‘You’ll have to get around to it eventually.’
‘What’s the point?’ Sara asked. ‘What’ll happen is, I’ll say what I have to say and he’ll nod a lot and look down at the floor or past my shoulder and he’ll rub his jaw or pick at his eyebrow, and at the end of the day he won’t tell me anything about how he’s feeling because he thinks he can just pretend it away and we’ll be fine.’
‘Ohhh.’ Tessa drew out the word. ‘You didn’t tell me Will was a man. Now all of this suddenly makes more sense.’
‘Ha ha.’
‘Sissy, you keep saying to me again and again that he won’t talk, but what are you saying to him?’
‘I told you I was giving him space.’
‘You know what I mean,’ she countered. ‘I can see you being all stoic and logical and letting him think this is some sort of math problem that has an X or Y solution, when inside you’re about to die, only you can’t let him know that because you’re worried about looking like some damsel in distress.’ She stopped for a breath. ‘Lookit, there’s nothing wrong with being a damsel. It’s not a man/woman thing. It’s a human thing. You like taking care of him. You like feeling needed. There’s no sin in letting Will have the same thing with you.’
Sara knew what was coming next before Tessa even said it.
‘You need to show him how you feel.’
‘Tess, I just—’ She had to tell the truth, if only to her sister. ‘I know this sounds petty, but I don’t want to feel like I’m his second choice.’
Tessa’s response was not immediate. ‘Will is your second choice.’
She meant Jeffrey. ‘It’s not the same.’
‘In a lot of ways, it’s worse for Will. There’s no question that you’d still be with Jeffrey if he were alive. But in Will’s favor, Angie’s still alive but he’s choosing to be with you. So it’s really more like a divorce, and you have to put up with his bitchy ex-wife, which puts you in line with exactly half the female population.’
Sara leaned her head back against the cabinets. She stared out the windows in the living room. The sky was an almost painfully clear blue. She wondered how Will was spending his Saturday. Their perfunctory phone call last night had been filled with a lot of noises about future plans that neither one of them seemed too excited about.
Tessa said, ‘Every person has baggage. You’ve got all your shit with Jeffrey. Lord knows I’ve got my shit. People have baggage. The next guy, if you move on, will have baggage. The pope has baggage. Jeffrey had baggage. You didn’t hold that against him.’
‘Because he belonged to me,’ Sara said, and she understood that this was what hurt most. She was jealous. She didn’t want to have to share any part of Will with anybody else. His mind. His heart. His body. She wanted him all to herself.
‘Sissy, don’t cry.’
‘I’m not crying,’ Sara lied. Fat, stupid tears were rolling down her face. In the abstract, she could logic out all of the reasons why Will was wrong for her. But then she thought about losing him and she could barely find a reason to get out of bed.
The phone started beeping, giving them their thirty-second warning that time was running out.
Tessa said, ‘Look, you know your choices. You can go find Will and tell him that you love him and that you want him in your life and that you’re miserable without him.’
‘Or?’
‘You can turn Dolly Parton back on and finish vacuuming out your kitchen cabinets.’
Sara looked around the kitchen. She really should stop being so predictable. ‘Is there a third option?’
‘Fuck the hair off his balls.’
Sara laughed.
They both silently waited for the three quick beeps on the phone before the line was cut.
Sara hung up the phone. She looked out the windows again. A bird floated through the air. Its wings fluttered in the breeze. Sara missed having bird feeders in her backyard. She thought about the open houses she had looked at with Will a lifetime ago. She had pictured her weekends spent filling up hummingbird feeders and doing laundry and reading on the back porch while Will worked on his car.
When they were all standing in the waiting room in the Grady ICU, Angie had told Will that she wanted to give her daughter a happy-ever-after.
Sara could give that to Will. She could give him everything if he would only let her.
The dogs stirred from the couch. They wandered toward the door. Their tails wagged, because they knew the person on the other side.
Sara’s first thoughts were purely instinctive. Her hair was packed into a granny bun. She was sweating from being inside of the cabinets. Her face was red from crying. She was wearing a ratty T-shirt and cut-off jeans. Even her bra was baggy. They had not been in a relationship long enough for Will to see her this way.
She jumped down from the counter with the hope of making it to the bathroom before he opened the door.
She made it to the living room.
‘Hey.’
Sara turned around.
He had a bunch of takeout menus in his hand. ‘These were in the hall.’
‘My neighbor is out of town.’
He dropped the menus on the dining-room table. He held up his key to her apartment. ‘Is using this still okay?’
‘Of course.’ Sara pulled at the cut-offs. She straightened her shirt. Will had obviously come from home. He was in jeans and one of his running shirts. Tessa’s third option flittered through her mind.
He said, ‘Faith just called me. Kip Kilpatrick died about twenty minutes ago.’
Sara knew the man had been in the hospital for the last twenty-four hours. His symptoms were all over the place. ‘Did they ever figure out what was wrong with him?’
‘He ingested high amounts of ethylene glycol. It’s found in antifreeze and—’
‘Transmission fluid.’ Sara remembered the distinctive red bottle in the back of Angie’s trunk. ‘She’ll get away with it, won’t she?’
‘I don’t care. I mean, I care because a man died. Even though he was a prick.’ He shrugged. ‘Faith says it was the sports drink. It’s red, the same as the transmission fluid, and apparently the taste is sweet, so Kilpatrick wouldn’t have noticed it. Half the bottles in his office mini-fridge were spiked.’
‘Clever.’
‘Yeah.’
They both went silent.
Sara felt like she had had some variation on this conversation for the last week and a half. They talked about something terrible that Angie had done. They talked about work. One of them said something about grabbing a meal, over which they would have an even more stilted conversation, then Will would make an excuse about needing to go home so that he could finish some paperwork and Sara would go home and stare at the ceiling.
She said, ‘So, what else? It’s lunchtime. Are you hungry?’
‘I could eat.’
‘There’s nothing in the house. I’ll need to shower if we go out.’
‘I miss you.’
Sara was shocked by his directness.
‘I miss your voice. I miss your face.’ He walked toward her. ‘I miss touching you. Talking to you. Being with you.’ He stopped a few feet away. ‘I miss the way you rock your hips when I’m inside of you.’
Sara chewed her lip.
‘I’ve been trying to give you some time, but I feel like that’s not working. Like I should just start kissing you until you forgive me.’
If only it was that easy. ‘Babe, you know I’m not mad at you.’
He put his hands in his pockets. He didn’t look at the floor. He didn’t look past her shoulder. ‘I’ve got a court date at the end of next month. There’s something called a divorce by publication. You put a notice in the newspaper, and if you don’t hear back in six weeks, the judge can grant you a divorce.’
Sara felt her brow furrow. ‘Why didn’t you do this before?’
‘My lawyer said it would never happen. Judges don’t like to do it that way. They rarely sign off on it.’ He said, ‘I asked Amanda to pull in a favor and find me a judge who would.’
Sara knew how hard it was for Will to ask for help.
He said, ‘I’m sorry I kept things from you. I know my not telling you stuff is a big thing. And I’m sorry.’