by Tawna Fenske
“And you still had mutual friends in real life. Every now and then I’d hear him ask them about you. He wanted to know if you were seeing anyone, if you’d found someone else.”
Meg bit her lip and studied Chloe’s face, expecting to see anger or bitterness or jealousy, but it wasn’t there. She thought about Kyle, wondering how hurt she’d be if she found him lurking on Cara’s Facebook page or asking around about old girlfriends.
Then again, maybe everyone checked up on exes. God knows she’d done it at first, though she hadn’t gone near Matt’s Facebook page for over a year now. She hadn’t even known about Chloe until a few weeks ago.
“That must have been awkward for you,” Meg said, not sure what else to offer. “Having him show an interest in an ex.”
“Not as awkward as you might think. I wasn’t threatened by you, honestly.”
“I—um, I’m glad?” Meg bit her lip, unsure of the correct responses to anything. This whole conversation was new territory for her, like visiting a foreign country populated only by women who’d loved the same man she had.
Chloe just shrugged. “I don’t mean that in a snarky way. Just that I never got the sense he was checking up on you because he wanted you back. He was checking up on you because he wanted to be sure he was happier. That his life was going better than yours was. He wanted to know the choices he’d made had landed him in a better place than the ones you’d made had done for you.”
“I didn’t realize we were competing.”
Chloe laughed. “You were always competing. Everything was always a competition for Matt, remember?”
“I guess so.”
Meg’s head was spinning, and she couldn’t decide whether this whole conversation was enlightening or depressing. Either way, Chloe seemed oddly undisturbed by it.
“I think it would bother me more,” Meg said slowly. “Knowing someone I loved was checking up on someone he used to be with. I don’t think I could be as cavalier about it as you are.”
Chloe shrugged. “That’s the difference between us. I’d rather know about all the skeletons in the closet. I’d rather throw all the baggage on the bed and open it up to see what’s inside so I know how to deal with it.”
“That’s very adult of you.”
“I try.” She turned away. “Come on. Speaking of going through baggage, I guess you’d better get started. File cabinet’s in here.”
She led Meg down the hall, headed toward the last room on the right. Meg knew it well. It had been their office, too, back when she lived here with Matt.
They’d bickered for months over the perfect paint color, finally ending up with a pale mint-green he’d chosen when she left town for a weekend wine tour with her mom. They’d jokingly dubbed it “the baby’s room,” their heads swimming with visions of rocking chairs and cribs and the possibility of starting a family someday. In the interim, it had remained an office and a guest room and a catchall for clutter and extra furniture and the hovering ghosts of all their dreams.
But the possibility of children had always been there, right up until the moment Meg had walked away.
She hadn’t realized she was holding her breath until she rounded the corner and saw the color of the walls. “You painted,” Meg said on an exhale. “The gray is really pretty with the yellow curtains.” She turned to look at Chloe, whose eyes flickered with a touch of pride.
“Thank you,” Chloe said. “He let me decorate it however I wanted. This was going to be our baby’s room someday. I was going to start stenciling little giraffes around the border when—” She broke off there, her eyes clouding with tears.
Meg hesitated, then reached out and squeezed Chloe’s hand.
“It would have been beautiful,” she said, meaning it with every ounce of her being. “I can picture it in my head, and it’s perfect.”
Two hours later, Meg sat cross-legged on the floor with an empty teacup and a distinct sense that she wasn’t going to find anything useful here. As if on cue, Chloe strolled in wearing a crop top and yoga pants Meg suspected were chosen for actual yoga, unlike her own.
She looked down at her own stretchy pants with a tiny bleach spot on one knee. She’d donned them that morning because they were the closest thing to wearing pajamas. Her T-shirt seemed appropriate, too, with its large bubble letters that read, Exercise? I thought you said extra fries.
“Any luck?” Chloe asked.
Meg shook her head. “Not really. I appreciate you letting me go through it all, though.”
