Shiloh didn’t expect to hear from Cary that night.
But he texted her a couple hours after he left. She was still awake.
“I’m sorry.”
“you didn’t do anything”
“That doesn’t matter to your daughter.”
“i’ll worry about my daughter,”Shiloh sent, frowning.
“Sorry. I’m sorry.”
Shiloh sat up to type with both thumbs. She took the time to capitalize and punctuate.“I’m not happy it went the way it did—but there’s no good way to be a divorced mom. Or a kid with divorced parents. This sort of thing happens.”
She sat waiting for Cary to text back.
Finally he sent:
“It didn’t have to happen tonight. I feel like I broke something for you and her, for nothing, on my way out of town.”
The“for nothing”snagged in Shiloh’s chest.“This really isn’t yours to worry about,”she texted.
Cary didn’t reply.
Shiloh lay back down, still holding on to the phone. She was exhausted. She hadn’t washed her face. Her eyeliner felt tacky.
Her phone beeped. The text was so long, it got sent in two parts:
“I was so angry with you after the wedding for saying you were giving me an out. But what you were really saying was that the stakes were too high for me”
“to even understand. And you were right.”
After a second, Cary sent:
“I don’t want to be the guy who makes your kids feel that way.”
Forty-Three
before
It was hard to sleep with someone else in her bed. Was she just supposed to close her eyes and turn off? With someone else right there? With Cary right there?
The bed in Shiloh’s dorm room was a twin. Cary was lying with his back against the wall. The only way for her to stay off the edge was to lie right next to him, with her head next to his on the pillow.
His eyes were closed... Shiloh couldn’t tell whether he was asleep. Cary had so many moles on his face, it was impossible to keep track of them all. If he’d only had one or two, they’d stand out. But instead they registered as a field. He had one hidden in his eyebrow. Shiloh touched it. Cary’s eyelid twitched. His eyebrows didn’t have much shape, and they sort of faded out at the ends. Not like Shiloh’s at all.
She touched his other eyebrow. His whole face twitched. “Go to sleep,” he said.
“I can’t,” she whispered.
“Why not?”
“Because of you.” She kissed his cheek.
Cary didn’t react.
There was a bumpy mole on the side of his nose. She touched it. There was a scar on his cheek. It looked like he’d had a couple stitches. Shiloh kissed it. She touched the pitted line of it with her tongue, so she could feel it better.
