She didn’t know what to say except ‘Thank you.’
He wasn’t finished. ‘The way I grew up, you had to hide the bad things. From everybody. It wasn’t just about people liking you or not liking you. If you acted out or said something wrong, it got passed on to your social worker and your social worker put it in a file and people—potential parents—they wanted normal kids. They didn’t want problems. So you had a choice. You either let yourself be really bad, like to let them know that you didn’t care whether or not they chose you. Or you kept your problems to yourself and hoped.’
Sara didn’t dare answer. He so rarely talked about his childhood.
He said, ‘With Angie, anything I told her, she would find a way to throw it back in my face. Find a way to hurt me with it or make me feel stupid or—’ He shrugged, likely because the possibilities were endless. ‘So I kept it all inside, no matter how important or inconsequential, because that was how I protected myself.’ He still did not look away. ‘I know you’re not Angie, and I know I’m not a kid living at the home anymore, but what I’m saying is that it’s a habit I have, the not telling you things. It’s not a character trait. It’s a flaw. And it’s something I can change.’
‘Will.’ Sara didn’t know what else to say. If he had told her all of this two weeks ago, she would’ve thrown herself into his arms.
‘I got you this.’ He took a key out of his pocket. He slid it across the counter. ‘I changed the locks. I installed an alarm. I changed the combination on my safe. I took myself off everything that has to do with Angie.’ He paused again. ‘I understand that you need time, but you need to understand that I am never, ever going to let you go. Not ever.’
She shook her head at the pointlessness. ‘I appreciate the sentiment, but there’s more to it than that.’
‘There really isn’t,’ he insisted, the same as he always did. ‘We don’t need to hash it out, because all that matters is how we feel about each other, and I know that you love me, and you know that I love you.’
All that Sara could see was a giant circle. He was apologizing for not talking about things, then saying that they should not talk about things.
‘Anyway,’ he finally said. ‘I’m gonna leave now, give you some time to think about this, maybe start missing me too.’ His hand rested on the doorknob. ‘I’ll be here when you make up your mind.’
The door clicked shut behind him.
Sara stared at the door. She shook her head again. She couldn’t stop shaking her head. She was like a dog with a tick in its ear. He was so infuriatingly elliptical.
I’ll be here when you make up your mind.
What did that even mean?
Here, as in the general ‘I’m here for you,’ or here, as in actually physically waiting right now in the hallway for her decision?
And why was it solely her decision in the first place? Shouldn’t the future of their relationship be something they decided together?
That was never going to happen.
She turned back to the kitchen. Pots and pans were scattered on the floor. The vacuum hose was full of dog hair. She would have to clean it out before she let it touch the cabinets. Or she could just give up on today, take a shower, get on the couch, and wait for a reasonable hour to drink.
The dogs followed her to the bathroom. She turned on the shower. She took off her clothes. She watched the water fall, but didn’t get in.
Will’s words played on an endless loop in her head. The memories worked at her irritation like a match striking flint. All that he’d offered her were Pyrrhic victories. He was finally divorcing Angie, but Angie would still be around. He had changed his locks, but Angie would find a way inside just like she had before. He had gotten an alarm. Angie would know the code, just like Will had known the code to unlock her cell phone. He’d said that he was never going to leave Sara. So what? Neither was Angie. This was just more of Will’s fairy-tale thinking that all he had to do was wait it out and everything would magically be okay.
Sara turned off the shower. She was so frustrated that her hands were shaking. She put on her robe as she walked back into the bedroom. She picked up the phone to call Tessa, but then she remembered the outhouse. And then she realized that calling her sister was pointless, because Tessa would only say the obvious: that in his usual roundabout way Will had just offered Sara everything that she had wanted from him for the last year and her response was to let him walk out the door.
Sara sat down on the bed.
Dumbass, she thought, but she didn’t know whether she meant herself or Will.
She had to look at this logically. Will’s earlier declarations could be interpreted one of two ways. One: he was going to try to be more open, but he would rather stick needles in his eyes than talk about their relationship. Two: why would they talk about what they wanted when they already had everything that they needed?
One and two. X and Y.
‘God dammit,’ Sara muttered. The only thing worse than her mother being right was when her little sister was.
Sara stood from the bed. She cinched her robe tight as she walked back up the hallway. She passed through the living room. The dogs followed her to the door. Their ears perked when Sara wrapped her hand around the knob.
Her resolve started to slip.
What if Will wasn’t standing there when she opened the door?
Too much time had passed. Five minutes? Ten? He wouldn’t still be out there.
What if here meant somewhere else?
Logic had failed her, so she had to rely on fate. If Will wasn’t in the hallway, she would take his absence as a sign. That it wasn’t meant to be. That she was a fool. That Angie had won. That Sara had let her win because she was too busy obsessing about what she thought she wanted rather than stopping and appreciating what she had.
Show him how you feel.
Tessa had told her to be more vulnerable. There was nothing more vulnerable than opening a door without knowing what would be on the other side.
Sara loosened her robe.
She unpinned her hair.
She opened the door.
Epilogue
Angie sat down on a wooden bench in the park. The slats were ice cold. She should’ve worn her coat, but the January weather was that weird mix of freezing in the shadows and burning hot in the sun. Angie had purposely chosen a bench shaded by the trees. She wasn’t hiding, but she didn’t want to be seen.
Her vantage offered a clear view of Anthony on the other side of the park.
Her grandson. Not for real, but technically.
He was on the swingset, surrounded by at least ten other kids. His legs were straight out, his head leaned back. He was giggling as he tried to climb higher and higher. Angie was far from an expert, but she knew that this was how a six-year-old was supposed to behave. Not sitting against the wall watching other kids have fun, but out there in the middle of it, running around, happy like the rest of them.
She hoped the boy would hold on to his happiness for a good long while. Six months had passed since Reuben Figaroa had killed himself. Anthony’s mother had almost died. He had been held by a stone-cold bitch for two days. They had moved away from Atlanta, back to Thomaston, where his mother’s people were. He was in a new school. He had to make new friends. His father was still in the news as more and more of Reuben Figaroa’s sins emerged.
But here Anthony was, kicking it on the swing. Kids were like rubber bands. They snapped back quickly. It was only when the years started to roll by that they retracted from the memories.
Was Jo still retracting?