“Use of the term ‘fucking millennials', for starters,” I reply.
I spend Wednesday fretting, wandering through the auditorium and worrying that it will be too crowded with the tables for coffee and bagels inside rather than out. I oversee the setup of the sound system I rented, and have just closed the auditorium doors, determined not to worry anymore, when Kayleigh calls to say I’ve got a delivery.
I frown. I’m picking up the food tomorrow myself. I didn’t order anything else. “What is it?”
“You’ll probably figure it out when you get it off my fucking desk,” she replies, helpful as ever.
I head downstairs and my stomach drops from twenty feet away.
A bouquet of roses so huge it takes up half the reception desk sits there. Stuart and I have been texting and he seemed relatively normal, but sending two dozen roses to a woman you’ve never met is definitely not normal and I can’t imagine who else would have sent them.
I swallow as I reach for the card attached to the bouquet.
I miss you. Dinner tomorrow? I’ll get a sitter.
All my love,
Jeremy
He was always this way—the cycles of punishment and excess. He’d fail to come home for a weekend or strand me and the twins at a party somewhere, and then return a day or more later with a wide smile and a piece of jewelry, as if that’s all he had to do to make up for it.
And these flowers—they’re the jewelry. They’re sorry I stole your money and cheated and implied I’d take your kids from you flowers. I can’t believe he thinks they’d work.
“You don’t seem excited,” says Kayleigh. “Even if you don’t like the guy, flowers are flowers.”
Except these are so much more than flowers. These are a gift given with expectation and when that expectation is not met, he’s going to punish me for it.
I take them back to my office. I’d rather not see them, but it’s better than having everyone entering the reception area ask Kayleigh who they’re for.
My stomach is heavy with dread as I dial Jeremy’s number. He’s never hit me, but his words can carve up my brain and make me doubt everything. I simply don’t need it right now.
“Hey, babe,” he says, his voice warm and confident. “I guess you got the flowers.”
“I did. Thank you. But…”
“I was passing this flower shop and I saw the roses in the window and thought ‘Those would make Lucie happy,’” he says. “I know how much you love roses.”
I don’t love roses. I told him my favorite flower a hundred times—the same one in my wedding bouquet—and he never remembered once.
It didn’t surprise me. I’m just a story Jeremy tells—yesterday, I was the bitch wife not giving him enough time with his kids. Today, I’m the generic female who loves roses. Nothing he’s saying or doing is about me. Even his desire to win me back isn’t really about me. Jeremy only knows winning and losing, and this is a tactic. Tomorrow there will be a new one.
“So, about dinner,” he continues. “We can maybe head down to Santa Cruz? Stacy next door said she’d watch the kids.”
He’s got it all planned out. He really thinks that after everything he did and said, I’m going to let him buy me dinner then give him one of those blow jobs he demanded, then criticized, in turn.
“We’re getting a divorce,” I say, my voice as firm as I can make it. “I appreciate the flowers, but they don’t change anything.”
“Lucie,” he says, “give me a chance. I know I fucked up. I know I didn’t appreciate what I had. Sometimes it takes losing everything to make you love your old life.”
“I—”
“It’s what I want, it’s what the kids want, and I think underneath it all, it’s what you want. We had a nice life together and now you’re slumming it out at that cabin, working long hours. And what about the kids? I know it must kill you to send them to aftercare. It must. And how are you going to help Henry if you’re working full time?”
My shoulders sag. Nothing he said mattered until he brought up the kids. And he’s right. I’m so tired when I get home from work that I can barely stay awake when I’m reading to them at night. How am I going to summon the energy when they get real homework next year, or if Henry needs extra help? I thought the hardships would be balanced out by Jeremy’s absence from our lives, but he isn’t disappearing the way I hoped.
Give in now, even a little, and you are lost.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t want that,” I say, still trying to soften my words, still trying to placate him in the futile hope he won’t turn vicious as a result. My stomach twists already, anticipating his response. “And I don’t want to go to dinner.”
There’s silence then, and I regret being so blunt. I do believe that somewhere, deep in Jeremy’s very fucked-up head and heart, there is a molecule of legitimate regret. And perhaps if I loved him, or believed he loved me, that would be enough. But that’s just it—I don’t love him. I thought I could and maybe did when we first met, because I was young and stupid and woefully inexperienced. But it wasn’t love at all—it was simply relief that someone, anyone at all, wanted me and claimed he was willing to have my back.
“You’re going to regret this,” he says, and he ends the call.
I press my palms to my face, wishing I’d somehow handled it better.
He’s going to make me pay.
22
LUCIE
The next morning, I’m running frantically through the house, buttoning my skirt while I try to find Henry’s missing shoe. In an effort to keep costs down, I said I’d pick the bagels up rather than getting them delivered, which means I somehow need to get the kids to school, pick up bagels for five hundred people, and have it all done by nine a.m. It already bordered on impossible, and then Sophie opened a yogurt and got it all over the front of her uniform, the floor, and me. By the time I’ve got her changed and myself cleaned up, we are five minutes behind schedule on a day when we can’t be behind schedule at all.
“Come on, you guys. Come on!” I shout, grabbing my bag and phone as I hustle them out the door.
“Mommy,” says Henry. “Where’s the car?”
I exhale heavily, fumbling for the keys in my purse. “Henry, I don’t have time for games, okay?” It’s at times like this that I can almost understand why my mother lost her shit with me so often. Because I want to have a tantrum, and children are so easy to rage against. It’s not like they can talk back, or at least they couldn’t in my mother’s household—Sophie seems to manage it just fine in mine.
I find the keys and sling the bag over my shoulder as I walk outside. Henry and Sophie are standing on the walkway, staring at me.
I look beyond them to the driveway and blink repeatedly at the empty space where the car should be. The alarm would have triggered if someone had tried to steal it. It takes me another long second to realize it must have been removed by someone with a key—a key only one other person has.
“Did somebody steal our car, Mommy?” asks Sophie tearfully.
I am not going to fall apart. I am not going to fall apart. I am not going to fall apart.
“No. Nobody stole our car.” My voice trembles with both sadness and rage. “I think Daddy might have borrowed it.”
Why did Jeremy have to do this now? It’s like he knew how important today was, but he couldn’t have. He just happened to choose to fuck me over at a time when I really needed everything to go perfectly.
And what the hell am I going to do? I still need to get the kids to school, pick up the food, and set up the smart board and mic. I could ask Molly, but she’s got a big project of her own today and isn’t anywhere near us.
I can really only think of one other person to ask.