness that was waking up next to her on three hundred mornings, those precious moments between sleep and awake before the guilt and panic crept in, that sacred state when all I knew was the safe integrity of loving her.
Chapter Forty-Six
Heather
Dear Dr. K,
Everything changed in 2006, the year Facebook grew in popularity. Looking back, I was probably among the first of Generation X to start using it.
I was working part-time at a boutique in downtown New Haven called the Kitchen Kettle, just to bring in some extra cash. Burke had been bugging me to finish my degree already and get a “real” job, but I’d told him countless times that wasting money on my education when we had three children to think about made zero sense. Besides, I didn’t mind my gig at the Kitchen Kettle. The store was usually slow—because who in New Haven shops for high-end kitchenware?—and I often spent my shifts reading glossy magazines behind the counter or listening to the gossip of whichever hyper-emotional high school girl was also working that day.
My sixteen-year-old colleague LeeAnn first introduced me to the world of Facebook. She was utterly consumed with the website, always using the store computer to log in to her account and update her photos and stalk boys she liked. I watched LeeAnn obsessively check the little red notifications that appeared in the upper-right-hand corner of the screen and couldn’t believe such a platform existed.
“God, I hope my son isn’t on here,” I commented one afternoon while LeeAnn was poring through photos of a guy she’d made out with over the weekend.
“Let’s look him up and see,” LeeAnn replied. “What’s his name?”
“Garrett. Garrett Michaels. But he’s only thirteen.” I watched nervously as she typed his name into the search box, three profiles for Garrett Michaels appearing in the results.
“Any of these him?” LeeAnn snapped her gum loudly.
I peered at the square profile photos of the other Garrett Michaelses of the world, relieved when I didn’t see my son’s face. I shook my head.
“Well, it’s only a matter of time,” LeeAnn assured me. “Facebook is blowing up. It used to be just college kids, but now everyone’s getting on it. Some boys are kinda late to the party. What else is new.”
I scratched my chin. “So you can just search anyone’s name and see if they have a profile?”
LeeAnn nodded lazily. “Yup.”
Half an hour later, while LeeAnn was busy helping a customer near the front of the store, I went to the computer and saw that she was still logged in to Facebook. I moved the cursor up to the search box and typed in the name that had been stuck in my mind for the past thirty minutes.
Skye Starling yielded a single result. I clicked on the profile photo and the image expanded. It was her, without a doubt. Her body type appeared to be different from her mother’s—stronger, curvier—but her flaxen hair and angelic face were Libby’s. Underneath her picture was a single line: Lives in Westport, CT.
“Who’s that?” LeeAnn’s voice called from behind, making me jump.
“Oh, um, sorry!” I stammered. “It’s my friend’s daughter. I just started searching for people I knew to see who might be on here. I’m bored.” I shrugged.
“She’s really pretty. Amazing skin.”
I nodded, starting to relax at the realization that, in LeeAnn’s eyes, I hadn’t done anything all that abnormal. “This is the only photo of her, I guess. You seem to have a lot more on your profile.”
“Well, I can’t see her photos ’cause I’m not Facebook friends with her,” LeeAnn explained knowingly. “If you’re not friends with someone, you can usually only see their profile photo and, like, where they live. Not their whole profile. Unless they’re public, but that’s creepy.”
“Oh.” I felt my brow crease in confusion.
“I’m not friending some rando I don’t know. Just make your own Facebook profile and then you can add your friends who have it. Or your friends’ kids or whatever.”
I nodded, still puzzled by the concept, but determined to find a way to see Skye Starling’s full profile.
Navigating Facebook turned out to be much easier than I’d anticipated. That night I stayed up late, long after Burke and the kids had gone to bed, using our clunky Mac to create my account and profile. Only after I was finished did I realize I couldn’t just “friend” Skye. She had no idea who I was. And if I sent her a message and tried to make the connection, Peter might find out I’d contacted his daughter, and it could look suspicious.