Alice struggles to sit up, feeling like all of her limbs are submerged in quicksand.
“Van, no,” she says, not quietly enough. “That’s not it.”
“That is it, though,” Van says, and she’s walking across the room to her shoes. She puts them on and whistles softly, and Frank hops off the other couch, stopping to stretch halfway across the living room.
“I’m going home,” Van says, not looking at Alice. “Tell everyone…I don’t know. Tell them whatever you want.” There’s a long beat, and then, “I’m sure you’ll be fine lying to them. You’re pretty good at it.”
The door closes behind her, firm but not loud, and it takes Alice what feels like ages to pull the Snuggies up around her, to curl into the spot that’s still warm from Van’s body, to cry.
Twenty
Alice spends Christmas Day at Isabella’s house. Taking the earliest morning bus from the Altmans was a pretty depressing experience—anyone on a bus at six in the morning on Christmas Sunday is not having a great day—but Isabella’s house is a riot of color and squealing children and wrapping paper and good food and sugar crashes. Being there eases the pinch in her chest; it doesn’t erase the way Van’s eyes had looked, the way she’d slid out from under Alice like she never wanted to touch her again, but it makes that all easier to live with. Here, in this warm house, filled with a family she isn’t lying to, a family she belongs with, a family she loves in a not-totally-fucked way, she can breathe a little better.
She hasn’t forgotten how she hurt Van—she’ll never forget that. She’ll regret that and be responsible for it forever, but being with Isabella, Henry, and the kids helps her remember that there’s some stuff in the world that’s okay too. Hazel dances like a toddler Beyoncé when Henry plays ukulele, Alice and Sebastian make the tallest Lego tower in history, Bellaloans Alice the softest sweater in the world, Henry makes a sizzling Korean tofu soup for dinner that’s full of mushrooms he foraged himself and he swears won’t kill them. Things worth living for.
Alice texts Marie and Babs a thank-you for having her yesterday, makes up some lie about needing to get to Isabella’s early. She’s tempted to say she’ll see them in a few days, but she doesn’t.
She’s done.
Nolan’s rampant disinterest means that Alice can’t keep being the embodiment of Babs’s hopes for him; he’s alive now, walking and talking, so it’s okay if Babs goes back to hating his taste in women. Alice’s part in this charade is well and truly finished. And of course, much more important, Van was right. It’s not fair for Alice to still be coming around, making everything confusing and gray, pitting Van against her recently comatose brother. Even if Alice isn’t kissing him or fake-dating him—and certainly not having his babies, fucking gross—Van’s right that Alice can’t flirt with her. Can’t lead her on if she’s not willing to be with Van, and she’s not.
As her text whooshes out her phone and into theirs, it feels like part of her heart is being twisted and pulled until it rips out. She silently says goodbye to Babs, to Aunt Sheila, to sweet, perfect Marie.
To Van.
It hurts like hell, but it’s finally over.
—
Daycare and preschool are closed between Christmas and New Year’s, and Isabella and Henry are going crazy with the kids in the house all day, so on December 30, they pack up the double stroller and enough luggage to travel to France, and prepare toventure to the big park a few blocks away even though it’s as cold and rainy as ever.
“If they’re going to be true Portlanders, they need to become amphibious,” Isabella says, shoving Hazel’s fat little arm into her puffy waterproof coat. “Like we were.”
Alice nods. “Gotta purge that weak Texan blood right out of ’em,” she says, and Isabella laughs.
“Exactly.”
Isabella’s right—when they were kids, recess always took place outside in the rain, and they spent a lot of time at the park, learning how to navigate wet, slippery monkey bars and wearing rain pants so they could go down the slide without looking like they peed themselves.
“Where are we going?” Sebastian asks as Alice pulls the Velcro on his little boots as tightly as she can.
“To play outside,” Isabella says.
“Why?”
Alice looks down at him, putting on a purposely goofy look. “How old are you now? Three?” He nods, quite proudly. “Well, then,” she says, rubbing her hands together to warm them before she plunges them, without warning, under his jacket to tickle his belly. “It’s time to harden you up! Go play out in the rain where you belong!”
He screams and squeals, and Alice gets kicked very hard in the stomach, but it’s worth it.
The park is huge, grassy and dotted with big trees that have lost their leaves. There’s a tennis court and baseball diamonds, and even a pool that’s closed for the winter, but they head directly to the playground tucked into the corner. Hazel is too young to do much other than toddle around and have Henry hold her up to the monkey bars so she can feel like she’s doing something, but Sebastian is big enough to run amok, toshout for them to watch him every five seconds as he climbs, balances, and slides.
Alice wishes she were as proud of anything as Sebastian is of his ability to let gravity pull him down a smooth piece of plastic.
After an hour or so, though, Alice wishes he were a little less enthusiastic. “Nice one, buddy!” she calls for the fifty millionth time. Turns out there’s a reason adults like to stay inside in the winter; her hands are freezing inside her gloves, her butt is numb, and her ears may have fallen off. Hazel has crashed out and is napping in her stroller under twelve thousand blankets and her parents seem to have nodded off on the bench next to her, but Sebastian is still fired up. Alice has pushed him on the swings until her arms almost fell off, and then spotted him as he climbed some very tall, very slippery things, her heart in her mouth the whole time. Now he’s going down the slide over and over, which is nice because Alice doesn’t have to do as much, but if she doesn’t stand there and compliment him each time, he gets adorably mad about it, and she’s still trying to earn her Auntie Points.
So there she stands, doling out compliments and letting Isabella and Henry get some much needed rest. Being a parent seems hard. Alice is glad that at the end of the day, she’ll go home to her quiet apartment and do only what she personally wants to do, not responsible for any living thing except herself and that succulent she keeps almost killing.
Although of course, when she’s home alone, there will be nothing to distract her from the unread texts from Marie that are piling up, the six missed calls from Babs and two from Aunt Sheila. When she’s fully immersed in the kids, the hot, anxious feeling in her stomach that urges her to respond to them is less noticeable, but whenever she takes her focus offSebastian, it overwhelms her and makes her feel nauseous. They don’t deserve to be ghosted, not any of them, but Alice can’t respond. What would she say? She’s pretty sure texting,Sorry, I lied to you, and it turns out I’m very much into your unfortunately disabled daughter, not your son, and your daughter hates me now! Happy New Year!wouldn’t go over great. Ghosting seems to be the kindest thing she can do, but that logic doesn’t have any impact on the constant guilty twisting in her gut.
