There was something open and unassuming about Jodie that allowed Krissy to relax around her in a way she hadn’t with anyone in a very long time. The band of tightness around her chest loosened when she was with her. Her shoulders and jaw unclenched. For years, she’d pasted on tight smiles, forced cordiality, endured backhanded compliments. But with Jodie, she laughed. Sometimes, she even forgot.
Krissy was in the kitchen one morning about three months after their first run-in in South Bend when her phone chimed with a text from Jodie. The kids are at sleepovers this Saturday, so I’m treating myself to a staycation! Want to get dinner at the hotel that night? Maybe face masks in the room after?
By this point, Krissy had developed a near Pavlovian response of excitement to seeing Jodie’s name on her phone, and she felt herself biting back a smile as she typed her response. Duh! I’ll bring the masks and wine.
For the rest of the week, every time she thought about their plans, Krissy got a little jolt of excitement, and when the night came, as they ate in the hotel’s restaurant, the air felt electric. For the past few months, Krissy had felt something building between them, though what it was exactly she didn’t know. The last time she’d felt something similar had been that summer after senior year—not with Billy, but with Dave. Her friendship with Jodie felt like a fluttering, a giddiness, a literal spark. But every time her brain went in that direction, it ground to a halt. She wasn’t gay. So perhaps this was simply what it felt like to have a real friend. Perhaps she’d been starved of companionship for so long she couldn’t tell the difference between that and romance.
That night at dinner, they split a bottle of wine, and afterward, giggling and tipsy, they took the elevator to Jodie’s floor. When the doors dinged open, Jodie walked out, but Krissy, who’d just noticed a button on her blouse had come undone, stopped.
“Oh no,” she said, laughing. “Has it been like this all night?” She looked up, fumbling with the button, to see Jodie, her fingers pressed to her lips. When they locked eyes, Jodie snorted out a laugh. “Oh my god,” Krissy said through her giggles. “It has!”
Jodie lifted her hand. “I didn’t notice it, I swear.” But then she burst into another fit of laughter that morphed into a shriek as the elevator doors began to close. “The doors!” She threw out an arm, grabbed Krissy by the hand, and tugged her over the threshold.
They walked to Jodie’s room, then tumbled into it, breathless with laughter, their fingers still intertwined. The heavy door swung shut behind them and they fell against it, shaking. Eventually, the laughter slowed and they caught their breath, smiles lingering on their lips. The moment came when it would have felt natural to let go of each other’s hands, but neither did, and soon the moment passed, and then another and another.
“Um.” Jodie turned toward Krissy, her shoulder still pressed into the door, her eyes downcast. “Would you mind if I just tried—” Her voice cut out and suddenly she was leaning forward, pressing her lips against the spot between Krissy’s jaw and ear.
Krissy’s breath came out of her in a fast rush. Her body melted; her mind swirled. “Have you, uh…” Her voice was hoarse and breathless. “Have you done this before? With a woman, I mean?”
Jodie pulled her head back to look her in the eyes. She nodded. “Have you?”
Krissy swallowed, shook her head.
“Are you…Do you want to?” Jodie’s eyes flicked over Krissy’s face, lingering on her lips.
But Krissy couldn’t speak. She just nodded, and suddenly Jodie’s mouth was on hers and Krissy no longer cared that she wasn’t gay or that she didn’t have a label for what she felt for this woman. That spark between them had ignited a flame, and now she simply surrendered.
The next time they saw each other, at lunch in South Bend a few days later, Jodie invited Krissy over afterward and they were kissing the moment the front door shut behind them. To Krissy, their connection felt both magnetic and safe, and when Jodie told her that she loved her a month later, Krissy didn’t hesitate before saying that she loved her back.
Although she initially worried Billy would discover her secret, it turned out to be relatively easy to hide an affair from him, as long as it was a gay one. She simply told him the truth—that she’d reconnected with Jodie Palmer from school and they’d struck up a friendship. As long as she was home when he woke in the morning, and as long as there was food in the fridge, he didn’t seem to suspect a thing. Meanwhile, Jace had grown into a volatile teenager, sometimes sullen, sometimes angry, always in trouble. Krissy, who often wondered if she’d done the right thing all those years ago by protecting him, had long since learned that the best way to deal with him was the path of least resistance. It seemed if she didn’t ask questions about his life, he didn’t ask about hers. She and Jodie knew, however, that not everyone would be so blind, so they made sure to enter and exit hotel rooms separately. They only touched each other behind closed doors.
The years passed and their affair soon grew into something solid. Although they didn’t live together, it was Jodie, not Billy, with whom Krissy now shared her life. The only thing she didn’t share was her secrets.
But then, in 2009, something happened that changed everything.
It was a Saturday morning and Billy was working the farm while Krissy did laundry and cleaned. She’d just retrieved the mail, tossed the little stack onto the kitchen table, and was turning to the stairs to switch the sheets from the washer to the dryer, when an envelope caught her eye. The return address was a PO box. In the center, her name was scrawled in neat, slanted letters. Her heart thumped hard in her chest. She hadn’t seen Jace’s handwriting in years.
Four years earlier, when Jace was seventeen, he walked down the stairs and told her he was dropping out of school and moving out. To where, he didn’t say. He was packed by lunchtime, and as Krissy watched his old hatchback retreat down the driveway, her knees almost buckled with relief. She didn’t know how to be a mother to this strange ghost-like creature, the boy who killed his sister. Unexpectedly, though, another emotion that felt oddly like regret bloomed in her chest. She didn’t know how she could’ve done better, but she felt she’d somehow done something wrong.
Now, Krissy stood in the kitchen, staring at her son’s handwriting on the envelope for a long moment. Then, with a trembling hand, she reached down and plucked it from its spot in the stack. The letter inside was handwritten in blue ink.
Mom,
When I left a few years ago, I didn’t think I’d ever want to talk to you or Dad again. But I’m going through a program now and I’m supposed to make amends. Though if I’m being honest, I don’t really think I need your forgiveness. There’s no way everything I did to you could even begin to balance our scales. Yeah, I know I messed up, but I was the kid. You were the adult. You should’ve done better.
I know losing January was hard for you—she was your daughter—but it was hard for me too, and I never understood why her death meant I had to lose my mom. And please don’t act like you don’t know what I mean: For eleven years, you never even looked me in the eye. Do I really have to tell you how unfair that is? I was alive. But the only thing you ever cared about was January.
I knew you loved her more than me long before she died. All those dance lessons for her, while you stuffed me into a corner. And after she died, it was like I ceased to exist. Dad was just as bad, don’t get me wrong. But he’d never understood me because I wasn’t like him. You were different. We had a chance and you threw it away. And there’s nothing that feels shittier than not being loved by your own mom.
I know I’ve gone and fucked up the “making amends” step with this letter, but I don’t really care. I haven’t been good in my life, but I think you need my forgiveness much more than I need yours.
J