I had to smile because I doubted he loved the Bachelor. I was fairly certain there wasn’t a straight male who was hooked on the fairytale of the Bachelor, but that’s how it was in the beginning. He must really like her if he was willing to sit through the Bachelor.
“I’ve realized your father never paid all that much attention to me. He was always focused on himself, his plans, and his career. I used to think he was just driven and I wanted to be supportive of him. I was always second place, but I was okay with that. I catered to his every need trying to make him happy, but you know what? I never thought about my own happiness and he didn’t either. Everything we ever did was about him. I came to the conclusion that he wasn’t driven. He was selfish and self-centered. He didn’t care nearly as much about me or his family as he did himself.”
She talked about him as if he was still present in our lives like she’d been having conversations with him all of this time when in reality, she hadn’t spoken to the man in over thirty years.
“What’s the new guy’s name?”
“Bernard.” Her eyes lit up when she said his name. “Isn’t that such an old fashioned name? It really is, but it fits him perfectly because he’s such an old fashioned kind of a man. He doesn’t even have an email address. Can you believe that?”
I leaned over to her bed and gave her a big hug. “I’m so happy for you. I love seeing you sparkle like this.”
“Oh nonsense, I’m not sparkling.” She pushed me away.
“What changed your mind about him?” I asked.
“I’m not sure. Normally, I wouldn’t have paid him any attention. You know me. But, I realized maybe it was time to move on. Eventually, life has to go forward again. Once I made the decision, it was easy. It freed me to love again.”
It had taken her thirty years to move on. She’d spent over three decades living with the ghost of my father. I started to feel sorry for her like I’d done so many times before, but realized I wasn’t any different. I’d been living with the same ghost. I’d lived my life trying to make sure nobody left me again. I became the perfect child and grew into the perfect adult so people would love me and not leave. I created a strong character to present to the world and lived according to strategically developed plans. My plans hadn’t been about my own happiness, but rather constructing a world that couldn’t be destroyed. I thought by doing so I’d avoid pain and loss, but I hadn’t avoided any of it.
Robin was right. Unlike my mother, I allowed myself to grow attached to people, but I controlled every part of the relationship. I set the rules and controlled how close they got to me. Each disclosure of intimacy resulted in me exerting my independence all the more. Everything I’d done with David had been to make sure he’d never leave me. I’d never shared all the parts of myself with him. I left out all my deepest wounds and shameful scars. My mom was the one who should feel sorry for me. She’d been aware of her handicaps and hang ups, but I’d been oblivious to mine. My world had crumbled around me despite all my efforts. A bomb had detonated and I was left surveying the damage around me—all the broken pieces of shattered lives.
I woke in the morning to the flashing light of the phone signaling I had a voicemail. I punched the button to listen. It was David’s voice.
“Celeste, it’s been almost a week and we haven’t heard from you. Maybe you disappeared again. But here’s the deal. I’m moving forward with the divorce and custody like we talked about. I’m meeting with the lawyer this afternoon at three. You can be there or not. I really don’t care. It’s 819 Wilshire Blvd. Suite 640.”
I’d been avoiding him until I knew what to say. I’d needed time to think about his ultimatum.
“Who was that?” My mom’s face was etched with concern.
“David.” The weight of his anger rested on my shoulders and made me feel like I was being pushed into a puddle of thick sludge. “Except I don’t know this guy. He’s so angry. He seethes with hatred every time I see him.”
“Grief changes people.”
“I thought he’d understand once he found out I’d been raped. I never imagined it wouldn’t make a difference to him. He doesn’t even care,” I said.
My mom moved over to my bed to sit next to me. She placed her arm around me. “I’m so sorry Phil did that to you.”
“I couldn’t tell anyone what happened because I knew no one would believe me. I knew everyone would blame me. And you know what, Mom? I was right. I’m still the villain.”
I didn’t want to cry again. I was tired of crying.
“It wasn’t your fault, honey.”
Her words were what I’d been waiting to hear. I’d said the word rape but it was only a word without a face. It didn’t convey what had happened. How Phil had thrown me down on the bed and pinned me there. I’d screamed and he’d punched me in the face. I’d felt the shock through my entire body. He’d put a pillow over my face when I started screaming and I thought he was going to kill me. I’d gasped for air hungrily when he took it off my face and I’d never made another sound. I kept quiet, burying the screams inside me. I’d heard about people leaving their bodies and I’d never understood it until I traveled out of mine as he flipped me over onto my stomach. I watched from the ceiling as he assaulted me from behind. It hadn’t taken any effort or thought. I’d simply left my own body, detached from it completely. I didn’t even feel the pain of his thrusts or the stings of his slaps. I watched as he pulled on my hair, yanking my head back and wondered how my head didn’t snap off my neck.
“It was so awful.” I fell into her arms. She took me into her embrace like she’d done when I was a little girl and held me tightly as I wept. My sobs grew violent as she rocked me back and forth, repeating how sorry she was. As the tears exhausted themselves, she laid me down on her lap, resting my head on her thighs as she rubbed my hair, petting me like a cat.
