DELILAH
I love my daughter endlessly. I would move heaven and earth for this child. I’d flip every car, slay every dragon. But I swear to all things holy, if Sadie doesn’t stop digging her heel into my ribcage while I’m trying to sleep, I’m going to drop her off at the nearest dog pound and let them deal with her.
Sharing a bed with my kid in my childhood bedroom isn’t my favorite way to spend a night, but these days Sadie and I are crashing at my parents’ place more often than not. Now that I know my husband is a lying, cheating, idiot rat bastard, it might be time to invest in a twin mattress for Sadie. I hate the idea of giving the Earl run of the house, but if I’m going to be a single mom, I’m going to need thesupport of my parents. Moving back here just makes sense. My room is on the small side, but if I got rid of the desk I haven’t used since high school, we’d have the space.
I mean, theoretically, one of us could move into my little brother’s room. But the walls in this house are thin, and unfortunately I’m all too aware of the debauchery that Stephen and his high school girlfriend turned fiancé got up to in there over the years. I won’t subject my daughter or myself to that.
Speaking of my kid, she chooses that moment to rip one of her room-clearing farts—a trait she inherited from her no good, rat bastard father—and even though the twenty-year-old alarm clock on my nightstand shows that it’s only a quarter after five, I resign myself to the fact that I won’t be getting back to sleep soon. Carefully, so as not to disturb Sadie, I slide out of bed.
My feet hit the freezing cold ground, and I feel around for my shoes. When my bare toes hit warm skin instead of the faux-fur lining of my off-brand boots, I’m barely even surprised.
For the hundredth time since I walked in on the end of my marriage yesterday afternoon, I feel like I might cry. Incredible, because after I sobbed it out on the back porch with my ginger ale last night, I was sure I had no tears left in my body.
“Vee,” I whisper, squatting down to the woman asleep on my bedroom floor without so much as a blanket to keep her warm. When she doesn’t stir, I gently shake her shoulder until she looks up at me. Pressing my finger to my lips, I nod towards the hallway. She gets the hint—don’t wake Sadie—and quietly wraps her arms around herself and follows me out of the room.
Wordlessly, we descend the stairs, and I flick on a small lamp to light the dark living room. I grab a blanket from the back of the couch and wrap it around Ivy’s shoulders, and the two of us head into the kitchen, where Ivy sits and rests her head on the island while I get a pot of coffee brewing. It isn’t until we both have steaming hot mugs in front of us that I finally break.
“I told you that you didn’t have to come,” I whimper, barely able to make it through the final syllable before I choke on a sob.
“Lilah,” Ivy breathes, opening the blanket and pulling me into her arms. Mom’s quilt wraps around me as Ivy holds me tight. I nuzzle my face into the crook of her shoulder, breathing in her cherry blossom scent as I allow the tears to flow. Snaking my arms around her waist, I hold tight and quietly sob for long minutes, feeling the weight of my life slowly melt from my shoulders.
While I cry, Ivy slips her hand under the back of my sleep shirt and drags her short nails over my skin. The soothing tickle reminds me of sleepovers in high school, when the two of us would lie in my bed and take turns scratching each other’s backs until one or both of us fell asleep.
“I am so, so stupid,” I mutter between heavy breaths and lingering tears, burrowing my leaking nose into the fabric of Ivy’s long-sleeve tee.
“You’re not stupid, Lilah. You’re brilliant and beautiful and strong as hell, and the Earl never deserved you. He’s a fucking moron, and he’s going to rot for making you cry like this. I’ll tear his balls off and shove them down his throat.”
Ivy’s quick jump to bloodlust makes me chuckle despite myself. “You don’t even know what happened, Vee.”
“Doesn’t matter. The Earl made you cry, and now he has to die.”
I pull back with a laugh and wipe my snot on the sleeve of my shirt. Ivy brushes her thumb over my cheek, wiping at a stray tear. The silence of the early morning sits heavily around us as I take a long sip of my still steaming coffee. Feeling the warmth blooming behind my ribs, I breathe in deeply and let the scent and taste of coffee beans and hazelnut ground me.
“He’s cheating on me. Which, in hindsight, is probably like…duh. Of course he’s fucking cheating on me. I’ve had a feeling he’d been going behind my back for a long time; I just didn’t want to believe it. If I believed it, I’d have to act on it. But I caught him and Mindy Price in our bed yesterday afternoon.”
Ivy’s breath picks up into angry pants, her grip on her mug so tight that her knuckles have gone white.
“I’m going to kill him. I’m going to run him over with my car and then back up over his twitching body and run him over again. And then I’m going to beat Mindy with a shovel. That bitch has had it coming since high school.”
Ivy rarely uses the word ‘bitch’ to describe women, but Mindy has been the exception to that rule since she tried to rally the other girls in our sophomore gym class not to change in front of us since Ivy was gay and I was her best friend, which meant I must be gay too. Mindy was unsuccessful, but the attempt still stung.
I ignore Ivy’s threats and soldier on.
“So, yeah. Now I know, and I have to act on it. I can’t stay married to someone who makes me feel like such an idiot, but this fucking sucks, Vee.”
“Of course it sucks,” Ivy’s face softens just a touch, and she traces circles with the tips of her fingers over my thigh. “You love the Earl. Even if heis a no-good, dirty, rotten piece of shit cheater with a tiny and ineffective penis, he’s your husband. This can’t be easy for you.”
“That’s the thing. I don’t love the Earl.” The truth that I’ve known in my heart for years flows freely from my lips, like a spirit slipping through the bars of a cage after realizing they were the only thing holding itself hostage. “I don’t think I ever did. Not in a romantic way. There was a time when I loved him as Sadie’s father, but even that has faded because he’s so…”
“Shitty? Inattentive? A barely-there presence to your daughter and a complete non-partner to you?” Ivy finishes for me. I pull my bottom lip between my teeth as I roll my eyes in reluctant agreement. I will never regret the choices I made that led to me becoming Sadie’s mother, even if I’ve been a married single-parent for all eight years of her life. I do, however, wish the person with whom I chose to create her cared even slightly about our daughter.
He’ll pal around with her, sure, but he never changed a diaper or woke up in the middle of the night when she was teething and miserable. He’s never been to one of Sadie’s soccer games or dance recitals. He doesn’t know her teacher’s name, or that she likes the crust cut off her peanut buttersandwiches and served on the side so she can dip the cut-off pieces in my strawberry jam.
I don’t even know if it’s a blessing or a curse that Sadie doesn’t know any better. To her, the Earl has always been less of a father figure and more of just…that guy who lives in her house. And what does it say about me as a mother that I almost prefer it that way? At least there’s less chance that he’ll break her heart, too.
“All the above. So yeah, I’m sad. But not because my husband is cheating on me with the town bully slash pick-me girl. I just…” I blow a stray, frizzy curl out of my face. “I guess I’m mourning the loss of my sense of normal. My life isn’t perfect or exciting. Some days it barely feels survivable. But it’s mine, you know? And now I don’t want to live in his house anymore. I’ll have to move back in here with my parents. Sadie is going to have to adjust to a new bed and a new schedule. I won’t have a kitchen to myself anymore, so I’ll have to work with Mom on when I can use her space to make my jam.”
Oh god, my stupid jam. How the hell am I supposed to raise my daughter on my nonexistent jam-maker salary? I groan and drop my head to the counter, the cool granite a shock to my overheated skin. “I’m going to have to quit making jam, too. God, this sucks.”
