I’m still processing the revelations about the testing the next morning, vacillating between anger at the choices my dad made on my behalf and gratitude. Being a little kid among hormonal sixth graders would probably have sucked. But who might I have been if he’d chosen another way?
“I agree,” says Theo after I voice all this. “But that isn’t a valid reason to skip our run.”
Ugh. Eighteen miles. On our last day together for well over a week.
I sigh heavily as I walk to the closet for my running shoes. “This is why I prefer men who are easy to manipulate,” I grouse. “And you aren’t being very sensitive. This has all been very traumatic.”
He raises a brow. “Compared to events of the past year, the trauma of this barely registers. And I doubt it’s mysensitivityyou find attractive.”
I change tack. “I’m finding very little about you attractive at the moment. And you realize that this is our last chance to spend the morning in bed? Lars could very well put us in separate houses again.”
Theo narrows one eye at me and continues tying his own shoes. “Yes, Rebecca, I’m well aware of what I’m sacrificing. But you’ve got to get your mileage up, and Lars will not put us in separate houses. I’ll make sure of it.”
We could just admit we’re together.I consider suggesting it but silence myself. If this goes badly—if Theo eventually decides I’m not what he wants—I don’t need the whole crew pityingme.
Besides, he’s not suggesting it either. I’m trying not to let it botherme.
Today we run our previous long route but add a loop around Maplewood, where I was born and where we’ll be running our marathon three and a half weeks from now. Jogging is still no fun but it’s a little shocking that I’m running eighteen miles today. Was it only four months ago that a couple of miles had me winded?
We finally hit Maplewood Avenue, passing all the athleisure and cupcake shops, and then we run past a church just to the south. “That’s unexpected,” he says. “I’m surprised it hasn’t been turned into a smoothie bar.”
I laugh, ignoring the small twist in my gut at the sight.
“My mother is buried there,” I admit after a moment.
His brows raise and he comes to a sudden stop. “Do you want to pay her a visit?”
“She’s not especially talkative these days.”
“Bex.”
I haven’t been to her grave in years, probably not since middle school, when I discovered she’d been interviewing for jobs in California when she died, and that her plans didn’t include me.Jessie let that one slip during an argument—You can resent me all you want, but at least I’ve continued putting up with you, which is more than your mother planned todo.
I was never sure, after that, if I was supposed to miss her or hate her. I’m still not sure.
I weigh out my reticence against my desire to stop running and then lead him down a gravel path behind the church. “I’ve never brought anyone here.”
He slides his fingers through mine. “You don’t have to bring me either, if it bothers you.”
I give the tiniest shake of my head. “It doesn’t. This thing…it’s different with you. I don’t normally do, like, relationships.”
I wait for him to tell me it’s different for him too or to give me a tiny hint how he feels, but he does not. I guess I should simply be grateful he didn’t balk at me calling it arelationship.I count four up and twenty over until we stand at her grave.
Nadia Daniels
Beloved wife and mother
He reads the snippet at the bottom aloud: “ ‘Awake for ever in a sweet unrest, / Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath.’ ” He glances at me. “What’s that from?”
I rub at my chest, at something simultaneously sweet and painful just beneath my skin.
“It’s from ‘Bright Star,’ this love poem Keats wrote for Fanny Brawne. My dad said that poem always made him think of my mother, even before she died. That she was a little mysterious and removed and splendid, and even if he couldn’t understand her, it was enough just to be in her orbit.”
I have only the vaguest memories of her. A walk through the park. Being read to at bedtime. I’ve seen the home videos taken before she died, of course, but they’re unsettling. Maybebecause she looks so much like me, and gives the impression of being a doting mom, but she was doing really shitty things to my father at the same time. I’m sure I missed her deeply when it happened, but you adapt to things as a kid. I bet I wasn’t still looking for her to walk in the door six months after she died, the way I’m still picking up my phone to text Bronwyn.
I shrug. “I think it was his way of coming to terms with loving her still after discovering all the lies she’d been telling him. She’d been hiding money and cheating on him too and it looked like she was planning to leave my dad for this other guy, and their mutual friends knew. Like it’s not bad enough to find out your wife did horrible things, but to also discover everyone was in on it?”
Theo is suddenly stiff and silent when I’d expected banal reassurance from him. And there’s something wary in his face that wasn’t there a moment ago.
