The pain etched in his face told me he was telling me the truth, and it was all I could do not to wrap my arms around him and try to make it better.
But what about me? Who would make it better for me, when my husband had just admitted he’d known what I wanted, and had let me long for my dreams by myself after I’d supported his for the entire length of our relationship?
“Laine?” said Josh. He was peering at me with concern. “What do you think we should do now?”
I held his gaze for a long time. My beautiful, brilliant Josh. He hadn’t meant to hurt me. He had done his best.
It was just that his best wasn’t enough for me. Not anymore.
I smiled sadly at him. “Josh, I think we should get a divorce.”
TWENTY-FOUR
SALLY
Oh, what was I thinking? Did I really believe none of my girls would ever find out? What a fool I’ve been—what a fool.
I do need Laine. Why on earth did I say I didn’t? But now she’s given up on me. This isn’t just about Reggie, though that’s more than enough. When she stormed off, I thought it would blow over quickly. I thought she’d go for a nice drive and think through things and realize that everything I’ve done has been for her and her sisters.
Well, not everything. She’s right about that. But I certainly never meant to hurt her. Doesn’t she know that?
But then she didn’t come back. And Josh left, too.
What were they fighting about? I can’t remember anymore.
Then our call today . . . it wasn’t good. I don’t remember exactly what she said, but there was a whole lifetime of anger in her voice. All the things she kept locked up inside—they’re out now. I knew from the way that she was speaking to me that she’d already made up her mind. She’s not going to live with me here. She probably never was. And can I fault her? I didn’t move to Florida to be with my mother at the end, even though that’s what she wanted. Now Laine wants to have her own life. Her space. I understand that, even if I wish it weren’t so.
But now the girls will have to send me to that terrible place. Not right away, but it’s only a matter of time. Aides don’t last. They don’t know you the way your child knows you. They can’t put up with the same things. And so they make their recommendation: it’s time to take the next step. What they don’t say is that it’s just one short step from the grave.
You’ll be with other people. You’ll make friends—that’s what we told my mother. But you don’t know those people. Most of them don’t know themselves anymore. That’s not good company. They just make you lose your mind faster.
Everything will be taken care of for you. Because you can’t take care of yourself—no one adds that part. And the less you can do for yourself, the meaner you become. I can still remember my mother throwing her oatmeal all over me like a toddler because she mistook me for a nurse. I could weep just thinking of it, the way she’d curse at me after a lifetime of never using those words. And then her face, childlike with sadness and confusion, whenever she caught herself. By the end, she never caught herself, and all I could hope was that I’d find her crying rather than angry. What a terrible thing to have to wish for.
You’ll have the best care. That means lots of drugs—that’s what they give you when you get mean. Sedatives. Sleeping pills. My mother’s mouth hanging slack, a river of drool making its way down her chin. Heart beating. Dead eyes.
No. I won’t go. But I don’t know how to convince them to let me stay.
What did Reggie always say? “When you don’t know the way, walk until you find it.”
Reggie. If only he were here now, we could walk together. But I can go where we went.
Yes, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll go for a nice long walk. I’ll see our happy places and think happy thoughts.
I’ll remember.
TWENTY-FIVE
LAINE
After more tears and some discussion, Josh went to Ravi and Melinda’s to spend the night at their guesthouse. Even if he wanted to have children—and he swore that he did and was willing to start right away—something in me had shifted profoundly. It was almost like his confession unearthed the truth, which I must’ve been trying to rationalize away. I loved him, and I always would. As I told him, I wanted him to stay a part of our family and would do everything I could to make that happen. But I didn’t want to be married to him anymore. And—this was the truly remarkable part—now I understood that I didn’t need to have a clear explanation for that, not even for myself. I simply . . . wanted something else for my future. However frightening it was to go rushing into the unknown, there was a freedom there, too—one that I must have been craving all along. Though my eyes were swollen and my heart was heavy, I fell asleep that night with a deep sense of calm.
When Piper called early the next morning, my first thought was that Josh had told her what had happened. My second was that I’d need to be okay with that. Josh was a free agent now, and it was entirely up to him how he wanted to interact with my family. If he and Piper decided to put each other on speed dial so she could support him through our divorce, so be it. As Hadley had reminded me, I could lean on her. And although I was waiting for the dust to settle before I shared my news, I had Ben, too.
“Morning, Pipes.” I hadn’t talked to her since I’d arrived in Michigan, but that wasn’t that unusual; Hadley and I touched base at least once a week, while it was sometimes an entire month before Piper or I called each other. “I take it you heard the news. Before you try to talk me into—”
“Laine!” she interjected. “Mom’s missing!”
I’d heard her just fine, but her words didn’t quite compute. “What do you mean, missing?”
“She’s gone, Laine!” She sounded frantic, but Piper had always been a mite dramatic, so I waited for her to say something that would indicate that this was just another one of my mother’s shenanigans and Piper had caught a rabid case of Hadley’s anxiety. Maybe my mother wasn’t home, but surely she was just at Bashir’s or off getting bagels or maybe even at Ben’s, looking for a spare set of keys.
Instead, Piper said, “I went over there to drop off some extras from our farm share last night, and she wasn’t there. The door to her apartment was unlocked, and her purse and phone were on the counter. I thought maybe she’d gone to see Mary or something, so I left a note telling her to call me when she got it. But she never did, and I called her a bunch of times last night and she never picked up. So I came over this morning as soon as the kids were awake and her stuff was exactly where it was yesterday. She’s still missing, Laine. I have no idea where she is!”
I inhaled too fast and nearly choked on my own breath. “Why didn’t you call me sooner?” I sputtered. “I could have asked Ben to look for her or—I don’t know. Something!” Something other than sit here, six hundred miles from the woman who birthed me and clearly needed me, luxuriating in my stupid, selfish thoughts and my ridiculous so-called needs.
“You said you wanted space! Hadley and I were trying to give you what you asked for!”
Oof. That was what I asked for. And everyone knew what they said about that. “I’m sorry,” I said miserably. “I shouldn’t have left.”
“That’s beside the point now, isn’t it?” squawked Piper.
“Stay calm,” I said, as much to myself as her. “I talked to Mom yesterday morning, so she hasn’t been gone that long.”
“You did? Did anything weird come up?” said Piper.
“She seemed normal,” I told her, but even as I said that, it struck me that normal was no longer the way to measure how bad things were. After all, she’d seemed “normal” right before I’d found her upstairs with enough inventory to start up her own personal home shopping network. “Well . . . she and I did have kind of a tough conversation.”
“Another one? What is going on between you two? You never fight!”