“It’s fine.” Chloe performed a hamstring stretch that left Meg wondering if the other woman could put her ankles behind her head. Then she thought about her father’s mistress, the one who’d sexted him those photos, and she couldn’t decide whether she wanted to laugh or cry.
“I have to take off for my class in about thirty minutes, so maybe you could wrap things up?” Chloe said.
“Of course.” Meg got to her feet with the empty teacup in one hand. “Thank you for letting me stay as long as I have.”
“Sorry you didn’t find anything to help.”
“I guess I can’t feel too disappointed since I didn’t really know what I was looking for to start with.” She shifted the teacup from one hand to the other, looking down at it for inspiration. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Why are you being so open about this? About letting me come in here and sift through the file cabinet?”
“I have nothing to hide,” Chloe said, pulling the other leg up for a stretch. “All of my stuff’s in another room, so these are just Matt’s files. I’ve already gone through it all, so I know there’s nothing dark and scary or threatening to my relationship with him. If it could give you closure, why not?”
“Closure,” Meg said. “I didn’t really get that, but I appreciate it anyway.”
Chloe nodded, studying her for a moment. “He really was doing well,” she said abruptly. “These last few months? He was happy. I know he was.”
“I believe you.”
“He was eating right, seeing a counselor, getting his physical and mental health in order.”
“I’m glad,” she said. “I could never even get him to go in for a checkup.”
“He left me this house,” Chloe said, her voice breaking a little. “And a life insurance policy that covers the whole mortgage. I wasn’t expecting that.”
“Congratulations,” Meg said, not sure what else to say.
“Thanks. Now I can pour everything I have into opening my kombucha company. He knew that’s what I wanted more than anything, so he made it happen for me.” Chloe’s eyes filled with tears, and she looked up at the ceiling to hold them back. Putting both feet on the floor, she swiped her thumbs beneath her lower lashes. “Anyway, I guess that gave me the closure I needed. Knowing he was looking out for me?”
“I’m glad,” Meg said, meaning it. “He must have really loved you a lot.”
Chloe looked at her, seeming to assess whether Meg was being serious or patronizing. “Truly,” Meg added. “I know there were a lot of us over the years—lovers and girlfriends and flings who had some place in Matt’s life. But for what it’s worth, I think he really loved you.”
Chloe was blinking hard now, no longer pretending she wasn’t stifling tears. “Because of the life insurance?”
“No,” Meg said. “Because he let you paint the room gray. Because he cared about being healthy for you. Because he invested in your career. Because I’ve never seen him smile the way he’s smiling in that photograph right there.”
She pointed to the framed image on top of the bookcase, and Chloe’s gaze followed the direction of her finger. She looked surprised for an instant, then thoughtful. “Kyle took that the day Matt and I announced to the family that we’d gotten engaged,” Chloe said softly, turning back to Meg. “Sylvia just kept saying, ‘Thank you for making him so happy,’ and I swear I didn’t stop smiling for a week.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“Thank you.” Chloe stared at her, seeming to decide something. “Before you go, why don’t I have you take a look at one more thing.”
“What the hell is this?” Jess set aside the top to a cardboard bankers box and peered inside, a mystified look on her face. She lifted the box onto Meg’s coffee table as Meg peered over her friend’s shoulder.
“That would be the Halloween mask Matt made out of papier-mâché in 2008,” Meg said. “And a bunch of notes from a photography seminar he went to in Dallas the year after we started dating. And those look like movie tickets from—” she grabbed the stubs, frowning down at them. “I have no idea who he would have seen Pocahontas with in 1995, but it must have been significant.”
“Good Lord. How did I never know you were marrying such a pack rat?”
Meg shrugged and pried the lid off another box. “It’s not like he advertised it. He was weirdly sentimental about stuff. He wasn’t very organized about it, though, so he’d collect all these trinkets and tokens and then just shove them in boxes and forget about them.”
“Where the hell did he keep all the boxes?”
