“That asshole!” Everleigh mutters.
“Jesus. Is she okay?”
“No! It’s a viral video that her friend shared with her, which means it’s making the rounds already. Brent is this high-powered realtor in Chicago. One of those slimeballs whose face is on every other billboard and the side of buses and has a stupid commercial on the radio that gets stuck in your head. Everybody knows who he is, and now poor Pen is sitting at home while he’s out therecheatingon herpublicly.” She punches a fist into her other open palm. “Ugh! I want to punch him!”
“What can we do?” I ask.
“She needs to get out of town with the boys until this blows over. You know how the media today is. They’ll take it and run with it, and her face will be all over by morning. But she’s in marketing, so she knows what to do. She asked if she could come stay with me for a few days, and I said of course.”
I think about offering to let Everleigh stay with me while her friend stays with her, but I’m not sure we’re at that place yet. I let it go as she continues telling me about her friend.
“She was talking about theDword last time we spoke,” she says quietly. “She said she didn’t love him anymore, but she wanted to do it on her terms. Not like this. It’s so messy, and her family is going to be all over the internet bymorning.”
“Those poor kids,” I lament, feeling for them even though I don’t know them. “How old are they?”
“Sammy is seven, and Benji is five. Two little boys about to have their world completely changed because of their stupid dad. And now there will be a divorce, and Brent will make it hell on them, and it’s just awful.”
“Divorce is like death,” I agree. “It’s the death of a marriage, and the effects are rippling and tough on kids at any age. My mom finally kicked my dad out shortly after I went to college, and I felt like I had to be there for grief support even though there wasn’t an actual death.”
“How long were they married?”
“Twenty years.”
“That’s a long time to be with someone and for them suddenly not to be a part of your life,” she says softly, and it’s true. It was a strange sort of divide that came when my mother had to learn how to do the things he did while dealing with another kind of grief as her son went off to college. It’s why I tried so damn hard to call her every day, to stay in touch, to let her know someone was always thinking about her. But as time went on, I got busier, and it got harder to fit in the calls until they became weekly, and then monthly, and now…
I visit when I can, but I haven’t called her in years. I wonder if it would help to hear my voice more often.
“What are you thinking?” she asks softly.
“How I used to call her every day, and now I can’t remember the last time I spoke to her on the phone.”
“But you just visited her,” she points out. “She knows you love her.”
“Does she?”
“Of course she does.” A beat of silence passes between us, and then she says, “I’m worried about my mom, too.”
“Why?”
“She broke her arm, and the X-ray indicated cancer. She’s getting a biopsy and scan this week, but we won’t know the extent of what’s happening until we get the results.”
I pull her in a little closer, a little more tightly. “You’ve been quietly battling this?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
“Are you close with her?”
“Not as close as I’ve always wished we were,” she admits against my chest.
“Why not?”
“Life gets in the way. She’s always more worried about appearances than reality. I always wanted the type of relationship where we could go on girls’ trips or get manicures together, and instead she invited me to get fillers with her once because of the dark circles under my eyes.” She sits up a little, and her voice is full of bitterness when she continues. “Which would perhaps explain how she might be dealing with a serious illness but hid it. She didn’t want anyone to know she was tired, or that she was having pain, or whatever else was going on beneath the surface. Instead, she kept up appearances and continued to run in her high society circles as if everything was fine and dandy. God!”
She’s swiping furiously at the tears leaking from her eyes by the end of her tirade, and I sit up and wrap my arms around her. I hold her tightly against me, simply holding her so she knows that I’m right here for her the same way she keeps showing up for me.
“Bonding over non-death grief and our mothers’ illnesses wasn’t on my Bingo card for this weekend,” she says into my chest, her voice muffled.
I offer a grunt of a chuckle. “It wasn’t on mine, either.”
