“Because they spread rumors, and gossip, and...and half the time, they don’t really care about what you’re going through. They just want a good story.”
“Of course there’s a few people like that in Hillford. There are people like that anywhere.” When Dad comes back, Mom thanks him and digs until she finds a bottle and formula. Dad offers, with saccharine politeness, to fix it for her. What the hell did Grandma’s little speech do to them? Usually my parents’ fights stretch into days of bitterness and passive-aggressive gestures.
“But,” Mom continues, “most people do care. They want to help. Believe me, I wish Reese would let us. If not for himself, then for his kids. Them having to do it all alone just breaks my heart. I can’t imagine going through something like that on my own, knowing if I told even just one person, the burden wouldn’t feel so heavy. Matter of fact, I think that’s exactly why Caroline told me.”
“Right. It had nothing to do with the fact you asked, point-blank.”
“Only because I could see how much it was hurting her,” Mom insists. “And for the record, about your little ‘one person knows so everyone knows’ comment? We haven’t told a soul. Not that people don’t suspect it, of course, but we’re not violating her trust or spreading Reese’s business.”
Shame sweeps across my chest, red-hot. “I didn’t mean you. Just...in a general sense.”
Dad comes back shaking the bottle. Bentley stirs at the sound, and my parents laugh as he roots frantically for it, clamps on, and devours it like manna.
“My goodness, I do miss this. You were the same way, as a baby.”
I force a smile, too busy to conjure a real one. I’m thinking, for some reason, of what Mom just said: tell just one person, and a burden doesn’t feel so heavy.
When Ford left, he was only part of my pain. The rest was touching my abdomen, still sore in the days that followed, and knowing there was nothing inside, anymore. Just when I’d begun to accept that something was in there in the first place.
We told no one. At least, I thought we hadn’t; now I know Ford’s father was privy, not that it did Ford any good, support-wise. But still—maybe it helped him, somehow. Maybe I should have told someone.
Maybe I still should.
“Mom?”
“Hmm?” she asks, without looking up.
I open my mouth again, lips already shaped to form the words: When I was eighteen....
But when I look at the softness of Mom’s eyes as she studies Bentley, singing a lullaby she used to sing to me, I can’t tell her. The news feels too old and too heavy. She looks too happy.
Maybe someday. But not this one.
“Do you, um...do you need me to stay and help with Bentley? Because I—I have a meeting with a client, but—”
“Oh, no, honey, you can go. Work’s important, I know there’s been a slump lately.”
“If you need me, just call. I might not have a signal where I’m going, though, so—”
She interrupts me again. “Easton, get on out of here. Between the three of us, this baby will be just fine.”
I want to tell her it’s not Bentley I’m worried about; it’s her. She’s essentially got three children to take care of today. Isn’t that why I moved in—because Grandma and Dad were acting like little kids, running her ragged?
As I leave, though, I think about the last few weeks. Sure, I’ve been helping out a lot, but not as much as I expected. Ford might have been right about me becoming her emotional support: an auxiliary caretaker to handle the little things, so she could focus on the rest.
But maybe it was more than that. Maybe most of the help I gave her happened before I even moved in: when she confessed how overwhelmed she felt, and I simply listened. Made that burden a little easier to carry, just by acknowledging its existence.
The drive drags along. At the turn for Kennedy’s land—or what used to be her land, anyway—I suddenly realize I’ve had the stereo off this entire time. Miles and miles of silence, and it didn’t bother me one bit.
Twenty-Eight
“Been a while since we’ve chilled like this.”
I nod and snuff my cigarette on the dock beside Hudson, then drop it into my empty water bottle. “Remember when Tanner thought he’d been bitten by that water moccasin?”
He laughs, soft and through his nose. He doesn’t have the boisterous, half-shout laugh that Bram does, but I know he finds the story just as entertaining. “Yeah. He acted like he was dying, full-blown panic, until you held up that fucking stick that jabbed him.”
