Chapter Eleven
Winnie
Michael looked good, but then again, he always looked good. Sharp jaw, Roman nose, hair waved perfectly back from his face. Like he’d just stepped out of the J.Crew winter catalog with pristine boots, pressed chinos, and quarter-zip sweater. A scarf hung smartly from his shoulders—though not doing him much good, guessing by how he hunched against the breeze.
As we walked away from the square toward Caroler’s Creek, a narrow stream that ran through the north end of town, he took my hand.
Just reached out and wrapped his fingers around it, like it was still his hand to take.
It took me a minute to listen to what my body was telling my brain, and then another minute for my brain to remember that I didn’t have to hold his hand if I didn’t want to. Which I didn’t! We’d been separated for a year and a half! We’d been officially divorced for two months! What the heck!
I pulled my hand away as we turned onto Sugar Plum Avenue and glanced longingly back at the set. Back to Kallum, who was still standing next to the Chevy, his hands shoved in his pockets. Watching me.
I spun back around, cheeks burning, not sure what to think. Kallum had looked pissed when Michael first stepped on set, but then he’d made a joke and hadn’t seemed to mind when I left with Michael.
Did I want him to mind?
What did it mean if I did?
Stupid.Whatever Kallum and I were doing, it was just for the sake of the movie, and it came with an expiration date. I wasn’t that doe-eyed girl looking for fairy tales anymore; I was smarter than that now. The proof was sitting in Addison’s pool house in the form of a notarized divorce decree.
Michael noticed me looking back, and his handsome jaw tightened. His displeasure had always been a subtle thing—he’d never yelled, never touched me in anger. But then again, he didn’t have to. One heavy sigh, one slow look into the middle distance, and I would be desperate to make him happy again.
And I could feel it now, that desperation, that lonely panic. My shoulders were pulled in, my head dipped down, the low headache I sometimes got from my narcolepsy medicine pullingat my temples. I wanted to be small, invisible; it was impossible to think of who I’d been just ten minutes ago, laughing on set with Kallum, my belly molten just from one heated glance. Feeling so tall I could touch the sky.
“Have you heard from your parents?” Michael asked, and I was so relieved he wasn’t saying anything about the movie or my costar that the words didn’t hurt right away.
Until they did.
My parents hadn’t spoken to me since my divorce had been finalized. And they only spoke to me before that to remind me—gravely—that remarriage after a divorce would be adultery and that hard-heartedness was a sin. I didn’t think they’d believed me when I told them Michael had cheated on me, and even when they’d pretended to believe it, it still hadn’t mattered. I should have forgiven him, they said. I should have at least played the part, so I didn’t ruin everyone’s lives merely to satisfy my own wounded ego.
Divorce was a sin, but to them divorce was also something much, much worse.
An embarrassment.
“They want you to come home,” Michael said when I didn’t answer.
“They wouldn’t let me come home before now,” I replied numbly. The Victorian houses on either side of us were giving way to snow-clumped trees, which then gave way to the ice-crusted slopes of the creek. Just beyond the bridge, I saw Holy Night Chapel, a small, steepled church frequently rented out for Hope Channel productions.
“They want to make things right,” Michael said.
I stopped at the foot of the bridge. “Then why aren’t they here?” I asked, but my voice was trembling, my face was ducked. For so long, I’d imagined myself a pillar of strength if I had to talk to Michael again, so confident and cool. The same with my parents.
But instead I was still that sleepy teenager who felt guilty for having narcolepsy, who felt guilty for not being as energetic and hardworking as girls like Addison. The teenager who’d been putting in medication-enabled sixteen-hour days since she was in the sixth grade. Who’d had to hide her disability as much as she was able because her parents were terrified it would ruin her career if the world knew her secret.
Michael had stopped, turning to face me with something in his expression I couldn’t name. Regret, maybe? Determination?
“Because I wanted to be the one to come,” he explained. “I wanted to be the one to talk to you.”
“Talk to me,” I echoed.
“Yes,” he said, reaching out like he wanted to take my hand again and then stopping. His eyes were silver in the weak sunlight, and I’d once been so in love with those eyes. Had written poetry about them when we’d started courting.
Blue eyes flashed through my mind now, but I pushed the image away. They were temporary blue eyes. On loan from the bridesmaids of the world.
“I miss you, Winnie,” Michael said. His face was earnest, his voice was earnest. Whatever his faults, he’d always been a decently good actor. “Getting those divorce papers was a wake-up call. I need you in my life.”
Anger sluiced through me, as cold and jagged as the ice fringing the creek. “You should have thought about that before Olivia,” I said, straightening up.