“The garage, when we lived together,” Meg said. “Chloe made him keep them in the attic. Apparently she needed the room to store all her bikes and workout gear.”
“This is nuts.”
“We’ve got three dozen of them to go through, and I’m guessing they’re all like this.”
“Good thing I made Bloody Marys.”
“Amen.” Meg took a sip of hers and set it down, then began pawing through her own box. There was a program from a play he must have seen a year or so after they’d split up. A pack of chewing gum with three pieces missing. A tiny blue piggy bank with a crack down one side, a relic from some other period Meg hadn’t been privy to in his life.
She spotted a printout she’d given him from a page on the Humane Society website, and she pulled it out, skimming more closely. It was a cat she’d hoped desperately to adopt when they’d first moved into the house together, but Matt had insisted he was allergic to cats. She couldn’t for the life of her think of why he might’ve kept these pages, creased and faded with age.
“There’s nothing in here but junk,” Jess muttered.
“I know,” Meg said, setting the paper aside. “But look at it all anyway, just in case.”
“Here’s an electric bill from 1997.”
“I’m sure he paid it at some point. He was always good about that. Just not at throwing things out.”
She continued digging through the box, pushing aside broken pens, a bottle cap, a Tyvek race number he must have worn for a competition during the era he’d taken up triathlons.
Meg spotted a paperback of e. e. cummings poetry in the bottom of the box. Nostalgia washed over her, and she scooped it up, breathing in the familiar scent of the used bookstore she used to frequent before Matt bought her a Kindle for her birthday.
“I didn’t fancy Matt as a fan of poetry,” Jess mused.
“He wasn’t. I gave it to him when we got engaged. Thought maybe we could find a poem together to have Kyle read at our wedding.”
“Kyle,” Jess said, smiling a little at the mention of his name, while Meg flipped through the book. “Did he agree to do it?”
“We never even asked him. Matt thought the poetry idea was stupid, so I dropped it.”
“Funny he kept the book.”
“Don’t read too much into it,” Meg said, dropping the book back into the box. “He also appears to have kept ticket stubs from the Joni Mitchell concert his mother dragged him to in college, and I know for a fact he hated Joni Mitchell.”
“Can I see the book?”
“Sure.” Meg picked it up again and handed it over. Tucking a curl behind one ear, she went back to sifting through the box. “Knock yourself out. I don’t even remember which poem I bookmarked for him.”
“Hmm,” Jess said, turning a page as her eyes skimmed over the words. “‘A politician is an arse upon’?”
Meg laughed and pushed her box aside, reaching for another. She pried the lid off and began to sort through more junk. “The word arse certainly would have been fitting at that wedding.”
“How about ‘sonnet entitled how to run the world’?”
“That does sound like one he might’ve picked,” Meg mused. She picked up a hand puppet made from a brown paper bag, wondering whether Matt or someone else had glued on the yellow yarn hair and the pink felt cheeks. Why on earth had he kept this, and what had it meant to him? She set the puppet down and picked up a matchbook, turning it over in her palm. It was from the restaurant they’d gone to on their first date, and she wondered if he’d kept it all this time or if he’d gone there more recently with someone else.
Beside her, Jess turned a page in the book. “The poem you chose,” Jess said softly. “Was it ‘since feeling is first’?”
“Maybe,” Meg said, setting the matchbook aside and reaching for an unopened envelope marked with the name of the local cable company. “Why? Is that page dog-eared?”
“No. That’s not it.”
Something in Jess’s voice made Meg look up. Her friend had an odd expression, and she was holding something that looked like a stained cocktail napkin.
She looked up at Meg, then down at the napkin again. The book slid off her lap, but neither of them made a move to grab it as Jess held the napkin out to Meg.
“I think I found what you’re looking for.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Look at this one! I think it’s my favorite.”
Kyle leaned closer to his mother, peering down at the photograph she marked with the pale pink tip of her fingernail. His heart twisted a little as he saw which image it was.