I laugh again and look down into the river. “Guess we shouldn’t talk, though. We’d have thought the same thing.”
“I don’t care. It’s too fun to give him shit over it.”
“True.” I’m glad I called Hudson. After I fixed the shower curtain and Caroline returned from the Lawrence house with Bentley (and, sure enough, with full Tupperware), she asked if she could invite Annika and Chrissy over. “I just don’t feel like being alone, you know? Don’t worry, I won’t tell them anything about Dad”—she rolled her eyes—“and we’ll stay out of your way. We can watch movies in my room, or something.”
I almost took offense at her “being alone” statement. What was I, invisible?
Then I stopped and thought about all those nights I used to hang out with Easton when I couldn’t sleep, or weekends I called my friends to see where the parties were. Sometimes you just needed people outside your situation to help you forget for a while, then remind you life went on. Or that it would, with time.
“Yeah,” I told her, “I think that’s a good idea.” Then I scrolled my phone, debating which of the guys to call first.
“So,” Hudson sighs now, leaning back on his elbows, “when are they letting your dad out of the hospital?”
“Wh— How’d you know he’s in the hospital?”
“My cousin volunteers at Unity. She saw you guys bring him in this morning.”
I let out the longest breath my lungs can hold and stretch across the dock, arms over my face. “God, this town.”
Then, I laugh.
It’s honestly funny to me: I went to all that trouble to keep Dad’s secret, and now it’s out, anyway. Hudson won’t tell anyone; he’s known about the illness as long as I have and hasn’t told a soul. But his cousin’s a different story. At least I’ll be able to laugh it off when the rumor mill starts churning.
Even weirder than finding the leak funny is the fact I’m relieved. Someone else knows. Soon enough, everyone will. It’s amazing how much that thought calms me.
Another secret digs at me, though, deep down in my stomach.
“I, uh...I think I fucked things up with Easton.”
Hudson clucks his tongue. “Again?”
“Again.”
“Dumbass. What’d you do this time?”
I pull my arms off my face and stare up at the sky. It’s deep orange, with a shot of red running through it like grenadine. “That’s the thing, it’s not anything new. It’s just all our old baggage. Like, I thought things were different this time. But they’re not.”
“How?”
“What do you mean, how?”
“How are things not different, this time?”
“I don’t know…I mean, other than being older, we’re still the same people. Facing the same shit we were back then. She wants to put a label on us, make me promise I’ll stay, when I don’t even know my next move.” I shove my arms into the air. They land on the sun-cracked planks with two identical thuds. “But she’s always known I would leave. This time, and back then. I told her in plain English, multiple times.”
Hudson mutters something, but the splash of a rock he pitches covers it.
“What?”
“I said,” he enunciates, sounding annoyed, “actions speak louder than words.”
I lift my head. “My actions? I did leave. And I haven’t taken any jobs since I’ve been back that weren’t temporary. My actions are saying the exact same thing as m
y words.”
“Not your actions with her,” he says simply. I’m reminded, very quickly, why I tend to regret seeking advice from Hudson. He’s too calm and too vague. In another universe, he’d be a monk. Maybe a cat.
“You told her you were leaving,” he explains, after I’ve reclined again and given up on real answers, “but you treated her like you were staying. Back then, and now. The way you acted around her, from what I saw, was like you were...you know, together. So I don’t blame her for thinking you’d hang around.”
I think a moment, then shake my head. “But I didn’t even say I wouldn’t, necessarily. Just that....”
“Just that,” he picks up, “you always planned on leaving. How was she supposed to feel, when you made it sound like you’d be absolutely miserable if you did stay, even for her?”
Which time Hudson’s referring to, I can’t tell. I guess it doesn’t matter.
Crickets have started to chirp along the banks; the sky’s turning deep blue at its edges. I sit up and put my feet back into the water, the chill stronger than before.
