“I’m glad I could find something for the two of you to agree on,” Cherry said. “I’m an adulteress.”
Her mom closed her eyes. “Don’t tell me this.”
“You’resleepingwith someone?” Honny’s hands were on her hips again. “Do you even know what diseases are out there? If you don’t already have HPV, forget about it. You should get that vaccine they give teenagers.”
“Maybe I will,” Cherry said. She handed Honny the insurance card. “Go get that mammogram.”
Their mom’s eyes were open. She took Cherry’s hand in both of hers. “Cherry, you know I love you very much.”
“I love you, too.”
“And Jesus loves you.”
“Okay.”
“Jesus does love you,” Honny said. “He can’t get enough of sinners.”
“Great, thanks.”
“Come on, Mom,” Honny said, leading her toward the door. She reluctantly let go of Cherry’s hand.
Once their mom was out, Honny turned back to Cherry. “Are youreallydating someone?”
“Yes.”
Honny frowned. “We were just waiting for your divorce to be final so we could introduce you to a guy from church.”
“Oh my god, Honny—no.”
“He’s an architect, Cherry—and a widower. Do you know how in demand widowers are? At your age, all the men are either divorced or weirdos.”
“Thank you for thinking of me. But I’m honestly seeing someone.”
“Someone nice?”
“Of course someone nice.”
“You never know.”
Cherry shut the door behind Honny and let Stevie out of the kennel. The dog immediately ran to the door to bark.Come back, come back,she was saying.I didn’t even get to say hi!
Cherry gave Stevie some consolation pets. Her fur was soft and clean. Tom must be brushing her after all their walks.
Cherry looked around the house...
It did, in fact, look like a forensics team was working in here.
Cherry had, in fact, been letting Tom make things complicated.
She’d hoped that he’d move through the house in a sensible fashion, from room to room—but Tom had never worked that way. He seemed to be wandering around the house, picking things up and setting them down, and leaving long, polite Post-it notes for Cherry.
They were having entire Post-it noteparleysabout things that didn’t even matter—the stapler, a jade plant, an electric kettle that wasapparently no longer in production. And Tom had started bringing things down from the attic.
Cherry didn’t know how to discourage this process, especially if she wasn’t here with him in the moment, and she didn’t think it would help to drastically disrupt him.
If Cherry were to throw everything into a box with a note that said,Take all this or throw it out,Tom would just unpack that box and lay everything out on the dining room table with a dozen new notes.
And if she were to tell him he was being ridiculous, he’d shut down altogether.