“You’ll get through this. You’re brave. So strong. You always have been.”
I’d never been brave. I’d been terrified. My buried fear masqueraded as courage.
“I don’t know how to make this better.” As strange as it felt to be vulnerable with my mom, it was the most wonderful feeling in the world.
“Sweetie, some things you can’t make better.”
She was right. The wounds I’d inflicted were too deep. I’d come back looking for a way to move on, but sometimes there was no moving on and you just had to move through.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I was hurrying to get to the lawyer’s office on time to meet David. Traffic had been terrible. I rushed around the corner on Wilshire Boulevard and smacked into two people locked in an embrace. They were kissing passionately as if they were lost lovers who’d been reunited after years apart.
“Oh, excuse me,” I said, embarrassed to have caught them in such an intimate moment.
The couple pulled away from their kiss and turned to look at me. I jumped back. My mouth dropped in horror and disbelief. I stared wide-eyed at David and Robin as the rush of realization came crashing in. I saw what I hadn’t seen—all the touching, their looks, the knowing glances they exchanged, and never being without the other. They hadn’t even tried to hide it. Their relationship had been right under my nose the entire time, but I’d been oblivious. Anger surged through my body.
“How dare you? How fuckin dare you! You’ve made me feel like I was the biggest piece of trash and you’re the ones having an affair! The two of you are having an affair! Fuckin hypocrites!”
I turned on my heels and pounded down the sidewalk. Footsteps echoed behind me.
“Celeste, stop. Just stop,” Robin called.
I ignored her and kept walking.
“I can’t believe you two. You both stood there looking at me so righteously, so fuckin self-righteous. Meanwhile, you’re sleeping with each other!”
“Celeste, please. I’m begging you.” She was panting we were both walking so fast. “Let me explain.”
“No, I don’t want to hear it. David doesn
’t want to listen to what I have to say and I’m not going to listen to what you have to say.”
“We’re not having an affair,” she said. “Trey and I are separated. I filed for divorce four months ago.”
I stopped in my flight. She grabbed my arm, jerking me around to face her. “Trey and I have been at each other’s throats for the past two years. You know that. We’ve talked about it a million times. How many times have I called you bitching about him?”
They had an explosion every few weeks and she was always threatening to leave him. I’d spent hours on the phone listening and assuring her all marriages struggled when the kids were young. I promised her that her marriage would get better when Emma was older and she had to wait it out until then. I’d comforted her about her marriage in the same way she’d comforted me about mine.
“How long has it been going on?” I asked.
“Nothing physical happened between us until after I left Trey. We didn’t even kiss until after I’d served him with the divorce papers,” she said.
She was talking about her first kiss with a new man like she talked to me about every one of her boyfriends, but it was my husband. I put my hands on my hips. “I’m not talking about hooking up. You know exactly what I mean. How long has it been going on?”
“I swear nothing happened until after you were gone. Honestly, I didn’t even know it was happening while it was happening. David is my friend, a good friend. You know how close we’ve gotten since we do so much together with Emma and Rori. We were both devastated when you left. That’s the point when our relationship started to change. Please believe me, Celeste. I wouldn’t do that to you.”
“Tell me all of it. I want to know,” I said.
“God, I don’t know. I’m not sure I should do that—”
“Tell me.”
“He’ll never admit it to you now, Celeste, but he was wrecked when you left. Completely destroyed. And I was too. You were family.” Her eyes filled with tears. “He was lost and Rori was so sick. There were all these decisions to make and he couldn’t think straight. He’d sit in Rori’s room and sob. I had to help him. I practically lived at the hospital with him. Trey tried to be supportive while Rori was in the hospital, but he expected things to go back to normal after she got home, but they didn’t. They couldn’t. David had barely started to function like a normal person and being back in your house wrecked him all over again. He needed me more than ever and by that time, I needed him too. It was like we were in our own little world because no one else understood what we were going through. He’d lost his wife and I’d lost my best friend.”
“Still. It doesn’t make it right that you had an affair.” My anger was beginning to evaporate.
“We didn’t have an affair. You sound like Trey.”
“Just because you weren’t sleeping together doesn’t mean you weren’t having an affair. You know that as well as I do.”
“But, you make it sound awful and it wasn’t. Neither of us wanted to hurt anyone. It was the only good thing that came out of all the pain. We were both drowning in it and we pulled each other out. I think we loved each other so much because of how much we both loved you. Is that weird?”
I shook my head. “Not any weirder than all of this is.”
“I’m sorry. This all is so unreal. Our life had finally gotten to feel a bit normal for the first time in a year.”
She referred to them as a unit and I flashbacked to all the conversations the three of us had had over the last two weeks. David used “we” whenever he spoke. He never referred to himself in the first person because they’d become a unit. They were a “we” which meant there was no more of an us.