“We felt like shit when you took off,” he says, after a long silence. His next rock hits the water just right, skipping nine times before the current picks up. “It was like we weren’t important enough to even get a goodbye.”
“You were. I was just too chickenshit to give it.”
He nods, like this isn’t news to him. “My point is, we felt ripped off. Like you’d lied to us or something—acting like we were best friends, but then treating us in a way that told a different story. So Easton, who was definitely more than a friend to you…she was just totally blindsided.” Anger darkens his face. It’s subtle, but so unusual for him, I have to fight the instinct to scoot away. “And right after the miscarriage, too. Like...what the actual fuck, man?”
There’s the shame again, as strong as last night and every night before it, for six years straight.
“How’d you know about that?” I whisper.
“I saw her get the pregnancy test at Owens. You got weird as shit right after that, so I figured it must have been positive.” He pauses. “But then the accident happened, and Easton was so...sad. Wasn’t hard to guess why.”
The anger drains from his face. Now there’s just distance in his eyes, a shift in his jaw. “She walked around like a ghost or something for weeks. Like she didn’t know what to do, anymore. She was just totally broken.”
My chest fills with concrete. Every word paints a picture I can’t stand to imagine, but that’s haunted me all these years, waiting for me to finally turn and look: the full impact of how much I hurt that girl. The cold, ugly proof of how little I deserved her.
Hudson shrugs as he finishes, taking a breath. “I mean, I never knew for sure. But it seemed like the most probable thing.”
I’m not even surprised. Hudson knows so much more than anyone could guess.
“You didn’t tell anyone, did you?”
“Yeah, actually: I stood out in Main Street Square with a megaphone. Come on, man. Of course I didn’t tell anyone.”
The faintest laugh comes out. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. Anyway, what I’m saying is, you might think you’ve been obvious with Easton. That she’s being unreasonable, demanding you ‘label’ yourselves, or decide what you’re going to do next...but she’s not.” He picks a splinter out of his palm and flicks it into the water. “People who let themselves care about you? They don’t deserve to get ghosted, Ford. They deserve the labels, if that’s what they want.” He pulls his feet from the water and stands, footprints stamped across the wood as he gathers our shoes. “And if you decide to let them go, they at least deserve a goodbye.”
He hands me my boots. I take them.
“That’s what stopped me last time,” I tell him, when we’ve walked the trail back to the car. “With you guys, I was just scared to say goodbye. I thought you’d all try and talk me out of it, or something.”
Hudson considers this, then shrugs. They probably would have.
“But with Easton…I didn’t even know how to say goodbye to her. I mean, how do you do that? Say goodbye to someone you love?”
“Maybe you could have started by actually telling her you loved her,” he says. I can’t tell if he’s joking or not.
“Look, there wasn’t any goodbye I could give her that would’ve made it okay.” I feel the shell rebuilding around myself, the one I kept close the entire time I was on the road, hopping from town to town, fresh start to fresh start. It was the only way I could get out of bed in the mornings: convincing myself I hadn’t owed her a goodbye, because none existed. A “sorry” on some sunflowers was as good as anything else, I’d reasoned, because all my options were shit.
“Tanner wants us to meet at Taphouse,” Hudson says, reading his text as soon as I read mine. “Sounds important. You have to get home?”
I check my other text: a picture from Caroline, who’s turned the living room floor into a nest of pillows and blankets with her friends. Bentley is in the center of it all, sound asleep in his bouncer.
“Nah,” I tell Hudson, putting the phone back in my pocket. “I’ve got some time.”
“And you never told anyone?”
I shake my head, wrapping both hands around the mug of coffee Kennedy poured me when I arrived. It’s lukewarm; the entire story took the better part of an hour. Most of that time was spent just trying to find the words.
“I guess I was lucky, kind of, that I’d already announced the pregnancy to everyone,” she says thoughtfully, “because otherwise, without that pressure of having to update them? I probably would have done exactly what you did. Kept it all a secret.” She smiles, a little sadly. “Why do we do that?”
