“Well, how would you know you were happy if you were never sad?”
Her look of recognition is so acute I have to stifle a chuckle. “I never thought of that!”
“It would all be the same and you wouldn’t be able to appreciate anything.”
She nods. “So Suze is unhappy so she can be happy in the end.”
“Yes.”
“Have you ever been really sad?” she asks.
“Yes.” He puts his sandwich down and wipes his fingers. “Lots of times. But the worst one was when my wife died.”
I frown, worried that this is way too much information, but Jasmine seems undaunted. “Was it a car accident?”
“No. She died of an illness you get in hot places.”
“What disease?”
“Malaria.”
“I’ve heard of that. There’s also cholera, typhoid, and dengue fever.” Which she pronounces den-goo.
“Where do you get this stuff?” I ask.
“YouTube.”
I narrow my eyes. “You have a very curious mind, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
We eat for a while, listening to the ’70s pop station I have playing on the speakers.
Very quietly, Jasmine says, “I’m not moving to London.”
I let it go. Because of course she is. Just as I had to move when my parents divorced.
There are many things beyond our control, and the past years have brought that home more fully than any of us could have anticipated. I think of Dmitri, dying in a hospital alone, and Suze grieving him, and sitting by her bedside in LA after the attack, praying that she would live. I offered the universe all manner of things if they would save her—but the main one was that I would come clean. I still haven’t done that.
I’m afraid she’ll hate me forever.
THEN
SAVE YOUR TEARS
5/25/22
TO: theprivatesuze8912@gmail.com FROM: phoebehudsonillustrator@gmail.com SUBJECT: happy birthday week Dear Suze,
It feels weird that we’re not celebrating each other’s birthdays this year. It’s a momentous one, right? I hate that we’re not talking right now. It feels lonely in the world without you. Jasmine has gone back to Portland for the summer and I miss her like a limb. It’s hard not to get attached, but I am more able to be generous with her than I’ve ever been with anyone. It’s easy to want the best for her and try to make it happen.
I was an asshole after my grandmother’s funeral. Can you forgive me?
Love,
Phoebe
[UNSENT]
September 7, 2022
Dear Phoebe, Weirdly, this is the anniversary of the day my dad tried to kill me. I mean, I don’t know that he really wanted to kill me, but he mostly wanted me dead my whole life. I wish I’d told you everything that summer, but I just didn’t know how.
I hate that we’re locked in this awful space where we said awful things to each other at the funeral. I’m sorry.
[NEVER MAILED]
October 12, 2022
Dear Suze,
I miss you. I was so mad that it seemed like a good idea to cut you out of my life. But I don’t really feel like me when we are not in communication. I just get more and more mean and small.
That doesn’t mean I’m not mad. You hurt my feelings so much, and I don’t know how to get over that. Do you really [NEVER MAILED]
The day of the attack Text string: Phoebe: Suze, Suze! I’m so worried! I just saw the news. I’m flying to LA tonight.
Phoebe: I’m here. They won’t let me see you or tell me anything about your condition, which I didn’t even think about. They just think I’m a crazed fan.
Phoebe: I love you. I’m so sorry for everything.
Phoebe: It’s been five days. I’ve rented a little studio apartment nearby and will stay until I can talk to you in person. I’m so scared for you.
CURRENT DAY
Chapter Twenty-Two
Suze
After Joel leaves, I skim through the scripts again but soon move away from them in frustration. Restless, I wander through the house picking things up and putting them down, looking for something I can’t name. Maui tries to follow for a while, but at some point, he stops in the middle of the foyer with a huff and settles his head on his paws, watching me. I’m glad of his company, though, and bend over to scratch his ears. “You’ll protect me, right?” I ask.
His eyebrows move in agreement.
I still haven’t told Phoebe everything. About Joel. About the baby. About all of it. Now that Joel and I have reconnected, it’s all the more urgent that I confess our history to Phoebe and try to explain why I’ve lied about it for so long. The idea fills me with dread, because things are really healing now.
But really, how did she not figure it out? Why didn’t she ever ask me more about Victor, who I told her was the father?
How did I actually think those lies would work, anyway? Joel burned down my father’s church! That’s not exactly the act of a good friend.
Is it possible she does know? Isn’t it more possible that she always has known?
I rub the spot between my eyebrows. How many times have we broken apart, come back together? At times I’ve hated her—namely, when I was banished to the Magdalene Home—and at times I was despairing over her choices, like when she married Derek and left her art lying in a forgotten pile at the side of her life.
A rumble of memory rises, the fight we had at the funeral. It poked me on the beach earlier, but in the space of quiet here now, it rolls itself out in spectacular detail.
We were sitting in the living room, big mugs of tea in our hands. Everyone else had gone to bed or gone home. A fire flickered in the fireplace. The mess of the wake was still scattered over the counters, the dining room table, the coffee table in front of us. I’d started to clean it up a little while before, but Phoebe said, “Leave it. We can tackle it all in the morning. Who cares?”
Exhausted, we sat curled on the two couches, watching the flames. Outside, rain fell, and it gave the room a damp chill. Beryl had been quite frail for two years, but to the end she kept her clear mind. The vacuum she left seemed impossible to fill, and it suddenly caught me in the gut.
I would never talk to her again.
A swell of grief roared through me, as impossible to halt as a train. Everything about the past three years, from the onset of the pandemic, then Dmitri’s death, and now Beryl’s, filled me to the brim. I heard a noise escape my throat that could only be called keening, and I bent over with it, rocking, letting it pour out, tears and pain and that piercing noise. I thought I should try to stop so I wouldn’t wake anyone up, but it kept moving, rhythmic and towering, a wave of purest loss. I would never see her again. Never look into her eyes. Never hold her hand.
I was aware of Phoebe, but I didn’t look at her. I just let it go, knowing she would understand, that her loss and mine were the ones that mattered. Finally, I got up and found a kitchen towel to sop up my tears and came back to sit down. “I can’t even imagine the world without her. My heart is completely broken.”
“Oh, of course,” Phoebe said in a cold voice. “You’re the one suffering, even though she was my grandmother.”
I jerked my head up. “What? It’s not a contest. And she wasn’t my blood grandmother, but she was the only mother I really ever had.”
“Really? So why weren’t you here with me, taking care of her these past few years?”
I blinked in both astonishment and fury. “Are you really going there? You didn’t want me here!”
“Because it’s a three-ring circus with you, all the time, and I didn’t think that would be good for her.”
“I wouldn’t have been in this house. I would have been in mine. I offered so many times.” Some evil thing made me say, “And I notice you were quite happy to take whatever money you needed from me.”
“There it is! The grand lady doling out her largesse!”
“You know that’s not fair. Why are you always so fucking jealous?”