Stunned, Molly touched her cuff and backed away, bumping into a skinny guy playing pool, who gave her a shove. As she stumbled out the door, she heard Glenda laughing, Dan’s moose voice saying something about pitchers of beer. And another voice, this one dark and filled with dirt.I see you. I see you.Outside, under a blistering cold sky, she emptied her stomach into the dirt-stained snow.
Chapter Twenty-Two
1992: Mid-Coast Maine
Maeve pulled the duvet up to her chin, scooted farther under. She’d left the office at noon, stopped at the grocery store like she always did on Fridays. Dylan and Opal had after-school activities, then her parents were picking them both up for pizza night. Sam would close the store then go to bowling league. No one would be home for hours. Fridays were predictable.
The crisp sheets felt good against her warm skin. She rolled over, let her hand glide down the sloping line from her waist to hip. She longed to drift toward sleep, to float in that heady place where wonder was possible. The candle on her bedside smoked and flickered. Bergamot and cedar and tangerine swirled around her like a finger in a cocktail glass.
Wendy, next to her, let out a gentle sigh and rested her hand on the curve of Maeve’s neck. “I should go,” she said.
The candle was a gift from Wendy. Wendy, on fire. When they weren’t together, Maeve sniffed the unlit candle to trigger what she felt at that very moment. To remind her that it wasn’t all a dream.
“No! No one will be here for at least two hours. Don’t go. Close your eyes.”
Wendy looped her leg over Maeve. “A few more minutes but then, seriously. I have to get out of here. Unless, of course, you’re ready to tell them.”
This was Maeve’s favorite time, the moments after sex when she pretended this was her life and this was the way she lived it, with Wendy and the kids and somehow with Sam too. It was fleeting, an unburst bubble.Why can’t it be this way? Who says this wouldn’t work?But how could it? Sam would be heartbroken. The kids would be disgusted. And her parents. Maeve couldn’t imagine how let down they would be. They held her up like a model wife and mother, especially to Molly, who continued to struggle to find her footing. Yet here was Wendy Walker, in her bed, the same one she shared with Sam. She wiggled out from under Wendy, swung her legs so her feet touched the floor. “You know I can’t.”
“It’s getting ridiculous. Strike that. Itisridiculous.”
Maeve and Wendy had been sneaking around for over a year. If Maeve were to say this to Sam, he might assume it was Wendy who had seduced Maeve, Wendy who had tricked his wife into a relationship. But that wasn’t the case.
It was Maeve who put her hand on Wendy’s thigh when they went out together. Wendy gently removed it.
They’d hugged once in a simple greeting, no eyes on them, and Maeve had lingered at Wendy’s neck, taking in her scent. Wendy registered shock, and Maeve relished even that. “Stop it,” Wendy hissed. “You’re being a jerk.”
Maeve told Sam she was going to a movie with a friend and instead had stopped by Wendy’s apartment unannounced with a bottle of cheap wine in a paper bag for old times’ sake. When Wendy opened the door, Maeve was surprised to see the lights dimmed, a different candle burning in a jar on the kitchen counter. Another woman—straw hair, dull eyes, man hands by Maeve’s account—sat on the couch weaving a macramé plant hanger out of white rope, a glass of wine in front of her on the coffee table. Carla was long gone, but Wendy hadn’t said anything about someone new. Wendy had put her arm casually on the woman’s shoulder, a signal to Maevethat she wasn’t welcome. Maeve made a lame excuse, thanked Wendy for a favor Wendy hadn’t done, and left the bottle of wine on the counter. She drove to the theater, sat in the back row of a movie in progress, and sobbed her way through murders and car chases on the screen.
Wendy had called her at work the next day. “What was that about?”
Maeve ducked down at her desk so the other clerks in the office wouldn’t hear. “I could ask you the same thing.”
“We need to talk. Can you come over after work?” Wendy asked.
“Will your girlfriend be there?”
“Maeve. Just come over.”
At the apartment, Maeve batted at the plant in the new macramé holder when Wendy told her to back off. “I hope you and Man Hands will be very happy together.”
“You don’t get it,” Wendy told her. “I walk this line at work where everyone knows I’m gay, but we don’t talk about it. I’m excluded from every conversation with other women when they talk about boyfriends and husbands. They’re talking about letting gay people be out in the military but in real life? In hospitals and law offices and classrooms? It’s harder than you know because you have the cover of this.” Wendy snatched Maeve’s hand roughly and held up the ring. “And for your information, ‘Man Hands’ has a name and it’s Laurel, and Laurel’s partner parked her car in a shed and stuck a hose from the tailpipe through the window and took her own life. I’m one of the few people who listens to her. So, don’t pretend life is hard for you.”
Maeve pressed on her stomach. The scolding hurt, but it was the image of the woman’s death that struck her. She didn’t want to picture that kind of sadness for anyone. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“You come over here and ... I don’t know what you want. But you have to stop fucking around like this. This isn’t a game for me. This is real life.” Wendy turned Maeve’s hand over. She caressed Maeve’s palm with her fingertip, and Maeve had felt the shock everywhere else.“Don’t start something with me that you don’t want to finish,” Wendy said. “Don’t pull me into your life unless you want me in it forever. It’s always been you for me.”
They laughed about it later, a scene made for Hollywood, the way they devoured each other, a frenzy of mouth and tongue, hands and fingers. Maeve told Wendy it was like being in another dimension. “Like I was surfing strands of my own DNA.”
Now, she heard frustration in Wendy’s voice again like she’d heard every time over the last year that Wendy called her out. She had a fair point. Maeve was stalling. She rested her elbows on her knees, buried her face in her hands.
A sound came from downstairs. A voice?
“Did you hear that?” Maeve checked the clock. It was early still. She wiggled into the jeans bunched on the floor and yanked on a top, not bothering with a bra. She tiptoed to the door and cracked it, her finger to her lips. Wendy rolled her eyes as she grabbed her scrubs.
The sound of a cabinet closing, the refrigerator door sucking open.
Maeve pushed the door closed. “Someone’s here. Hurry! Make the bed.” She blew out the candle, twisted her head left and right, trying to find an excuse for Wendy to be in her bedroom. “Fuck.” She smoothed her hair in the mirror over the dresser, licked her fingertips to wipe smeared mascara away. “Wen.” She pointed to Wendy’s bra on the floor.