“I don’t know. Stubbornness?”
“Nah,” she says, sitting back against the arm of the sofa. “That’s too simple. I think...I think women just do that. Just take their pain and try to fold it up until we can put it off to the side.”
“Which is stupid,” I add, “because bottling up how we feel always ends badly.”
“Oh, no, I wouldn’t say ‘always.’” Kennedy looks at her calendar idly. I notice the sonogram she had paperclipped to the top half is gone, now.
No, I think, not gone. Just somewhere else. Off to the side.
“Sometimes,” she says, “you have to do that. What’s the word? Compartmentalize? I think that’s what most women do—we compartmentalize our pain. It’s not necessarily bad to bottle it up. You don’t want to ignore it forever, obviously, but you’re just keeping it contained for a while, until you’re strong enough to face it.
“And that might be a little at a time, or all at once…depending on the person, or the situation.” She shrugs. “Anyway, that’s just what I think. Maybe you kept it a secret because you wanted to forget it ever happened, like you said earlier.” Her head tilts, a small but deep gesture that makes me relax. “But I think you did it so you could build the rest of your life, first. So you could deal with it when you were ready—when you were stronger.”
Stronger. It’s not the word I’d pick to describe myself now. It’s definitely not how I feel.
Older, yes. Maybe a little wiser. But stronger? There’s no way. Not after I let myself fell for Ford all over again, knowing firsthand I’d come out the other side shattered.
“It gives me hope,” Kennedy goes on, before I can tell her exactly why her word choice is wrong. “If you can be all right again by, what did you say—six years out? When you didn’t even have someone to talk to about it? Then I should be okay a lot sooner than I think.”
“You’re already on the way,” I offer, motioning to her; she showered today—the first time since she’s been home, she confided—and put on makeup. Then I point to the strawberry salad she made us, straight from her greenhouse out back. It’s the first food she’s eaten since she left the hospital.
She nods slowly, like she’s repeating my words in her head. I hope she believes them.
I hope, one of these days, I’ll believe hers.
We talk until late afternoon. It’s weird, but in a good way; once a client’s pregnancy ends, I’ve never quite kept that closeness. Maybe that will change when I’ve been in business long enough to get repeat customers, but for now, Kennedy is the first client I can actually call a friend.
I leave the A-frame feeling a peace and pain rolled together that I’ve never known. It hurt, exposing the wound to air, just like I always feared it would.
But at least I know it’s healing—doing what I always feared it couldn’t.
* * *
I get home in time for Mom’s daily breaking point, that moment when Grandma’s demands and Dad’s needs and the chores all get to her most. She doesn’t cry, usually, but always sounds like she might; a few minutes to herself tends to set things in order again.
So when I step inside to find Grandma shuffling through the house complaining about her hip, Dad asking her how many grams of sugar are in honey-glazed ham, and Bentley screeching from the little pallet she made him on the living room floor, I shoo her out of there.
“Mom, go lie down for a while. I’ll handle it.” As soon as she relents, I spin to face my grandmother. “Grandma, your hip hurts because you haven’t been resting it the way you’re supposed to. Didn’t Dr. Park tell you no more than a few minutes of walking at a time?”
She grumbles, but I turn her towards her room. Few problems in life can’t be improved by a good, long nap.
In the kitchen, I write down the sugar content for everything in our fridge lacking nutrition facts, tape it to the cabinet with a slap, and leave Dad to fix his own sandwich.
Finally, I scoop up Bentley. There’s no pacifier in sight, so I wash my hands, take him upstairs to my old room, and sit in the office chair. It bounces, which entertains him just as much as rocking; when I put the knuckle of my forefinger against his gums, he goes completely silent and wide-eyed. I feel his tongue poke and prod my finger until, finally, his gums clamp down. Easton Lawrence: midwife, music enthusiast, human pacifier.
The Midwife’s Playlist: A Now Entering Hillford Novel Page 22