“I’m so sorry, but I’ve got to go,” I tell her. “I think we’ll need to file the divorce paperwork differently now that you’re back, but I’ll give you a call?”
“Sure,” she says. “I’ll be around.”
I hesitate. “You’re not staying with that dealer, are you?”
She shakes her head. “No. Don’t worry about me.”
I take her at her word, mostly because I’m too freaked out about Lucie to do anything else.
I call Mark on the way back to my truck. “Can you tell Caldwell I can’t make it this weekend?” I ask.
“Can’t make it? Are you insane? This weekend means everything!”
Yeah, I thought so too, but I was wrong.
It turns out what means everything was sitting next door, waiting for me. And I don’t want them to wait even a minute more.
39
LUCIE
I’ve just gotten a seat near the front of the school auditorium when Mrs. Kroesinger comes to find me. “We have a little problem,” she whispers. “Henry isn’t sure he wants to go on.”
I expected as much, but I follow her to the left of the stage where Henry sits on an overturned milk crate with his chin in his hands, a truculent set to his face. He isn’t unsure, as his teacher suggested—he’s already decided. I kneel in front of him. He won’t admit he’s scared, but it’s there in his wide, lost eyes. “What’s going on, buddy?” I ask, pulling his hands into mine.
“I don’t want to do this.”
I nod. “Everyone gets a little stage fright. Tell me exactly what you’re worried will happen.”
“People could laugh. Or it might not work.”
“Has it ever not worked before?” I ask.
He stares at his tiny knees, pressed tight together. “No.”
“Why would people laugh?”
“If I mess up.”
I take a seat on the step beside him and pull him into my lap, pointing to the ladder built onto the back wall. “You know how they build a ladder like that?” I ask quietly. “By nailing the first rung and then climbing on that rung to nail up the next. And life’s a little like that ladder. A good life is made up of all these brave moments. And you use the confidence you get from the first brave moment to move on to the bigger and better ones. But how are you ever going to get there if you won’t take that first step?”
His eyes meet mine. I have no idea if he’s gotten the analogy. “Is Caleb coming?”
There’s a pinch in my chest. “I’m sure he’d have wanted to. I didn’t invite him.”
He frowns. “Why not?”
There are so many answers on the tip of my tongue. Yes, Caleb couldn’t have come. He’ll be heading to the airport soon, perhaps with his wife. But Henry’s asking a bigger question. He wants to know why we no longer talk to Caleb or talk about Caleb and why I’ve stopped saying ‘maybe’ or ‘I hope so’ when Henry asks if we’ll see him soon. And I have answers for that too, but I’m not sure they’re entirely truthful.
Can I honestly say Caleb didn’t want us? Can I honestly say it was never going to work out?
I can’t. Because I was too scared to push for the answer. Caleb is terrified of repeating what he lived through before, but I was terrified too. I worried that I’d keep trying and he’d say, ‘no thanks,’ the way both my parents did at various points—Jeremy as well. That I’d let my kids love him and he’d say ‘no thanks’ to them too.
I didn’t reply to his text today. I didn’t even ask him about Kate after I met her. I just ran away, so scared of wounding us that I denied us the very small chance we could have been healed.
“Because I wasn’t brave,” I admit to Henry.
He raises his eyes to me, questioning, waiting for me to make the same concession I am asking of him.
It’s not going to change anything, I long to argue. But I guess I can let Caleb say what he’s going to say. I guess I can let him tell me he’s moved on.
Henry rises, pressing his lips to my forehead—the way I kiss him at night. And then he points over my shoulder. “Okay. Caleb’s over there. If you’ll be brave now, I’ll be brave too.”
“What?” I stare at him, wondering if this is some metaphor I don’t understand or a game of pretend. But I follow his gaze…and see Caleb in the corner, talking to one of the teachers and watching us with that anxious furrow between his brows.