I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Stop. Just stop. You’re right. You told me you didn’t have a lot of time. But this has been the worst night of my life, and I don’t need to hear you justify the fact that you made a promise to my son you didn’t keep.”
“So you’re blaming me,” he says, and my stomach sinks. I still haven’t recovered from watching a boat dredge the lake for my son—I’m not sure I will ever recover from it entirely—and I can accept that it’s my fault. But Caleb’s defensiveness is really poorly timed. “I’m not blaming you for anything.”
A vein throbs in his temple. “I think you were expecting something from me that I just can’t give.”
“I’m not expecting anything from you, believe me,” I retort. “And we’re moving, so allow that to ease any lingering fears about our expectations.”
“Moving?” he repeats blankly. It’s the first thing I’ve said that seems to have knocked a brick out of this wall he’s suddenly got up. “Where?”
“Some place Jeremy saw in Idlewild. He said he’d pay our rent for a year, so I agreed. This house is too old, and the yard isn’t fenced. We can’t keep living here.”
His eyes narrow. “Oh, you and Jeremy agreed? Suddenly he’s the good guy?”
“Do you have any idea what we just went through?” I demand, my voice cracking. The agony of the entire night is catching up with me at once, compressed into a single moment. “I don’t give a shit where we go or who found it for us. I need to make sure my kids are safe.”
“He’s playing you,” Caleb snaps. “How can you not see this? He’s been awful to you and them for years, but one little thing and it’s all good?”
I take a small step back. One little thing? Are you fucking kidding me?
Caleb’s failure to grasp what occurred tonight, how devastating it was, is this whole situation in a nutshell. When you love someone deeply and you nearly lose them, everything else is so fucking trivial that you’re shocked it could ever matter to you in the first place. Jeremy, for all his flaws, managed to put everything aside—his grudges and selfishness, the squabbling—when Henry went missing. Caleb isn’t able to do the same.
It still feels as if he’s who I was meant for, and maybe it would have worked out if my life had gone a different way. But it didn’t, and I have two children who need to come first.
My chin lifts and I swallow hard. “I’ve loved you since I was six. I used to watch out that back window for you and only you, dreaming up these crazy scenarios that would make you see me.” My voice cracks and I have to stop talking.
“Lucie—” he begins. “I’m sorry. I just can’t be respons—”
I hold up a hand because if I don’t say this now, I never will. And because if he’s about to offer yet another fake apology, I’m going to lose it.
“You’ve got a company to run that comes first for you. Maybe I didn’t want to accept that, or maybe I thought once you fell in love with us, you’d choose to change. But I spent my entire life as the kid no one wanted, and I’m not doing that to my own children. For their sake, Caleb, I need to stop waiting on you to figure it out.”
His eyes are wide, his mouth is ajar, and I don’t give him a chance to reply as I turn to walk into the house.
There was no point in waiting—he wasn’t going to promise to change. He was just going to apologize and continue proving with his inaction and his defensiveness that he doesn’t feel the same way I do.
I’m someone no one has ever wanted quite enough and I put my kids in the same position.
But at least I know how to make sure it stops happening.
I WAKE on the floor between the twins’ beds. I tried to sleep in my own room, but I couldn’t do it. I needed to be able to hear them breathing.
I sneak out to go in search of my cell phone, which I left downstairs last night after the conversation with Caleb.
My stomach sinks, remembering how it ended. But it had already ended for me, in a way, the second Henry admitted he’d been looking for Caleb when he got lost. I wanted to save Caleb from himself. I wanted my fairy tale. But those are goals for someone who doesn’t have two children depending on her.
The phone shows that I already have a missed call from Molly—at six in the morning.
I dial her back immediately. “Hey, is everything okay?”
“Michael asked me out!” she screams so loudly I have to hold the phone away from my ear. “Oh, wait. Henry’s okay, yeah? I guess I should have asked that first.”