by Lisa Beazley
June 29 Cassie,
Double whammy! I found a questionable text message on Adrian’s phone from an “AP.” It said, “Miss u. Come back to BKK soon, OK?” BKK is obviously Bangkok and I knew that, but for some reason I felt the need to Google it, on the off chance that it was, oh, I don’t know, a bank or something with extremely personal service. So I opened River’s laptop and when I typed “B,” I hesitated for a second, and a scroll of terms starting with the letter “B” appeared, and “birth father locator” was the first one. That means River must have typed that into his computer recently, right? Shit! I wonder if I did the right thing by never searching for Kenny—never even trying to connect him with River. I think he went to jail at some point for selling drugs, so who knows what became of him? I figured if he wanted to find us, he could. But now I wonder, was I being too proud? Was that what was best for River? Or just for me? River and I have talked about his dad a few times over the years. He knows his first name, that he decided he wasn’t ready to be a father and went to live his own life. I never once consulted a book or the Internet or even took him to a counselor. I guess I thought he was fine with it. I still think he was mostly fine. He was so close with Mom and Dad and Joe and Margie growing up that I never felt like he had a typical single-mother childhood. I really never even thought of myself as a single mom. Someone was always at his baseball games. Dad taught him how to drive. I feel so stupid to have assumed that was enough. I thought if I could just make sure someone was always around for him, he’d never feel that hole. But maybe he did. Adrian certainly didn’t make any attempt to fill it, which is a whole other story. At any rate, I’m sad about all of this. My marriage—not even three years old—is going to end, and I’m not enough for my son. Love you. —Sid Her sad and insecure feelings stuck with me through the night. By the next morning, I still felt sick as a dog, but that letter plus the burning question of whether she had told Mom about the kiss, added to this business with River, had me agitated. The kids were eating Cheerios and watching Sesame Street, and I could think of nothing else but phoning Sid. I knew it was an okay time to call, because she was either twelve or thirteen hours ahead of me, or behind me. I could never remember, but I did know that if I was ever going to call her, it should be in the morning or the evening, and not in the middle of the day. So without overthinking it, I picked up the phone and dialed the fourteen digits I had taped to my refrigerator. She answered on the second ring. “Sid?” “Cass? Is everything okay?” “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I said, taking a sip of my honey-lemon tea and simultaneously fighting back tears. I hadn’t heard her voice in months, and the sound of it grabbed my heart and squeezed. “It’s just . . . I just . . . I just wanted to see how you were doing . . .” “You sound terrible. What’s wrong?” she said. “Oh, a nasty cold. But it’s fine. I got your letter about the text message and the birth father Google yesterday.” Sid let out a soft sigh. “Oh, yeah. That’s a doozy, right?” “And, actually, I had a weird phone call from Mom yesterday, too,” I continued. Just do it, I thought. Rip off that Band-Aid. “You didn’t tell her about my letter from the Pig, did you? You know, the kiss?” I whispered that last part into the receiver. “Hon, no,” Sid said. “Shit. No. Noooo. I wouldn’t do that. Of course not.” Of course not. I immediately felt bad for thinking she might have but also relieved that I knew for sure. She didn’t sound mad. Surprised, but not mad. “She does know about everything that’s going down with Adrian, though. Why? What did she say?” It was obvious to me then that, not unlike me all those years ago, Mom was in marriage-rescue mode, trying to shore up one daughter’s union while the other’s fell apart. I felt duty bound then to hold it together with Leo, if only for Mom’s and Sid’s sakes. I had to be the one who got it right, who had life go according to plan. Sid could be the different one—she was the free spirit, after all. It was kind of a relief that I could get on with my life. I didn’t need a famous TV chef as my lover or husband. My husband was the IT director for a chain of gyms, and I was an ordinary stay-at-home mom. Now let me get it over with, move to the suburbs, and take my Pilates classes at the mall. Sid and I ended up chatting for forty-five minutes. She was giddy, having just returned from a yoga retreat in Bali. “Holy shit, it was beyond amazing, and it helped me put some of this craziness in perspective. I mean—suddenly my life is like . . . It’s like I’m a fucking Capwell, with my baby daddies and my suspicions and my snooping and—so I just needed to clear my head. I hardly slept at all. I was kind of in this zone and didn’t want to miss anything, but now I just need to crash. Sorry—excuse my language. When I’m sleep deprived, my vocab is the first thing to go.” “I was just thinking of the Capwells yesterday!” I told her. And I did that same thing when I was tired. I had to laugh—“fuck” and “shit” can really fill in for any word, or add nuance to a thought when you don’t have the mental wherewithal to make your point in a more sophisticated way. The mood on the phone lifted even higher, the iffy note the call had started on a distant memory. My whole body felt light and happy. “Fucking shit, Sid. I miss you so much,” I said, ignoring my boys, who were sitting four feet away. “But wait—is everything good with River? And what’s up with Adrian? Do you need me to come out there? I will, you know.” “No, no, no. I mean, it sucks about Adrian. It really does. But you know what? I’m actually fine—or I’m going to be.” “Of course you are, sweetie. Hey, I felt really bad about sending that letter where I threw myself at Jake while you were in the middle of finding out about Adrian. You should hate me. I never would have said anything—actually, I don’t even know if I would have kissed him if I’d known you were dealing with that. It was such an immature and selfish thing to do. I’m sorry.” “Don’t apologize to me! You didn’t know. God, Cass, it’s great to talk to you. But it’s kind of weird too, right? Like it doesn’t fit in with this whole alternate-time continuum we’re on. I’m not even sure what you know because I don’t know what you’ve read yet.” “I know what you mean! It does feel like . . . I don’t know . . . like I just accidentally saw a current episode of a TV show I’ve been watching reruns of or something, you know?” “Totally! Okay! Fuck! Let’s hang up!” “Nooooo! Okay, fine! Shit! Bye! Love you!” “Love you, too! Bye.” I put down my phone and let out a big sigh. “Shit! Bye! Shit! Bye! Shit! Bye!” yelled the boys, who had miraculously been relatively quiet during that conversation. Despite my miserable cold, my spirits were high and I wanted to reward the boys for a good morning. “All right, you two, who wants to go visit the chickens?” CHAPTER TWELVE