I barely stifled a yawn. “You do, though?”
“I usually do. There’s a lot competing for his attention right now. Love he can’t explain. And worry that he won’t be able to explain it to me, that I’ll take offense. Disappointment that Joshua doesn’t have any half siblings. And regret. Thirteen years is a lot of time to miss.” She avoided meeting my eyes. “Lots of regret.”
Watching Ray rub his thumb methodically across the image of my son made me crazy. Given the chance, I’d leave right now and keep Joshua to myself forever. Regrets for leaving. Regrets for coming back. Regrets of such size that they seemed to be welling up and choking me from the inside. Or maybe that was the anger. I could still feel some of that, too. Thirteen years is a lot of time to miss. No one knew that better than I did.
Mamie hoisted herself to her feet. In the low light from the kitchen, she looked tired and older, and I imagined that’s how I looked to her, too. “We all have some regret, Leeanna. Sometimes I think that’s what we’re made for. Humans. No matter what we do, we regret what we didn’t.”
I didn’t answer. Mamie sounded to me like a woman who hadn’t suffered, not quite as much as she thought she had.
Chapter Thirty-two
I slept badly. I woke once in the night from a dream—words scribbling across the same blue field of earlier nightmares. Everything hinged on reading the message and knowing who wrote it, but the words circled and looped around me so that I was tied up in them, noosed. Half awake, I tried to remember: Was it Joshua? Was it Ray? Was I chasing or being chased?
I lay in bed until the sun finally rose over the lake, straight into my eyes.
The clock in the kitchen said six thirty. I found a nearly full pot of coffee and a mug waiting for me. In the window over the sink, I caught sight of myself—puffy eyes, hair haphazard—and beyond my reflection, the lake.
The sliding door was quiet. Outside the world was already alive with chittering bugs and birds. This was my favorite time of day in the woods. Before mosquitoes, before the high, burning summer sun. Before the boats pulling water-skiers roared across the water. I’d always slept through the mornings as a kid staying with Theresa’s family on the lake. But when Ray and I had lived on the lake—
My pulse jumped. I didn’t want to think about it.
The sky over the lake was a tender blue.
I took my coffee outside to the deck. There was something unfair and unsatisfying about being the only one who seemed to remember just how awful those days were. Ray should remember, but he hadn’t been very talkative. Or apologetic. And Mamie had all the facts, but she hadn’t gotten her head bashed in. She didn’t get her arm twisted behind her back. She hadn’t heard her own body creak and snap. Something unfair about how well one person can know these things. Other people could never understand, no matter how much they thought they did. I caught myself feeling smug and started down to the lake.
Ray was sitting on the dock bench. Before I could turn around and go back inside, Magic jumped up from the dock and came to escort me down the steep stairs, her tail wagging a hero’s welcome.
“Hey,” he said.
“Good morning.”
He turned back. The water was black where the sun had not yet reached.
“Or,” I said, “maybe not a good morning?”
“A—confusing twenty-four hours.”
“I think I’m only responsible for your last twelve or so.”
“Always had to be right.”
I sipped my coffee, thinking how easy it would be, just this one time, to bash his head in. Here was the mug in my hand. He might even get a little scald. “Is that it? The reason for it all?”
He slid over on the bench to make room for me. “Sorry.”
“For the comment, Ray? Or for more than that?” If I ran for the stairs, he’d be too fast for me. I sat on the edge of the bench. If he’d really changed, here was his chance to prove it.
He nodded into the lake. “For everything.”
For everything. Two words didn’t quite cover it, but I guessed it was all he was capable of. It was probably all locked in his heart. Locked in his monstrous heart, if he’d actually been born with one.
Magic had had enough inattention. She put her chin on my knee and sighed. I switched the mug to my other hand and gave the dog a scratch on her neck.
“I want to see him,” Ray said. “Joshua.”
“Me, too.”
“No, I mean. I want to get to know him.”
I’d been waiting for this. Had worked the words over and over in my head in the night until I’d made sense of it. He’d want to grab his half now. Now that I’d done all the hard work of surviving his abuse and raising his offspring. He could do all the anger-management training in the world, and it wouldn’t change my mind about this: he could go to hell.
“I think it’s probably not the right time to be making plans like that. Obviously he and I have some things to work out. I think you might just—complicate things.”
Ray was glaring at me with Joshua-brown eyes. “You’re going to run off again.”
“Don’t even—you’re not allowed to talk about it like that. Like I was some crazy kid taking a joy ride.”
“He’s my son, too.”
I hated him, I really did. “I won’t entertain clichés from talk shows, OK? I just won’t. I could have gone my entire life not coming back here. You’d never have known.”
“But now that I do—”
“Screw you.”
“I can get a lawyer.”
“And your lawyer.”
Ray slapped his hand on his knees, the sound jolting me. “What am I supposed to do? Just ignore that you did come back?” He narrowed his eyes at me. “You had to come back. You thought he’d come here. He didn’t, but that doesn’t change the fact that you thought he wanted to. My kid has an interest—”
“He has a lot of interests. Football. Oh,” I said, “and he’s taking up street art.”
“He wants to meet me, and that just drives you insane.”
“Can you just go back in the time machine for a second? I left here thinking that you would kill me. Kill me, Ray. You said”—I lowered my voice to imitate him—“‘you know what I’d do, right?’ And I took you at your word—no, I didn’t have to, did I?”
Ray’s face went flat. “I’ve left all that behind me.”