“Do you think we can go somewhere?” she asked.
I thought about that. I thought about how interesting it’d be to finally have a close relationship with my mother. It was a possibility, but I knew it’d take a lot of hard work. I couldn’t put that work in at the moment because I was grieving for my father.
“Yes,” I said finally. “I think so, Mom.”
She was grieving, too. Now I knew. So it wouldn’t be automatic. And it wouldn’t be tomorrow or even a month from now. But sometime in the future, we would find ourselves in a different, better place. It was my only hope, but it buried itself under my pain for the next several months. I was oblivious, standing beside her at the kitchen sink, drying the freshly washed mugs. I’d no idea just how dark the future would get before Mom and I found each other again.
“Come on, sweets,” Reece said gently, opening his door.
I sat in the passenger seat staring at our office building, and then I checked my phone: 7:53 A.M. I shook my head.
“Not yet,” I replied.
“I’ll go in with you. Together,” he urged.
“No. Just go. I wanna wait,” I said.
“Why, Bailey?” he whispered.
I shifted irritably in my seat. “Because it would make me feel better to wait. Okay?”
I knew he wanted to press me, but he didn’t. It had been two weeks since my father died, and I was just now returning to work. Before that I stayed home, putting myself back on a much-needed schedule of waking up at the same time every morning, counting my steps, arranging the shirts in our closet and remotes on our coffee table. Arranging all of the things in our house “just so.” I worked for two weeks to get my life back in order. I walked Poppy at the same time every day. I avoided cracks in the sidewalk. Turned knobs. Walked to the beat of the ticking clock in my living room.
All the things I witnessed my father do when I was little.
“I’ll wait with you,” Reece said.
“No!”
He shrank back in his seat a fraction, and I apologized immediately.
“You can stay. Or don’t stay. Either way is fine. I know you have stuff you need to start on,” I said. It was my lame, indirect way of asking for time alone.
“All right,” Reece replied. He was frustrated. I could hear it in his tone. He was frustrated with my schedule—cleaning the kitchen before he even had breakfast.
“You didn’t get up!” I screamed that awful morning last week.
“Bailey, it’s fucking seven o’clock on a Saturday morning! Why do I have to get up to eat breakfast at seven in the fucking morning?!”
“Because that’s when I make it! That’s when I make it!” I screeched.
“Fine! I’ll make my own goddamn breakfast!”
“Kitchen’s closed!” I roared.
I couldn’t handle the mess. I couldn’t handle Reece cracking eggs on my counter and leaving behind strings of goo. I couldn’t handle him frying bacon and popping grease everywhere. I couldn’t handle him squeezing oranges for fear I’d find tiny crusted pulp pieces on the counter days later. I couldn’t handle anything.
“Kitchen’s closed,” I repeated. “Kitchen’s closed, kitchen’s closed, kitchen’s closed—”
“You’re going to see Dr. Gordon,” Reece ordered. “I know you haven’t been going. You haven’t gone in months. And you need to. More than anything, you need to go back to therapy. This bullshit stops now.”
“Don’t you dare threaten me,” I warned.
“I’m not threatening you. I’m telling you that I can’t live like this. You are consumed with you. You you you. It’s like I don’t even exist in this house.”
“My father died!” I screamed.
“I know that! I know that, Bailey! And it’s terrible and sad and lonely. And I wanna be there for you. I wanna help you. But all you wanna do is retreat!”
I wiped the tears from my cheeks.
“What do you think all this will accomplish? Huh? You go back to the way you used to act. You give into your compulsions. You live a life trapped in your urges. What? Are you doing it for your father? You think living this way will honor his memory? Bring him back?”
I charged at him before thinking. I beat his chest then slapped his face over and over.
“Don’t you ever say those things about my dad!” I cried.
He grabbed my wrists and held me still, his face inches from mine.
“I’ve given you two weeks,” he said evenly. “Now, I’m sorry if you didn’t like what I said. But you’re not gonna hit me for trying to help you.”
I yanked my arms hard, trying to break free from his grasp.
“I’m sick to death of the way we’re living, and it stops now. You’re going to therapy. You’re working this out. And I’m gonna be here for you every step of the way, whether you fucking like it or not.”
He dropped my wrists, and I stood seething, panting with fury, balling my hands into tight fists on instinct. He noticed and leaned forward.
“Don’t you even think about it,” he said slowly.
“Get out of my kitchen,” I spat.
He stood up and took hold of my shoulders, moving me aside. He opened the cupboard and grabbed a cereal bowl. I watched him move to the pantry next and take out a box of Rice Chex. He poured the cereal, then the milk came afterwards. All of it deliberate. All of it infuriating.
Absolute anger. That was what I felt. Absolute anger at his defiance. Or maybe it wasn’t defiance. Maybe he was trying to show me that he was an equal partner in this house—that he had equal rights to the things in it. But I wasn’t interested in being equal today. I was interested in him getting the fuck out of my kitchen, so I snatched the bowl and hurled it across the room, Chex and milk flying and crash-splashing against the opposite wall. The bowl cracked in two—my broken heart—and I realized I’d made a mess. I did the one thing to my kitchen that I was trying to keep Reece from doing.