“I understand.”
He drained his beer, grabbed another from the fridge. “Then I guess we don’t have anything to worry about, do we?” He walked into the living room and collapsed onto the couch, reached for the remote. I didn’t know if we were done talking, and I was scared to move. I slowly walked to the doorway and waited for a moment, but he was staring at the TV. I watched as he brought the beer to his mouth, his throat muscles flexing as he gulped it. Could it be the booze? Some men got really mean when they drank. Andrew would never normally say these things.
The stew was bubbling on the stove behind me in the kitchen. Food. I needed to get him to eat. My mom always told my dad not to drink on an empty stomach.
When I came back into the living room, Andrew didn’t look up. I placed the bowl on the coffee table in front of him. He was watching a hockey game, their red uniforms reflecting in his eyes. I slowly sat on the couch, my breath tight in my chest. His hand suddenly reached out and I flinched, but he just rested it on my stomach. His palm was hot.
“We should get a security system in the house,” he said. “Been a lot of break-ins lately. We can hook it up so I can check the cameras in my office at the site.”
I stared at his profile, thought about cameras watching me all day, following me around. His hand pressed harder against my stomach, and I winced at the sudden pressure.
“Okay,” I said. “If that’s what you want.”
CHAPTER SIX
DECEMBER 2016
When I get home Sophie is sprawled on the living room floor drawing. As a child, she was obsessed with painting and would stand in front of the easel Andrew made for her, chubby cheeks smeared with paint, hands gripping a paintbrush she splashed against the paper in bold purple streaks. “Look, Mommy! It’s you!”
Since she started high school her chosen medium is ink. She can work on one sketch for weeks, her face grimly determined or full of blissful contentment. I find her doodles on the papers by the phone, on our mail, the newspaper, magazine pages. I started tucking them away into a box. Sometimes I take them out and study the lines, the curves of each pen stroke. I love this glimpse into her mind, her imagination. A world where fairies can morph into trees and fish into birds and boxes become flowers and wings and gnomes and dragons.
Sometimes I worry about what I see: a skull with a broken heart, a tire with flames, devil’s horns, sad clown faces, rivers of tears. When I ask her what they mean, she shrugs.
“I don’t think about it. They come out of my fingers that way.”
Everything about Sophie is expressive, her words, her face, the way she moves her hands when she’s talking. She looks more like Andrew than me, but her style is all her own. She wears tunics, patterned leggings and scarves, colors her hair pink and blue and turquoise. This week it’s violet, makes her green eyes huge. She has my shape. Small, but we’re strong. We run fast.
When I told her Andrew was out of prison, she went silent, then said, “So? He told his lawyer he was going to leave us alone, right?” His lawyer called my lawyer after the divorce went through: Andrew wishes Lindsey well and won’t bother her anymore. He also sent a large check for Sophie’s support. I never used any of it and put it in a savings account for her.
“We still need to be extra-careful from now on,” I said.
“We don’t matter to him anymore,” she insisted.
“You matter to me. So be careful, okay? Tell me if you see him.”
“I don’t even know what he looks like anymore.” She was annoyed, frustrated with my anxiety, and I hoped that she was right and my worry was for nothing.
Now I know Andrew had just been waiting.
I grab a pillow from the couch and lie beside her. “How was your walk?”
“It was okay.” She glances at me. “How was work? Is your back sore again?”
“I took an Advil.”
“You need to do yoga. It will help.” Sometimes she pours me a bath or massages my feet with lavender oil, nags at me that I need a different job. She doesn’t understand that I enjoy cleaning. I let my mind drift as I scrub and wash and sort. Everything calms down inside me and I feel content and satisfied, proud as I close my client’s door behind me. I like that I have my own business, that I’m independent and can support myself and my daughter.
I tried to tell Sophie that cleaning gives me the same feeling she has when she’s painting, but she just said, “What are you going to do when you’re old? You need to think about retirement, Mom.” I told her that she was my retirement plan and she just laughed, then gave me a hug. Some people would probably say we are too involved in each other’s lives, too enmeshed, that we lack boundaries, but to hell with them. I need it this way.