by Laura McHugh
“You don’t believe me?”
“Oh, baby.” Her eyes glossed with tears. “I’m sorry. I never meant for anything like that to happen, I swear. I just wanted you to have a job, to be taken care of. He’s not in his right mind, sometimes, when he drinks. If I ever thought…” Her face buckled and Henley didn’t doubt that Missy felt bad about what had happened, but she couldn’t help wondering if some of Missy’s tears were due to the fact that she’d so easily been replaced as the object of Earl’s attentions.
“All right, Mama.”
“No. You need to understand, Henley,” Missy said, her face twisted up, her lashless eye seeping tears. “I was a single mother, living with my parents, no hope of ever doing anything better than cleaning somebody else’s house. I thought if I had Earl’s baby, that’d change things. He’d marry me, you and I’d move into the big house, you’d be one of those kids that took horseback riding lessons and ballet. That was my one shot to give you a better life, and I took it. I did it for you. I know I haven’t been the best mom, but I did everything I could. I’m sorry it didn’t work out like I hoped it would.”
Henley didn’t buy Missy’s claim that she’d done it all for her—her mother had wanted a different life for herself as much as she’d wanted it for Henley. Earl had supported Missy for years, and none of what he’d given her had been spent on horseback riding lessons or ballet or whatever else Missy claimed she’d wanted for her daughter. She felt a swell of pity for her mother—that her greatest aspiration was to trick Earl Sullivan into marrying her. Henley was embarrassed that she’d had her own daydreams about marrying Jason, but she had enough sense, at least, to know it was a fantasy, that she could find her own way out of the life she was stuck in.
* * *
—
“How did it go with your mom?” Jason asked.
She’d barely left the jail when he called, like he’d estimated exactly how long she’d be there. She felt slightly queasy talking to him after the things Missy had told her. “It was fine,” she said. “I was mostly just there to say goodbye.”
“How’s she doing?”
“Looks like a stray cat that got put down but didn’t die,” she said. “But she’s coming back to herself. She’ll get there. I hope.”
“Did you tell her about us?”
She hesitated, wondering which answer he’d prefer, and whether she should lie. “No,” she said.
“She might feel better knowing I’m going with you—that you won’t be alone.”
Henley hadn’t told him that she was going by herself. It was easier to let him believe she was doing what he wanted than to have to talk through it again. The boyfriends she’d had before Jason had been fairly taciturn, more interested in riding four-wheelers or making out than dissecting the nuances of their relationship. She never imagined she’d grow so weary of talking about her feelings. She and Charlie had largely avoided discussing the sometimes complicated nature of their relationship, calling themselves best friends and leaving it at that.
She’d been thinking of Charlie a lot lately, wishing she could talk to him about everything that was going on, but they hadn’t spoken much since Labor Day weekend, when he found out that she was seeing Jason. She missed him terribly. Jason had suggested several times, under the pretense of joking, that her best friend had abandoned her, to the point that it felt true. Jason was always with her, pushing everyone else out of the way, making her feel that he was all she needed, that he was the only one who truly cared.
His attention was by turns exhilarating and overwhelming, his desire to know every intimate detail of her life before they met, of each hour they spent apart. As though he could somehow possess her through an encyclopedic knowledge of her heart. But she was a Pettit, not prone to laying herself bare, and she took quiet pleasure in her secrets, their dark spiraled passages like the unseen whorls inside a shell. The plans she’d been making. The things Missy had told her at the jail. The way she thought of Charlie, still, how she stirred when she smelled smoke on the river, like the night they’d first kissed. All of it locked away in places Jason couldn’t reach, if she didn’t let him. She had to keep making room for herself inside. She needed to stretch out, push back, because if she didn’t, Jason would spill into everything, swallow her up like a flood, consuming all the light and space and air, leaving room for nothing else.
After confirming that Greg would drop Lily off at my house the night before Thanksgiving, I asked him how the diet was going—my nonconfrontational way of determining whether he and Heidi had gone back to stocking their pantry with normal food. He reminded me that it was not a diet and then rambled on about how it had given him unprecedented clarity and focus, to the point that he sounded like he’d entered an altered state. It reminded me of the time he’d dropped acid in college and stayed up all night talking about his teeth, how the inside of his mouth was a cathedral, a stadium, filled with rows and rows of teeth, more teeth than there were tombstones in Arlington Cemetery, and he had just never realized it before. I never knew what a negative impact sugar/dairy/legumes had on my mind and body!
It occurred to me that much of my time with Greg had been spent listening to him talk about himself. He’d always had plenty to say and seemed confident that other people wanted to hear it. I was glad—genuinely—that he’d found someone he was happy with, someone who enjoyed listening to his blather but also had no qualms telling him when to shut up. I’d recently realized, as I thought about how well he and Heidi complemented each other, that I was completely over the divorce. It had taken a long time to grind my anger down to a fine powder of irritation and a little while longer to brush the last of the dust away, but I had managed it. I hadn’t been angry that Greg had met Heidi while we were still married, that the spark between them, though not acted upon, had likely precipitated our already inevitable divorce. And it wasn’t that I’d wanted to stay with Greg—I hadn’t. I’d been upset that things hadn’t turned out the way I’d wanted. I’d thought my life would follow a trajectory more like Heidi’s—a flourishing career, a happy marriage, a big house in the suburbs—and while I’d blamed Greg for part of that, I knew it was mostly my own fault. I’d been too passive, let him push me into things. I’d given up on myself, on what I wanted, too easily.
