“Oh God. Why?” Bridget fanned her hair up, her eyes big. Her patience was waning.
“She was angry. Hurt. Rejected maybe? She says she wanted to scare him. They called her a witch, it was like a fuck you.”
“Nate, they call her a witch because she does things like that. It’s not a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Bridget said. She thought, then, about Lucia’s journals, the entries that called out to Taylor, a desperate sort of grasping, like the slick edge of a cliff. So different from her angry, scribbling entries, so different from her childlike ones, memories and poems. Bridget couldn’t know, or even understand how many different sides there were to Lucia, to anyone really, but she could at least acknowledge there were things she couldn’t understand.
She was so close to saying all this when Nate spoke, his voice hushed.
“It’s so obvious to me, but maybe not to you.” Nate swallowed twice, his blue eyes shining, blinking. “We all become what people expect us to be.”
CHAPTER 14
Alecia, Thursday, April 30, 2015: 9 days after the birds fell
When Alecia finally did ask Nate to move out—temporarily, she claimed, although she was never sure if she meant it—it was without fanfare. He agreed to it as though he’d been expecting it, which made Alecia want to kick and scream. Nate never made a scene about anything, ever. He’d certainly rarely bucked her or disagreed with her, with the exception of lately where he picked sulky fights at any opportunity. He sighed and packed a single duffel bag and Alecia stood in the doorway to their bedroom watching him, thinking this was someone else’s life, out of a movie, certainly not hers.
“Tripp said I could stay there for a while.” He stood staring at the closet with his back to her and Alecia wondered what he’d pack now that he didn’t have to go to work anymore. She felt like scum, like dirt, making him leave when the whole town was against him and he had no job. But having him there was too disruptive, too awful, the anger burning hot and bright under her skin, making her jumpy. She snapped at Gabe, her patience fried by Nate’s shoes in the hallway, his cereal bowl in the sink, his thereness.
“I just need you to go away so I can think,” she said lamely, and he shrugged like he either understood or didn’t care. He packed jeans, sweats, polo shirts, a button-down shirt. Casual, but not what he’d wear to work.
He didn’t look at her when he started talking. “Is this it for you? I feel like you’ve made this decision in your head, that our marriage is over and I have no choice and nothing I could say to you would matter. You think I’m a liar and a cheat.”
He folded his shirts, his socks, his underwear he’d pulled from the crumpled clean basket at the foot of the bed. It struck her then that after he’d left, she’d still be folding his blue plaid boxers, putting them away in a drawer that may or may not be his anymore. Stay. She mouthed the word but did not say it.
“No. It’s not it for me. Nothing about this is simple or easy. I don’t even think we can afford a divorce and keep Gabe in therapy. But I’m just so . . . I can’t even look at you. I’m too mad at you—for lying. For whatever you may have done”—she held up her hand and turned her head away, willingly blind to his open-mouthed protest—“and I just need to think without you here.”
They each had gone around and around this so many times it just felt like words now, loose and unattached, clattering buttons in a tin. They’d gone through the yelling and the screaming and the crying the night before, Gabe huddled in his room, his hands cupped over his ears, until Alecia (and only Alecia, she might add) thought to go comfort him.
He finally looked at her, his eyes bluer than Alecia had ever seen them, shiny and wet and blinking.
“You don’t let me think, that’s all. Every time I turn around you’re pleading your case. And then it turns into this fight. Just . . . for a few weeks. Please.” Alecia didn’t even know what she was saying please to.
“It will look bad,” Nate said, but he said it blandly, like he didn’t care. And then, like he’d just heard it. “Weeks?”
“Who will know?” Alecia whispered. “I won’t tell, will you?”
When he didn’t answer, she said, “Is it a conflict of interest? For Tripp?” Tripp Harris was Nate’s best friend and a Mt. Oanoke police officer. He wasn’t assigned to the investigation, but there were only a handful of cops in Mt. Oanoke. Tripp would have access to Nate’s case.
“Ah, I don’t know. I don’t think so.” Nate shrugged, relieved to have something official to discuss. “I’ll come back at the end of the week. To see Gabe, get more clothes?” His voice tilted up insecurely, even though it wasn’t actually a question.
Alecia nodded. She thought it was odd, unexpected, that this is how it would go when your husband was moving out. These desperate words tangled up in the everyday business of ending your marriage. Maybe ending your marriage.
He stood in front of her, his bag hanging down at his side, his fist flexing and unflexing. She moved to the side to let him pass and he paused, unsure of what to do. He hadn’t left the house in ten years without kissing her good-bye, even when fighting. Sometimes the kiss was so quick, so perfunctory, it felt like steel against her cheek.
He leaned down and brushed the side of her face with his lips. He didn’t say good-bye. Neither of them said I love you.
Alecia stood in the upstairs hallway until she heard the downstairs door click open and shut.
?????
Day one and day two didn’t feel that different from life before Nate left. Alecia hunkered down, her house a cocoon, only leaving to take Gabe to occupational therapy and then on day three, a doctor’s appointment. The only change in her routine was not texting Nate after to tell him that Gabe lost two pounds and wonder together if they should be worried. She singly decided they should not, and went about her day.
She felt so good she turned right to go to the A&P instead of left to go home. From the back Gabe whimpered, his hand jamming up against the window as he watched his street pass him by. Pushed out of his routine, his distress grew and he flat palmed the window, slap, slap, slapping. He rocked forward until he knocked his forehead on the seat in front of him, which happened to be Alecia’s seat. Her head thrummed with Gabe’s rhythm.