“We didn’t think you were ever coming home. I can’t tell you how many nights we spent imagining different scenarios about what had happened to you—where you’d gone, who you’d gone with. I thought you were dead because of the bloody clothes you left in the bathroom. David was convinced you’d left because you didn’t want to face the truth, but I could never get over the blood. He was sure it was your own blood like you’d staged it to make us think someone hurt you, but I made him call the police even though your mom had already filed a missing person’s report. The police thought the bloody clothes were disturbing, but they said the same thing as David—that nothing pointed toward foul play. They didn’t seem concerned. They kept telling us people left their lives to start new ones all the time.”
“I know David doesn’t believe me, but I want you to believe me—as awful as everything was, I didn’t run because David found out Phil was Rori’s dad. I would’ve found a way to get through it. I left because I thought I killed Phil. You have no idea what it feels like to think you killed someone.”
“I believe you.” She put her arm around me.
“Thank you,” I said.
“And I want you to believe me about David. I never would’ve agreed to a relationship with him if I thought there was any chance you’d ever come home. I was sure I’d never see you again.”
“I believe you.” Besides David, Robin was the most loyal person I knew and didn’t have a malicious bone in her body. “And I’m really sorry I hurt you.”
It was such a sad story. All of it. Every part. I couldn’t deny that their relationship made sense. Something happened when you traveled through the depths of despair with another person. You connected in a way that was devoid of all pretenses and rules. I’d experienced something similar with Joe.
“Do you love him?” I asked.
“Yes, I do. More than I’ve loved anyone before. It’s a different kind of love.”
“Does he love you?”
I had to know.
“Yes. We’re going to get married. I’m sorry.” She looked away.
“Wow. And Trey?”
“He’s started dating again. He gets Emma every other weekend and one day during the week. Things are a lot better between us now that we’ve split up. We’re better friends than before. He’s still not the biggest fan of David and I don’t think he ever will be again. The days of spending our weekends together are definitely over.”
My mom’s words resonated in my head, some things you can’t make better. The only way to live my life was forward. I couldn’t go backward. None of us could.
“David’s probably waiting for us. We should go sign the papers,” I said.
David was in the same spot on the sidewalk where we’d left him looking bewildered. Robin reached out and took his hand. He refused to meet my eyes. We walked in silence into the tall building and the space in the elevator was suffocating. Each of us was lost in our own thoughts of what had been, what might have been, and what it was like now. David signed us in at the receptionist’s desk. It looked more like a doctor’s office than a law office. I kept waiting for someone in a white coat to walk out, but instead a young woman with shiny red hair popped her head out of the doorway and motioned for us to follow.
“I’m Bonnie Moran,” she said closing the door behind us. We shook hands. “Glad you could make it in today.”
She laid out the divorce paperwork and parental rights documents across her table. I only half-listened as she launched into a discussion of what it would mean to sign over my parental rights. I would be signing a document agreeing to not contact Rori in any way for the duration of her lifetime. She droned on and on about the legalities of each document, highlighting important parts and explaining certain legal causes. Not only could I not contact them, but they wouldn’t contact me. There wouldn’t be any pictures or any updates on Rori. They wouldn’t be writing me letters or calling me to ask about things. No more David. No more Rori. And no more Robin since she was going to marry my husband. No contact with them meant no contact with her. I was serving a different sentence than the one I’d originally thought I’d be coming home to. I was signing papers that would erase me from their lives forever. It was as if I was dead.
I looked toward David as he leaned into Robin for support. I saw the way they clut
ched hands together the same way we used to hold onto each other. You could feel the bond between them as if they’d merged into one person instead of two.
“Do you really want this?” I asked him.
He didn’t hesitate. “Yes. I think it’s the best thing for everyone involved.”
I picked up the pen and began initialing in the spots she’d highlighted for me. I wanted to get it over with as fast as I could. I couldn’t help but think of the times I’d secretly wondered if Rori would be better off without me. In five minutes, it was over and I was legally dead to my family. David and Robin wanted to meet with the lawyer privately so I stood to leave, shaking Bonnie’s hand on the way out. I was walking down the hallway toward the elevator when David called my name.
“Celeste, wait. Just a minute.”
I stopped, turning to look at him following me down the hallway. He was alone. It was the first time I’d seen him without Robin by his side. He caught up quickly.
“I just want you to know that I’m glad you’re okay.” I could see how hard it was for him to say the words by the way his jaw worked and his facial muscles twitched as he spoke.
“Thank you. I’m glad you’re okay, too.” I wanted to touch him one final time since I’d never see him again, but I didn’t dare.
“I’m sorry Phil did that to you. I wish you would’ve told me. I could’ve helped you.”
I couldn’t hide my emotions, they rolled down my face. “I know you would’ve.”
But I hadn’t told him and I couldn’t go back.
He stuck out his hand to shake mine. I couldn’t bring mine up to reach him. I wouldn’t end our marriage and life together with a handshake. “Can I give you a hug?”
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