I was looking forward to the long weekend with Lily. After work on Wednesday, I met up with Theo at the clinic to buy some of the dog food Gravy seemed to hate the least, based on the samples we’d tried.
“Hey,” he said. “I’m gonna go next door and grab a quick bite before I head out of town, if you’d like to join me.”
I didn’t even think before agreeing. I was starving, and the Dairy Barn would always win out over a Lean Cuisine or the frozen pizza Lily would undoubtedly ask me to make when Greg dropped her off later. The parking lot was nearly empty, and I figured most people were probably either scurrying around Walmart for last-minute groceries or on the road to someplace else.
We ordered at the counter and took a booth overlooking the highway, the plate-glass window shuddering as a semi hurtled by. “Where are you headed for Thanksgiving?” I asked, shrugging my arms out of my coat.
“My parents’, in the city. And I’ll get to spend some time with my girls.”
“You have daughters?”
“Yeah.” He swiped through the photos on his phone and handed it to me. Two girls with long wavy hair, their mouths wide with laughter, surrounded by a blur of frolicking dogs. The girls looked nearly identical, except that one had braces. “Liv and Stella. They’re fourteen and fifteen.”
“They’re lovely,” I said. “My daughter’s eleven. Are those beagles?”
“They are. We foster for a rescue group. Lots of hunting dogs get dumped around here when they can’t or won’t hunt. So far the girls have talked me into adopting a three-legged redbone and a pointer that’s half blind. If they had their way, we’d h
ave at least twenty dogs by now.”
The server came by with my Oreo concrete, ice cream dripping down the sides of the cup.
“Looks good,” he said. “Now I wish I’d ordered dessert instead of dinner.”
“Want to try a bite?” I asked. “I haven’t touched it yet.”
He shook his head, looking amused, and I felt silly for offering. Maybe it was a mom thing—I was so used to Lily eating off my plate, stealing the last cookie I’d wanted for myself, drinking from my glass because my tea supposedly tasted better than hers, even though it was exactly the same.
“So, Gravy’s eating better?”
“A little,” I said, digging Oreo chunks out of my ice cream with a long plastic spoon. “He’s been sleeping a lot, but it’s nice just having him around. Lily loves him. And the house doesn’t feel quite so empty when she’s gone.”
He nodded. “I know what you mean.”
“Lil always wanted a dog,” I said, “but my ex didn’t like animals in the house. Nothing with fur, anyway.”
“Really?” Theo laughed. “Gotta wonder about people like that.”
His food arrived, and he sprinkled pepper all over his fries. “Hey, can I ask you something personal?”
“I guess.”
“What are you doing in Shade Tree? Seems like most people get out, if they can, if they’re not here to farm. I expected you to end up someplace else.”
“I didn’t think I’d end up here either,” I said. “I was pretty determined not to. Things change, though. I wanted to be near my family when I had Lily.” It had been almost like an animal instinct, the desire to return, to bring my baby back home. I wondered now if the feeling would have passed, like so many of the intense directives of pregnancy—the midnight craving for candied ginger and Velveeta cheese, the frenetic scrubbing of every household surface when nesting kicked in. Maybe, if I’d ignored my homesickness, we would have stayed in the city and everything would have turned out differently.
“So you came back. And you stayed.”
“Yeah. I’d rather be near the city than in it, I guess. Shade Tree’s quiet. Familiar. I like my job. I’m not sure I’ll stay forever, though. I don’t really like Lily having to go back and forth. It’d be easier if Greg and I lived in the same place.”
“That part’s hard,” Theo said. “It was the only thing that made me hesitant to take the opening here, even though I’d always wanted some land, room to spread out. My ex and I are good friends, though, thank goodness. Makes everything easier when it comes to the girls.”
I wiped my mouth and pushed the melting remains of the concrete away. “Yeah. Greg’s a good dad. I can put up with all the rest.”
Theo put down his burger. “I don’t know how it’s been for you,” he said, “but it seems like being divorced in a small town like this is tricky. You’d think it would be easier to meet people, but it hasn’t worked out that way. It’s hard to even make friends. My kids finally convinced me to sign up for online dating. Have you tried that yet?”
“No.” I had looked, scrolling through the pictures without signing up, dreading the thought of filling out my profile, summing up my life in one pathetic paragraph: This is who I am. This is what I want. Single mom of an anxious preteen. I bake a good pie but hate making dinner. Looking for someone who likes to watch Dateline and take tediously slow walks with my incontinent dog.
One of the younger girls at work had informed me that dating worked differently now. It was standard procedure for men to text pictures of their genitals. I couldn’t imagine the horror of Lily playing Minecraft on my phone and having a strategically angled photo of some stranger’s penis pop up on the screen.
