“Are you tired?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Let’s be done talking about it,” she said. “I’ve thought it through, and I’m not going to change my mind. It doesn’t make any sense for me to keep Stevie.”
Tom didn’t say anything.
Cherry peeled the Post-it off her knee and crumpled it up as she got to her feet.
“You home tomorrow?” Tom asked.
Tomorrow was Christmas Eve.
“Yeah,” she said. “I’ll be home. I can walk Stevie.”
“Do you want me to walk her on Christmas?”
“That’d be great.” Cherry turned for the door. “Thank you.”
“Merry Christmas, Cherry.”
“Merry Christmas.”
Chapter 49
As tired as she was, Cherry didn’t sleep much that night.
Tom was leaving Omaha.
Her marriage was over.
She’d thought that she’d already understood that—that she’d been living with it for a year.
But, really, she’d been living in a perfectly preserved diorama of her married life, with only one piece missing—the husband—and it hadn’t seemed like he was gone for good.
For a year, if you’d walked into Cherry’s house, you might have thought that Tom had just stepped out.
Well, not anymore.
Tom was leaving, and he was taking everything he loved with him.
What wasCherrysupposed to take?
From this house? From this marriage?
What was she supposed to do with all her memories? They were mostly happy. Was she supposed to block them out? (Blockhimout?) Recast them as sad-memories-waiting-to-happen? Like the scenes before things go to shit in a horror movie?
Tom had been Cherry’s whole life. She’d given him her whole heart. (Maybe she’d forced it on him, but he’d taken it.) Tom and Cherry had been something whole, together. That was the goal, wasn’t it? That was the assignment? Wasn’t shesupposedto love him this much?
Cherry got up early on Christmas Eve, determined to manage things better than she had on Thanksgiving. She wrote down a plan of attack for everything she needed to make that day:
Sicilian meat piescalled pastieri—Cherry made these for every holiday, they were her specialty.
Two kinds of cheese spread.
Two kinds of cookies.
Tom’s broken-glass Jell-O salad again.
