“Understandable.” I held him, having not quite realised when he’d fallen into my arms. Held him tighter than I ever had.
“So my hesitation with everything… I never wanted that to happen again. So I shut my mouth. Got on with it. And slowly…I became this. Sometimes I feel like I died when she did. Like there was nothing left of me. I just…woke and slept and sometimes ate, and we just…the boys and I. We just carried on like she was still here. Like the bubble had never burst and she’d never been carried out of that funeral home in a box and our bed hadn’t been put in a skip and we didn’t throw out all her clothes.”
“You had no choice. That is what life is. A rite of passage.”
I had no idea what came out of my mouth. I was just trying to find something. Anything to soothe the violent jerks in his body.
“And here I am. And now you’re saying that I’m something I’m terrified to admit I am. But you make it sound like it’s real and good and worthwhile. Like it’s something worth…believing in.”
Which was when a pan fell off the top shelf.
Like…
I burst into laughter. “Shut up, Mary! He’s trying to tell me he loves me here!” I shouted.
“No shouting,” he said. He looked at me. With so much love.
“She’s ruining the moment.” I grinned. “A bloody saucepan.”
“She does that.” He was smiling. I loved it when he did. I liked it better than all the anger. The harsh words. The tears in his eyes.
The confessions. I hadn’t expected that. Well…
“I thought you might have had experience…with other men.”
“Ed did…kind of out me.”
“They know.” A statement. Not a question.
“Yeah. Apparently, I ruined their lives when they were twelve. And they have been traumatised since.”
I didn’t know if I was supposed to laugh there, but I couldn’t help it.
“I can see that,” I snorted. “You’ve obviously been terrible parents.”
“Mary still is. All this haunting is doing Ed’s head in. He’s threatening to move out for good.”
I stroked his cheek. Held his face. Let my forehead move in to meet his.
“And now we have to…start over. Make this something new.”
“It won’t be easy.” He looked like he meant it.
“I don’t expect it to be.”
“I’m not always a good person.”
“You’re the best person I know.” I meant that. “You really are.”
“Thank you.” His words were mere breaths. “She wasn’t a terrible person.”
“Neither were you.”
It was just us. Arms around each other, in an empty house. And I was completely and utterly…okay with that.
“And now you’re… Oliver, I know how messed up this is, and…”
“We’ll take this slow,” I started, but then…he pushed me backwards with a ferocity that should have frightened me.