“That was our first day of Little League,” he said, wondering why no one told him his ball cap was so crooked. Matt looked mischievous and adorable with his missing front tooth and a smattering of freckles across his nose, and Kyle noticed the way his brother’s arm looped around his neck in a gesture that was half brotherly love, half strangulation attempt.
“You were so nervous,” his mom said, sliding her fingertip over the faces in the photo as though committing them to memory. “Remember that? Matt played the year before, but this was your first time.”
Kyle remembered. He put an arm around his mother, staring down at the photograph until the faces were burned into his brain. “He took me around so I could meet all the coaches. Then he introduced me to all the players. Said, ‘This is my kid brother. Anyone messes with him, you answer to me.’”
His mom laughed, leaning back against Kyle’s arm like a cat craving affection. He thought about Floyd the fickle feline and wondered how Meg was doing, but he pushed the thought from his mind for now. He should be focusing on his mom, on her need for support and love and the affection of her one remaining child.
Kyle needed to be a better son, dammit. He’d only stopped by today because his afternoon appointment got cancelled at the last minute and he was already in the neighborhood. It wouldn’t kill him to do a better job making time for her, checking in to be sure she was coping okay. Hell, he should probably take her to lunch a few times a week or come to dinner on Saturdays the way he used to before he’d reached the point where seeing Matt and Meg together at family meals grew too unbearable.
He cupped his hand around his mom’s shoulder, noticing how bony she felt.
“He was always looking out for you,” she said. “Such a good big brother.” She looked up at him, her smile fading as her eyes went watery. “I know you two didn’t always get along well, but you know he loved you, right?”
Kyle nodded as his throat tightened. “I loved him, too.”
She smiled, but the sadness in her eyes left Kyle feeling like someone was standing on his chest. “I’m glad to hear you say that.”
Kyle swallowed hard, trying to force the lump back down into his gut. “I’ve been missing him every day,” he admitted. “Which seems dumb since we used to go months without
speaking. But something funny will happen and I’ll think, ‘I’ve gotta remember to tell Matt about that,’ and then I’ll remember I can’t. Not ever.”
“Oh, honey.” His mom snuggled closer beneath his arm and turned a page in the album. Kyle thought about the last time he’d had the urge to tell his brother something. It was the other night when he’d been cutting up penis vegetables with Meg, and he’d come across a red pepper that looked like it had a scrotum. He’d laughed so hard he’d nearly stabbed himself in the hand, and he almost pulled out his phone to text Matt a picture of the phallic vegetable.
Then he’d felt like hell, not just because Matt was dead. If he were still alive, would Kyle have told him about Meg? About cooking with her and laughing with her and making love with her in the big bed she’d never shared with anyone else?
Kyle took a deep breath, pretty sure the answer was hell, no.
Which brought him right back to the fact that he was a pretty shitty brother, in addition to being a lousy son.
He let his gaze drop to the photo album again. So many memories there. His brother fighting with him over who could do cooler tricks on the shared scooter. The Halloween when they bickered about whether they were too old to trick-or-treat, then cut eyeholes in old bed sheets and ran around the neighborhood pretending to be ghosts. Prom night when Matt tried to get him to bet over who had the better chance of getting lucky.
The line between affection and rivalry was so blurred in his memory that he honestly wasn’t sure where one stopped and the other started.
“I always loved this one,” his mom said, smoothing her thumb over a shot of them giving the family dog a bath when they were both in middle school. Matt was smearing a handful of suds into Kyle’s hair, while Kyle laughed and scrubbed Ginger’s ears. “You might have fought like wild animals half the time, but you laughed together, too.”
“We did,” he said. “I wish we’d done it more. The laughing, I mean. Especially as we got older.”
His mom closed the photo album and looked up at him with tears pooling in her eyes. “I just can’t believe he’s gone. I know it’s been four weeks, but it still doesn’t seem real.”