Steve hadn’t proposed yet, but she knew he was planning to once they’d graduated. Sometimes she wondered if he’d already talked to her father about it. There was tension between Al and Steve whenever they were in the same room. But that might have been because the two men didn’t really like each other. Al had built the lucrative Al’s Autobody from the ground up, and he’d been looking forward to Barbara marrying someone to take over the family business. Instead, she had fallen in love with Steve, whose father had been a police sergeant killed in the line of duty back in Houston when he was six. Raised by the forever-frosty Wanda, who’d come to Ridgedale for a fresh start—a second cousin had offered her a good job at his insurance agency—Steve had always wanted to be a police officer like his father. He wasn’t going to give that up for Al’s Autobody, no matter how easy the money.
Even with a proposal in the works, Barbara knew she shouldn’t keep Steve on too short a leash. They’d be grown-ups before long, and Barbara didn’t want Steve to have regrets. And it was their senior year and, as Steve kept reminding her, their last chance to have fun. So she’d learned to bite her tongue and go to the parties in the muddy woods where she always ended up getting some piece of clothing smudged or torn. She tried to pretend to have fun sitting around on those soggy logs, talking to girls who’d been her friends for years but who she wouldn’t miss after graduation. And she let Steve go off with his teammates to play their stupid game and forget about her for an hour or an entire evening. Because he always came back when he was ready, every single time.
It wasn’t as easy to let him roam, though, once she started buzzing around, talking to Steve about her perfectly nice family who didn’t like her or the boys she loved who didn’t love her back or the boys who (naturally) dumped her once she’d lifted her skirt. Jenna had no shame, either. She couldn’t have cared less that Steve belonged to someone else. Not that Barbara was worried, because honestly, how could you take a girl like that seriously—garbage is as garbage does. And Steve knew better than to fall for Jenna’s bells and whistles. He loved Barbara. They complemented each other perfectly. Barbara was their head. Steve was their heart. He was just too nice to turn his back on some pathetic whore with no self-respect. And that might not have been a nice thing for Barbara to think, but that didn’t make it any less true.
By that last Saturday in May of their senior spring, Barbara had had enough of the parties. Still, she’d gone out to the woods again to make Steve happy, even though she’d had a splitting headache. Her only request was that they leave early. But when she wanted to go, she couldn’t find Steve anywhere. She looked for him for at least twenty minutes before she spotted him—not with the other boys, like she’d thought. Instead, there he was, at least a five-or ten-minute walk down the creek, sitting on a rock. With Jenna.
There was plenty of space between them, their hips weren’t even close to touching, and all they were doing was talking. But it was the way they were talking that made Barbara’s heart feel like it had been cleaved in two. Worse was the way Steve looked at Barbara as he tried to explain on the way back to his truck. His eyes were so filled with regret, not about what had happened but about what was going to happen. What Steve was helpless to stop.
“It’s okay,” Barbara had said, smiling hard and waving his explanations away like she didn’t have a care in the world. “You’re trying to help her, I know.”
Because the last thing in the world she wanted was for him to make excuses. She didn’t want to hear how much thought he’d already put into the whole situation.
“I do feel bad for her,” Steve had said once they reached his truck. And then he paused. There was a “but” there. But that’s not . . . Barbara had no interest in hearing the ending.
“Because you’re a nice guy, Steve.” She leaned over to kiss him before he could say anything else. “And that’s why I love you.”
As Steve carried Cole up to bed, Barbara sat down at the kitchen table with her coat still on. Their morning coffee cups were on the table, and there was unopened mail on the counter, and the pile of unfolded laundry and scattered toys. Ever since that meeting with Rhea, Barbara had been too distracted to worry about housework. After just a day of inattention, the house was falling into disarray. The mess couldn’t be helping Cole. Maybe it was making things worse.
Barbara jumped to her feet, snatched up a mug in each hand, and marched toward the sink, where the caked breakfast plates were piled up. Underneath were their dinner dishes from the night before in several inches of brownish, foul-smelling water. It was revolting. All of it. But she’d barely made it through dinner with Caroline after seeing that drawing—a drawing Cole seemed not to fully remember doing—never mind doing the dishes afterward.
She’d left it to Steve to get them an appointment with Dr. Kellerman in the morning. No matter what it took, she’d said before taking Cole up to bed. Steve surely had to pull strings, maybe throw his status around, to get them in so quickly. She was grateful he hadn’t felt the need to tell her about it.
Barbara was staring down at the disgusting filth when Steve came back downstairs.
“Well, he’s out cold,” he said with forced cheer, as usual trying to pump her up so he could sneak out the door. “If nothing else, that Dr. Kellerman sure knocks him out. Reason enough to go back.”
“I’m never going back there.” Barbara jammed her hands into the crowded sink. “And neither is my son.”
Why had she let herself think about that stupid party all those years ago? Because now here she was, about to have yet another fight with Steve without him knowing what they were actually fighting about. But she was suddenly so angry at him. Furious. All that history, he was responsible for every last page. Maybe if Barbara hadn’t been so distracted by her being back, she would have been paying more attention to whatever was happening with Cole.
As Barbara tumbled her hands around the sink, a glass stacked on top of one of the dinner plates slid off to the side. She grabbed for it, but it slipped through her fingers and shattered, the pieces vanishing into the grimy water below.
“Dammit!” Barbara yelled as she jerked off her coat and threw it on the floor. Then she grabbed the edge of the sink and started to cry.