Her father was the best of men. She only hoped that Mia would be able to say the same.
Dawn rose to answer the door, and Laurie followed her inside.
When her mother opened the door, Chris said a curt hello and then looked past her to Laurie.
“Ready to go,” he said. Probably it was voiced as a question, but his expression was flat, making it feel more like a command.
“Mia’s not here,” she told him.
His temper flared. Though his expression only twitched ever so slightly out of place, his anger was so palpable that Dawn took an immediate step back.
“She ran into town with her cousins to get shave ice. She’ll be back any minute.” Laurie glanced at the clock and then looked back to her husband. “You’re early.”
“I wanted to get home before dark.”
Dawn said something that Laurie couldn’t see, and Chris shook his head.
“I’m not hungry.”
“A cup of tea, at least?” Laurie said.
“Sure. Fine.” He strode across the room and sat stiffly at the kitchen table.
A quiet dread seeped through Laurie’s limbs as she went through the motions of making tea. She didn’t even want to look at her husband, afraid that she would flinch away from the anger in his eyes.
It wasn’t that she wasafraidof him, exactly. She had been honest with her mother when she’d told her that Chris would never harm them… but in that moment, she began to wonder if the cortisol-inducing stress of keeping him calm wasn’t a subtler sort of harm.
Laurie’s stomach sank as she realized that no part of her wanted to climb into that van and drive home with her husband.
Like the old story of the frog being boiled alive, her marriage had deteriorated so gradually that she’d hardly noticed. Now, though, when the air was thick with his anger… it felt hot enough to scald.
Maybe her family wasn’t so far off the mark after all.
But her husband had always been a quiet, introverted man. They’d never really understood him, not like Laurie had. They’d never seen his effusive kindness and affection when he was alone with her.
Then again, she hadn’t seen that side of him in a long time herself.
It was partially her fault; she knew that. She had always been so wrapped up in her own pursuits – first her PhD and then motherhood – that she had failed to prioritize her marriage. But it wasn’t too late, surely.
They needed more quality time together, like he’d been saying. More time together as a family. Counseling, maybe. She had to believe that they could find their way back to each other. The alternative – divorce, family court, going days on end without seeing her daughter – was too painful to contemplate.
Or, said a quiet voice in the back of her mind,maybe your pride and your fear are keeping you from accepting the true state of things.
Laurie swallowed her worry and set the tea down in front of her husband.
Everything was going to be fine.
She just had to try a bit harder.
25
Anne
Anne felt profoundly grateful as she drove down the highway.
The green hills and vast blue skies above were food for the soul, and she felt whole in a way that she never truly had before – or at least, never in her adult life.
Seeing all three of her children on a daily basis was healing a deep wound that she had lived with since the age of seventeen. The progress that Anne had made with her eldest was subtle, but theyhadmade progress.
