When I return to the apartment, my mother is in the living room, her head bent as she files her nails. A news program is on the TV, and the scent of coffee lingers in the air. She glances up when I enter.
“Where’ve you been?” she asks.
“With Dean. We had to talk.”
“Talk?” Her gaze sweeps over me in one movement, and my breath shortens. If anyone knows the signs of post-sex, it’s Crystal Winter.
I fight back the urge to blush. I had sex with my husband, not some random man I picked up at a grocery store while my daughter waited in the car.
Shit. A wave of old apprehension floods me. I drop my purse on a chair and head into the bathroom. I slam the door and get into the shower, hating the sense that I’m trying to wash the scent of Dean off my skin.
When I go back into the bedroom, Crystal is sitting on the bed cross-legged, one elbow resting on her knee.
“It’s okay, Liv,” she says. “Plenty of people have problems in their marriage. I did.”
“I’m not having problems in my marriage, not that it would be your business if I were,” I tell her. “I’m tired. I need some sleep.”
“How long has he been gone?”
“He’s not gone.” I grab a brush and drag it through my wet hair. “He left in February to work on an archeological dig in Italy. He’s back for a few days to take care of some stuff and is staying in a hotel for personal reasons. He’s leaving again on Monday. That’s all there is to it.”
“Well, I’m sorry he’s leaving again,” Crystal says, “but you can leave too, you know.”
“I don’t want to leave.”
“I was thinking I should go to Phoenix soon, see about my mother’s house and whatnot,” she says. “You should come with me. A road trip, like old times.”
God in heaven. Just the suggestion has my heart sinking and my brain flashing with images of hot, vinyl car seats, crumpled fast-food containers, the sun glinting off the windshield. A black strip of highway behind us. A strip of highway before us.
This is exactly the same thing Crystal wanted from me years ago. I’d been a senior in high school, still living with Aunt Stella in Castleford, when Crystal came to visit and asked me to go on the road with her again. I’d had a perfect excuse to decline—I needed to stay in Castleford and graduate because I was going to Fieldbrook College on a full merit scholarship the following fall.
And though that accomplishment had ended up shattering like glass around me, I know my answer to my mother will never change.
“I… I can’t go with you.” Not to Phoenix. Not anywhere. “I have work here.”
“You’re also separated from your husband.”
“Dean and I are not separated.”
She rolls her eyes. “This is why I never got married, Liv. Too much trouble. I refuse to let a man control me or my life. And maybe if you were on your own again, you’d figure that out too.”
“Crystal.” I take a breath and try to control the anger scorching my chest. “I’m not going anywhere with you. I can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Both.”
“Is it because he won’t let you?”
“No! This has nothing to do with Dean. I won’t go with you because I don’t want to. I hated being on the road with you, Crystal. That’s why I left. Why would I ever want to go back?”
“You will,” she replies tartly. “When you realize you’re delusional to think that marriage is better than freedom.”
Crystal gets off the bed, her footsteps soundless across the carpet as she returns to the living room. I close the bedroom door and crawl under the covers, pushing her words out of my mind. I sink into a shallow and restless sleep before waking at dawn.
Crystal is still asleep when I get up to make coffee and start to put breakfast things out. For an hour, it’s peaceful and quiet as I think about what we need to accomplish at the café today.
I hear Crystal rustling around as she wakes and goes into the bathroom. I pour a cup of coffee and put it on the table along with a pitcher of milk.
“Morning.”
I turn to glance at my mother and stop. She’s holding a pink box that makes my heart twist.
“Where… where did you get that?” I stammer.
“Bathroom cabinet. I was looking for tampons.” She examines the pregnancy testing kit. “Are you pregnant?”
“No.” A wave of dizziness hits me as I remember the reason Dean and I needed a test kit in the first place. “No… I… I just had a pregnancy scare a few months ago. Nothing happened.”
“You’re sure?” An odd stillness surrounds her.
“Of course I’m sure.” I can feel her looking at my waistline. I think of the two newborn hats, soft as a cloud, one pink and one blue, both wrapped in a yellow-striped box beneath our bed. My throat constricts.
“Are you trying to have a baby?” Crystal asks.
I concentrate on unwrapping a loaf of bread. I don’t know how to answer her question.
“I… maybe one day,” I say.