Was I dreaming? Had I fallen asleep hours ago? I couldn’t think straight. “I’m fine.” I was anything but fine.
“Oh, okay then. I’m sorry if I woke you, but I can’t sleep. I keep thinking.” He paused, and I could imagine the serious crease between his eyes. “I wanted to say I’m sorry.”
My mind was a blank. “For what?”
“For whatever happened to your mother. And, I think, your little brother.” He paused again. “I think that’s what you were talking about tonight. I mean, I’m pretty sure. It seemed like it was important, and I didn’t ask you about it, and I didn’t tell you I’m sorry. And I am.”
I made myself breathe, my hand gripping the phone. I’d told him a story, a stupid story, and he’d seen through it. How had that happened? How was everything slipping out of control?
“Okay,” I managed, too stricken to bother to lie anymore. “Thank you.”
“And I’m sorry I didn’t kiss you,” Ethan said. “I wanted to, and then I thought maybe you’d think that was all I had been after all night, and then I got too into my own head, and I didn’t do it, and I missed my chance. My only chance, as it happens. And I tried to tell myself it was fine, that it was what you wanted, but now I don’t think it was. And I’m never going to get another chance, so I regret it now. I should have kissed you.”
I was leaving New York. As soon as I could pack my things, as soon as I could get out of here. This wasn’t going to be a weekend trip or a vacation. It was the end of everything. The life I knew had vanished like smoke with one phone call.
I was going, and maybe I was never coming back.
“Yes,” I said, staring into the darkness. “You should have kissed me.”
“You have my phone number,” Ethan said. “Call me if you need me, Dodie.”
I hung up on him.
Then I turned onto my side in bed, and finally I started to cry.
4
Violet
The woman behind the counter at Rona’s Burgers knew I was hungover. Probably because I was at a roadside burger place at eleven in the morning when they opened, ordering a hamburger and greasy fries.
“Rough night?” she asked. She was about sixty, with creases bracketing her mouth and eyes that had seen some things. I was the only customer in the restaurant, my car the only one in the parking lot beside hers. Past the lot, cars flew by on the highway.
“Rough few years,” I admitted. “I need my burger to go.”
“I hear ya,” the woman said.
Two days of wine were taking a long time to leave my system. I’d worked extra hours to finish cleaning out the old woman’s house, going in at six in the morning and not leaving until nearly midnight. Since no one lived there, my hours didn’t matter. I couldn’t have said why I did it, only that it was wrong to leave her hanging like that when she’d trusted me with her photo of baby Thomas. I couldn’t let her down, even for Ben. Maybe because of Ben.
But I’d brought several bottles of wine with me as I worked, sipping through the day so I’d never be entirely sober.
When the house was finished, I’d taken leave from my job, telling Tess I didn’t know when I’d be back. There was no pay, of course. That didn’t matter to me, which Tess had started to suspect. She told me she’d call in a replacement and she couldn’t guarantee I’d have a job waiting when I got back. We left it at that.
It had been surprisingly easy. It was harder to call Lisette, who was at Clay’s house, and tell her I was going away for a while. She was sullen, angry, and childish, even though she was fourteen and she hadn’t wanted to stay with me in the first place. “So you’re going, just like that?” she’d snapped. “You’releavingme?”
“I have to,” I’d said. “My family needs me.”
“You hate them!”
Had I said that? Where did she get it from? Had Clay told her that? I didn’t think I hated Vail and Dodie, and besides, I wasn’t talking about them. I was talking about Ben. None of us had ever hated Ben.
“Well, I’m going home for a while,” I’d said, peevish with my own daughter as the wine headache gripped the back of my skull. “It has to happen, so deal with it. I’m not going far. I’ll call you every few days.”
“Don’tbother,” Lisette said dramatically, hanging up on me.
I was a bad mother. The courts knew it, Clay knew it, and I knew it. There was something missing in me, and I had never been good at it, never been able to do it right. But in that moment, I knew that Clay wasn’t winning any awards, either. If my daughter was an asshole, it wasn’t entirely because of me.
Still, I’d drunk most of a bottle of wine after that conversation.