“There are a lot of crazy people out there,” Theo said. “And sometimes you don’t figure it out until you meet them in person, when you’re stuck at dinner with someone who seems really interested in your job and then you realize it’s only because she’s after animal tranquilizers.”
“Animal tranquilizers?”
“Yeah. She was looking to get high on ketamine. Thought I could hook her up.”
“Maybe you’re on the wrong site,” I said. “My friend from work tried to get me to sign up for Cougar Date.” I rolled my eyes.
Theo chuckled. “Huh. I might be too old for that one.” He tapped his knuckles on the table. “Chemistry’s hard to find online. It’s hard to find, period.”
“Tell that to my sister,” I said. “She’s been trying to set me up with random guys who I have nothing in common with. It’s like she doesn’t think single people can be happy.”
He was looking at me, and I had the uncomfortable thought that Becca had somehow set up this very encounter. It wasn’t likely—even she had her limits—though I remembered her asking, after Gravy’s first appointment, if the vet was single. I’d thought about dating again, though it wasn’t one of my top priorities, certainly not lately. I felt like I needed to plot out my immediate future first, decide if I should move closer to Greg or go back to school, and I couldn’t figure out any of that when so much was still unresolved with Shane. Theo was attractive and kind, and I liked being around him, though maybe that was only because he knew the old me, the old Shane, because there were things I didn’t have to explain. I could be myself with him.
“Maybe we could get the girls together sometime soon, when they’re all in town,” he said. “Liv and Stella don’t really have any friends to hang out with when they’re here. We could take the dogs on a walk.”
“I’d love that,” I said, something loosening inside me as the words came out. The response had come automatically, before my brain could phrase it in a more neutral way, something along the lines of “that would be fun for the kids” or, at the very least, replacing “love” with a less enthusiastic word. The same thing had happened when he’d asked me to join him for dinner—I’d said yes without thinking. Maybe Theo just had that effect on people. On me.
He nodded, smiling at me in a way that no one had in a while. Heat prickled my chest, even though we’d only vaguely agreed to walk dogs at an unspecified time in the future, which wasn’t even necessarily a precursor to an actual date. “Great,” he said. “I’d love it, too.”
* * *
—
I had to speed a little to get home before Greg arrived to drop off Lily. I knew he’d be testy if I was late, and he was already driving in holiday traffic.
I called Leola as I drove, telling her that Mom wanted Charlie to have Shane’s Firebird. “We can have it towed to your house,” I said. “We don’t have any keys. He could get new ones made, though.”
Leola put the phone aside to holler for Charlie, who was home for the weekend, and then he got on the line. “Thank you,” he said. “For the car. That means a lot to me.”
“He’d want you to have it.”
“Hey,” he said. “You don’t have to get it towed—I’ve got a key.”
“You do?”
“Yeah. He loaned me a key ring so I could get into his place and borrow tools. I’m pretty sure the Firebird’s spare key is on there. So I can pick it up this weekend.”
I looked forward to seeing his face when he came to get the car, and Mom’s relief when the Firebird would no longer be haunting her outside her window.
I turned into the driveway ten minutes after Greg had said he’d be there, but I didn’t see his car. I hurried into the house to switch on the porch light and nearly tripped over Lily’s duffel bag by the front door. It was bright pink, with emojis all over it, a birthday gift she’d picked out from Justice the year before and had probably now outgrown. I hadn’t expected Greg to take off before I got home, leaving Lily alone, but maybe he’d been in a rush. He and Heidi and the baby were getting ready to leave for Florida, to spend the holiday with Heidi’s family.
“Lily?” I called. There was no answer. The house was d
ark. “Lily!” I yelled. I moved toward the stairs, thinking she might have gone up to her room, and froze. The sheer curtains in the front window were moving, ever so lightly. I hadn’t noticed at first, but standing still, I could feel it. A cold breeze pushed in from the back of the house, snaking into my jacket and chilling me. I crossed the living room to get to the kitchen, where the sliding door gapped open by several inches. Gravy wasn’t under the table, where he’d taken to napping, and my breath eased. Maybe Lily had taken him out. The sliding door could be stubborn, difficult to close all the way once you had it open.
I flicked on the light and stepped out into the yard, expecting to see them, but no one was there. The light illuminated a stretch of brown grass, dead leaves cartwheeling in the wind, a tennis ball that Gravy never even bothered to smell. Lily wouldn’t go far from the house in the dark, unless Gravy had wandered and she’d gone to fetch him.
“Lily!” I hollered, stepping to the edge of the light. I dialed Greg, straining to see into the darkness as the phone rang.
“Hey,” Greg said, “you home yet?”
“Did you drop Lily off? Her bag’s here and I can’t find her.”
“She’s with me. We got there a little early. You weren’t there, and she was starving, so we went to get her something to eat. Didn’t mean to worry you.”
“Oh, thank god.” My legs wobbled as I backed up to the house. Lily was okay.
“Everything all right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I just…the back door was open, and I thought…I don’t know. Maybe Lily opened it when she brought her bag in?”
“No. I was with her.”
“Did you see Gravy?”
“No, but I didn’t look.”
“Maybe I didn’t close the door all the way and he pushed it open somehow to get outside.”