“Oh, really?” She leans forward and presses both hands against the desktop. “You were the one who walked away. You were the one who left me in all that hot water.”
“I had to walk away,” I say to Frieda. “My child needed me. My family needed me.”
She shakes her head and reaches for the pack of Salems on her desk. “You made it all sound worse than it was. The truth is, you welcomed an excuse to leave. You weren’t happy. All you could think about was the time you were spending away from them. You said—” She pulls a cigarette from the pack and tightens her lips around it as she lights it. “You said the store was a waste of your time.” She blows smoke in my direction. “Do you remember that, Kitty?”
Yes. I remember that, too. And I remember why I said it. Because Frieda was the one who’d found Jenny for me. Frieda was the one who’d convinced me that Jenny, with all her credentials, was the right person to watch the children.
I remember telling Frieda that it was her fault that Michael was the way he was. “If I’d been at home, he would have been just fine!” I shouted. “If I’d never hired Jenny—that awful woman that you found, Frieda—if I’d never done that, everything would be different now. But you—you convinced me to stay here at the shop, you found Jenny to watch my children, and I trusted you, I trusted you, Frieda. I trusted you to help me do the right thing. But it was all wrong. And now look at what’s happened to him.” I sat down on my stool behind the counter, flushed and trembling. Then I took a breath and looked up at Frieda.
“I want out,” I said firmly. “I don’t care what you do, but I want out. This isn’t working for me—and let’s be honest, it’s not working for you, either. You figure this out, Frieda. It’s your fault, not mine. So you get out of this mess, if you can. Go on and do all the big things you want to do with this business. I don’t care.”
“How can I do that?” she challenged me. “I have no money, Kitty.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “That,” I told her, “is not my problem.”
It wasn’t my problem—I made sure of it. I got out, and I stayed out. I remember it now. The money I inherited, not long after Frieda and I quarreled—in this world, that money did not go toward saving Sisters’ Bookshop. What did I do with it? I shrug, and then it comes to me. I used it to hire a lawyer to get me out of the Sisters’ mess—that’s where most of it went. And the remainder? I smile wryly. That nice sofa and the other fine furniture in the living room on Springfield Street—that’s where the rest of my grandfather’s money went, in this world.
Frieda had strode to Sisters’ front windows and looked out on empty Pearl Street for a few seconds. Then she turned back to me. “What will you do with yourself?” she asked. But not nicely, not like she actually wanted to know. Her tone was mocking. “Mrs. Housewife, huh? Well, fine. It’s what you always wanted, anyway.”
“It is not what I always wanted. It’s just what happened. It’s just how things turned out.” I stood up, wringing my hands. “It turned on a dime, Frieda. For God’s sake, I almost didn’t even meet him. The poor man could have died.”
She snickered. “Yes. Quite a tale. You ought to call the newspapers. It would make a charming human-interest story.”
“With what ending?” I asked softly. “How would it end?”
“Well.” She turned away again, refusing to look at me. “I guess we’re finding that out, aren’t we?”
Now, seated across from me in her office, Frieda glares at me. “You left me with nothing,” she says. “Next to nothing. A pile of bills. A few hundred books in our inventory. Some miscellaneous store equipment. And not a dime to move forward with.”
I look down at my lap. “You could have asked your parents for help.” I tentatively raise my eyes to meet hers.
“How could I do that?” She presses her lips together. “How could I ask them? How could I go to them, tail between my legs, and admit failure? I hadn’t . . .” She looks out the plate-glass window, then back at me. “I hadn’t made a success of the bookstore. I hadn’t done anything right, in their eyes. I hadn’t . . .” She hesitates, and then adds, “I hadn’t married. I hadn’t found another . . . person . . . to share my life with.”
I wait for her to go on. But she is silent, her eyes downcast. She taps her cigarette against the ashtray on her desk, and a few ashes float in the air for a moment before settling into the porcelain dish.
I think about Jim Brooks, the man Frieda told me about in the other world, the imaginary world. He sounds so right for where she is in her life—in that life. Well, of course, I think. Naturally, I would invent a happy ending for Frieda, in that happy-ending world.
In this world, the real world, things are different for her, both personally and professionally. I don’t know where or how she got the funds to move forward with the business. I don’t believe she would have gone to her parents, but Frieda is clever and resourceful enough to have come up with something. Perhaps she did find an investor, just as she did in my made-up world. Nonetheless, I doubt that the affable and smitten Jim Brooks—or any actual person who resembles him—has a place in the life Frieda has here.
And I realize, quite suddenly, why that is.
Frieda doesn’t want Jim Brooks, or anyone like him. That sort of person was never the partner she longed for.
What Frieda wanted was a true companion. Just as my mother said. No—more than that. More than what my mother thinks Frieda and I have, in the imaginary world.
But I made a different choice. What did my choice do to her? Not just to our business—that was one thing, a small thing, really.
The real question is, what did my choice do to her heart?
I shake my head. I can’t believe I failed to see it until today.
“Freeds,” I say softly. “Freeds. I’m so . . . I’m sorry.”
She looks up. “Well,” she says, putting her cigarette to her lips. She breathes in, then turns her head to the side and exhales. “Life takes its own peculiar twists and turns, does it not?”
I lean forward, the fingers of both hands clutching my handbag, rhythmically closing and opening the gold-toned clasp. “I hope you . . . maybe someday you can . . .” I trail off, because I don’t know what to say.
Frieda watches me silently. “Perhaps you’re right,” she says finally. “Perhaps I can.” Her eyes gaze into mine. “Maybe seeing you is what I needed. Maybe it will help me . . . go on from here.”
I smile timidly. “I hope so, Freeds. I truly hope so.”
She stands up, takes one last drag on her cigarette, and stubs it out. “I need to return that call,” she says, her voice even. She comes around the desk and puts her hand lightly on my shoulder, then removes it immediately. “Please know, Kitty, that I really am very sorry about your parents.” Our eyes meet—and hers, usually so dancing and light-filled, look dreary and dark.