“So, about dinner,” he continues. “We can maybe head down to Santa Cruz? Stacy next door said she’d watch the kids.”
He’s got it all planned out. He really thinks that after everything he did and said, I’m going to let him buy me dinner then give him one of those blow jobs he demanded, then criticized, in turn.
“We’re getting a divorce,” I say, my voice as firm as I can make it. “I appreciate the flowers, but they don’t change anything.”
“Lucie,” he says, “give me a chance. I know I fucked up. I know I didn’t appreciate what I had. Sometimes it takes losing everything to make you love your old life.”
“I—”
“It’s what I want, it’s what the kids want, and I think underneath it all, it’s what you want. We had a nice life together and now you’re slumming it out at that cabin, working long hours. And what about the kids? I know it must kill you to send them to aftercare. It must. And how are you going to help Henry if you’re working full time?”
My shoulders sag. Nothing he said mattered until he brought up the kids. And he’s right. I’m so tired when I get home from work that I can barely stay awake when I’m reading to them at night. How am I going to summon the energy when they get real homework next year, or if Henry needs extra help? I thought the hardships would be balanced out by Jeremy’s absence from our lives, but he isn’t disappearing the way I hoped.
Give in now, even a little, and you are lost.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t want that,” I say, still trying to soften my words, still trying to placate him in the futile hope he won’t turn vicious as a result. My stomach twists already, anticipating his response. “And I don’t want to go to dinner.”
There’s silence then, and I regret being so blunt. I do believe that somewhere, deep in Jeremy’s very fucked-up head and heart, there is a molecule of legitimate regret. And perhaps if I loved him, or believed he loved me, that would be enough. But that’s just it—I don’t love him. I thought I could and maybe did when we first met, because I was young and stupid and woefully inexperienced. But it wasn’t love at all—it was simply relief that someone, anyone at all, wanted me and claimed he was willing to have my back.
“You’re going to regret this,” he says, and he ends the call.
I press my palms to my face, wishing I’d somehow handled it better.
He’s going to make me pay.
22
LUCIE
The next morning, I’m running frantically through the house, buttoning my skirt while I try to find Henry’s missing shoe. In an effort to keep costs down, I said I’d pick the bagels up rather than getting them delivered, which means I somehow need to get the kids to school, pick up bagels for five hundred people, and have it all done by nine a.m. It already bordered on impossible, and then Sophie opened a yogurt and got it all over the front of her uniform, the floor, and me. By the time I’ve got her changed and myself cleaned up, we are five minutes behind schedule on a day when we can’t be behind schedule at all.
“Come on, you guys. Come on!” I shout, grabbing my bag and phone as I hustle them out the door.
“Mommy,” says Henry. “Where’s the car?”
I exhale heavily, fumbling for the keys in my purse. “Henry, I don’t have time for games, okay?” It’s at times like this that I can almost understand why my mother lost her shit with me so often. Because I want to have a tantrum, and children are so easy to rage against. It’s not like they can talk back, or at least they couldn’t in my mother’s household—Sophie seems to manage it just fine in mine.
I find the keys and sling the bag over my shoulder as I walk outside. Henry and Sophie are standing on the walkway, staring at me.
I look beyond them to the driveway and blink repeatedly at the empty space where the car should be. The alarm would have triggered if someone had tried to steal it. It takes me another long second to realize it must have been removed by someone with a key—a key only one other person has.
“Did somebody steal our car, Mommy?” asks Sophie tearfully.
I am not going to fall apart. I am not going to fall apart. I am not going to fall apart.
“No. Nobody stole our car.” My voice trembles with both sadness and rage. “I think Daddy might have borrowed it.”
Why did Jeremy have to do this now? It’s like he knew how important today was, but he couldn’t have. He just happened to choose to fuck me over at a time when I really needed everything to go perfectly.