“I can’t believe you didn’t mention it. Nobody mentioned it to me all day.”
“I told them not to—I figured you wouldn’t want to talk about it.”
Cherry put her hand over her heart, feeling touched. “Idon’twant to talk about it.”
Stacia nodded sympathetically.
“You’re a really good friend,” Cherry said.
“I try.”
Cherry gave her a hug, then walked out onto the sidewalk.
“Tell Russ I said hi!” Stacia called after her.
Cherry looked back, grimacing.
“Or maybe don’t,” Stacia said.
“I don’t think I will,” Cherry agreed.
Stacia seemed delighted. “This is going to be soawkward...”
“Good night!”
Chapter 14
Confessing to Stacia made Cherry feel a hundred pounds lighter. (Her recommended body weight.) Maybe there was something to Catholicism after all.
She felt almost completely unconflicted about seeing Russ the next day. They were going out to dinner for the first time, to a Thai restaurant near Cherry’s place, and she was going to invite him to come back to her house afterwards.
It took most of Saturday afternoon for Cherry to de-Stevie the main floor. (She got out the industrial-strength vacuum.) Then, in a fit of supernatural fortitude, Cherry decided to de-Tom it, too.
She put his boots in the hall closet. She gathered up his sketchbooks and shoved them in a drawer. She tucked half his collection ofSpace Ghosttoysinside the TV cabinet and then, when she ran out of space, hid the other half in the kitchen with the canned goods.
She couldn’t hideallhis things...
Tom lovedstuff. He loved little figurines and action figures and vintage bubble bath bottles. He loved mechanical toys that didn’t work and cartoon characters that no one recognized. He loved cute things, and clever things, and contraptions.
Cherry had never wanted to make Tom bury the things he loved in boxes—but she also hadn’t wanted the house to feel like a junk shop. She’d tried to integrate his magpie collections into her own decorating. She wanted their home to reflect them both.
The house had become the main outlet for Cherry’s creative energy after she gave up graphic design—and while she and Tom waitedto have kids. She spent all her free time sewing curtains (there weretwodozenwindows) and painting patterns on the wood floors. She watched YouTube videos to learn how to refinish all the old furniture they brought home from estate sales and auctions.
If you took a photo at Cherry’s house for Instagram, you didn’t have to worry about your angles; the background would always be adorable.
And Tom’s stuff waspartof that. It was intrinsic. That’s one reason Cherry hadn’t surgically removed it already. Putting Tom’s stuff away would leave big gaps in the house that she couldn’t just fill in overnight. She’d have to redo every room to make the house feel whole again.
That afternoon, Cherry cleared away the most obvious of Tom’s things. She moved quickly, like someone getting paid to clean, without letting her eyes or hands linger.
An hour before Russ was supposed to pick her up, Cherry changed her clothes and put on eyeliner, then walked through the house one more time, looking for anything she wouldn’t want to explain to him.
She ended up in the dining room, staring at the photos of Tom with his mom.
She carefully took them off the wall and buried them in a drawer under some table linens.
Then she sat on the couch. To cry.
Stevie heaved herself up onto the cushion next to Cherry and laid her big head against Cherry’s chest. Cherry put a hand in the dog’s fur and reflexively pushed her fingers through it.
