I smile. “He’s fine. So how did this happen?” I think I’ll keep our potential role in this to myself for the time being.
Molly goes on to describe how she completely lost it as he drove her home and couldn’t stop crying. “And so he hugged me and somehow we were kissing and then, you know—”
“You slept with him?”
“No, Michael was all annoyingly honorable about it and saying he didn’t want to take advantage of me in a vulnerable state, which goes to show that a lot of my plans that involved him rescuing me from traumatic situations would not have ended as sexily as I thought. But anyway, he said he’s had a crush on me since the day I interviewed but never wanted to put me in a weird position and we’re going out tomorrow night!”
I tell her how happy I am for her and agree to help her shop for lingerie for their date, though she’s been buying lingerie for this date for years now.
“Now he won’t have to punch one of Caleb’s friends at your wedding,” she replies with a laugh.
It stings—because yes, there was a ridiculous part of me that really believed there’d be a wedding—but I don’t correct her. What happened between me and Caleb can wait.
This is Molly’s moment. I got my moment too. I just hope hers lasts a little longer than mine did.
I call in sick and keep the kids home from school too. Henry’s teacher phones later in the morning to tell me she feels awful about what happened yesterday and wants to give him another chance to demonstrate the robotic arm. Kindergartners aren’t normally a part of the school-wide end-of-year show on Friday, but she’s convinced them to make an exception for him. To my utter shock, he agrees, though I doubt he’ll go through with it.
There are other calls too, because the whole world, it seems, has heard about Henry going missing. Even the moms at St. Ignatius, women who’ve never said a word to me, call or text. “God, you must have been so scared,” I hear again and again. As different as we are, there’s one thing we have in common: the terror of loving someone so much—someone we could lose.
The one person I don’t hear from all day long is Caleb. He’s already back at work and moving forward, while I’m the one with this wound in my chest reopening every time I look at his house. I’m the one fighting this childish hope that we can be salvaged, when the sight of Henry looking out our window for him should be enough to remind me it can’t.
I did this to myself, and I did this to my kids, and now I’m going to undo all of it. The sooner we get out of here, the better.
36
CALEB
I do what I’ve always done when shit’s gone wrong: I head to the office and bury myself in work, and then I get on another goddamn plane and travel back to the east coast.
Budgets, contracts, the merger. None of it really matters anymore. I should be ecstatic, but even yesterday, when the last piece was set in place for the weekend at Caldwell’s estate, Henry’s potential disappointment was eating at me, ruining it.
I land in New York to discover texts from my friends about Lucie, but nothing at all from Lucie herself, which I guess makes sense. ‘One little thing and it’s all good?’ I demanded. I was referring to Jeremy’s offer of assistance, but when she took it the wrong way, I didn’t stop her. I guess a part of me thought it seemed like the easiest way to cut this whole thing off. And then she cut it off herself, and she was absolutely correct to do so.
BECK
Just checking in. How’s Lucie?
I assume she’s fine.
Please tell me you didn’t end it.
It wasn’t going anywhere. It’s for the best.
You fucked things up with Kate and now this. How many chances do you need to be given? You let her go and you’re going to regret this for the rest of your life.
“It’s better for them in the long haul,” I say quietly.
It’s the truth. I’m not sure why it feels like a lie.
When I finally fall asleep after forty-eight hours awake, it’s a nonstop montage of my worst memories. It’s coming over the hill to see Lucie clutching Henry’s body. It’s walking into the hospital to find my wife singing to our dead daughter with tears rolling down her face. It’s holding Hannah for the one and only time, her little rosebud mouth pursed as if asleep—so tiny, so helpless and so failed by me. It’s Henry saying, ‘I wanted to show you the arm,’ and Kate’s screams when I let the hospital staff take Hannah away. It’s Lucie with her eyes full of tears, saying, ‘I’ve loved you since I was six’ and telling me she’d given up. It’s my father’s agony over failing the company as he died—a situation I could have prevented if I’d come back here after grad school—and my mother weeping as we left the lake house for good.