She sits frozen in my words, so I pick up my fork and take a casual bite of my dinner.
She stares at me while I chew, and she’s still staring at me as I wash down the food with a sip of water. I’m sure her brain is running a mile a minute, searching for an insult or a threat of her own, but she’s got nothing.
“Every Tuesday night we’re going to have dinner here, as a family. You are more than welcome to come. I’m sure he would enjoy that. I’ll never ask you for a penny. All I ask is that you show up one night a week and be interested in who he is, even if you have to fake it.”
I notice Sutton’s fingers are shaking as she reaches for her wineglass. She must notice, too, because she makes a fist before grabbing it and pulls her hand back to her lap. “You must not remember Cape Cod if you think I was such a horrible mother to you.”
“I remember Cape Cod,” I say. “It’s the one memory I try to hold on to so that I don’t completely resent you. But while you feel like you did this wonderful thing by giving me that one memory of us that one time, I’m offering to give that to Josh every day of his life.”
Sutton looks down at her lap when I say that. For the first time, she looks like she might be experiencing an emotion other than anger or irritation.
Maybe I am, too. When I decided to have this conversation with her on the drive home from Tim’s house today, I fully planned on cutting her out of our lives forever. But even monsters can’t survive without a heart beating inside their chest.
There’s a heart in there somewhere. Maybe no one in her life has ever let her know they’re appreciative that it still beats.
“Thank you,” I say.
Her eyes flicker up to mine. She thinks I’m testing her with that comment.
I shake my head, conflicted by what I’m about to say. “You were a single mother, and I know neither of our fathers helped you in any way. That must have been really difficult for you. Maybe you’re lonely. Maybe you’re depressed. I don’t know why you can’t look at motherhood like the gift that it is, but you’re here. You showed up tonight, and that effort is worth a thank-you.”
She looks down at the table, and it’s a completely unexpected reaction when her shoulders begin to shake, but she fights back the tears with all that she is. She brings her hands up to the table and fidgets with her napkin, but never has to use it because she doesn’t allow a single tear to fall.
I don’t know what she went through that made her so hard. So unwilling to be vulnerable. Maybe one of these days she’ll share that with me, but she has a lot to prove as a mother to Josh before she and I will ever get to that point.
She pulls her shoulders back, sitting up straighter. “What time will the dinner be on Tuesdays?”
“Seven.”
She nods and looks like she’s about to scoot out of the booth.
“I can get you a to-go box if you want to take it with you.”
She nods quickly. “I’d like that. It’s always been my favorite dish.”
“I know. I remember Cape Cod.” I take her plate to the kitchen and prepare it to go.
Josh is asleep on the couch when I finally make it back home. Anime is playing on the television, so I hit pause and set the remote on the coffee table.
I watch him sleep for a little while, overcome with relief after the day I’ve had. Things could have gone a lot differently. I press my lips together, choking back the emotional exhaustion as I watch him sleep in peace. I realize as I’m staring at him that I’m looking at him the same way Lily looks at Emerson, like she’s so full of pride.
I pull the blanket off the back of the couch and drape it over him, then I walk to the table where Josh’s homework is laid out. Everything is completed, even the family tree assignment.
He drew a tiny seedling sprouting from the ground with two small branches. One says Josh and one says Atlas.
Chapter Thirty-Four Lily
I almost missed the note, I was in such a rush this morning. It was shoved under my front door and was caught on the entry rug.
I had Emmy on my hip, a purse and a diaper bag on my shoulder, and coffee in my free hand. I managed to bend and pick up the note without spilling any of it. Supermom.
I had to wait until I got a quiet moment at work to open it. When I unfold the note and see Atlas’s handwriting, I feel a shiver of relief run through me. Not because I thought the note would be from anyone other than Atlas. We’ve been together several months now, and he leaves me notes all the time. But this is one of the first notes he’s left that a small part of me hasn’t dreaded opening, in the off chance the note was from Ryle.
I make a mental note of the significance of this moment.
I do that a lot. Mentally note significant things that are clues my life is finally getting back to normal. I don’t do it as often as I used to, but that’s a good thing. Ryle is such a small part of my life now, I sometimes forget how eternally complicated I used to believe it would be.
He’s still a part of Emmy’s life, but I’ve been demanding more structure from him. He sometimes tries to push back on how strict I am with her visits, but I’m never going to be comfortable until she can tell me in her own words what her visits with Ryle are like. I’m hoping anger management is helping, but only time will tell.
The contact Ryle and I do have is still sometimes terse, but all I’ve ever wanted out of our divorce was my freedom from fear, and I truly feel like I have that.
I’m hiding in my office storage closet, sitting cross-legged on the floor because I wanted to read this letter uninterrupted. It’s been months since I forced Atlas to hide out in here, but it still smells like him.
I unfold the note and trace the little open heart he drew at the top left-hand corner of the first page. I’m already smiling as I begin to read.
Dear Lily,
I don’t know if you’re aware of the date, but we have officially been dating for half of an entire year. Do people celebrate half-year anniversaries? I would have gotten you flowers, but I don’t like to make the florist work too hard.
I decided to give you this note, instead.
They say there are two sides to every story, and I’ve read a couple of stories of yours that, even though they happened the way you said they did, I had an entirely different experience.
You kind of brushed over this moment in your journals, even though I know it meant enough for you to get a tattoo. But I’m not sure you’re aware of how much that moment meant to me.
You say our first kiss happened on your bed, but that’s not the one I count as our first kiss. Our first kiss happened on a Monday in the middle of the day.
It was that time I got sick and you took care of me. You noticed I was ill as soon as I crawled through your window. I remember you taking immediate action. You gave me medicine, water, and blankets, and forced me to sleep on your bed.
I don’t remember ever being sicker than that in my entire life. I do believe you witnessed the most awful day I’ve ever lived through. And I’ve lived through some awful days. But when you’re in it, there seems to be nothing worse in the moment than a horrible stomach bug.
I don’t remember a lot of that night. I remember your hands, though. Your hands were always near me, either checking my temperature or wiping my face with a rag or holding my shoulders steady while I repeatedly had to fold over the side of your bed throughout the night.
That’s what I remember: your hands. You had a light pink polish on, I even remember the name of the color because I had been with you when you painted your nails. It was called Surprise Lily and you told me you picked it because of the name.
I could barely open my eyes, but every time I did, there they were, your slender helping hands with your Surprise Lily fingernails, holding up my water bottle, feeding me medicine, tracing my jaw.
Yes, Lily. I remember that moment, even though you didn’t write about it.
After hours of being ill, I remember waking up, or atleast becoming more aware of my surroundings. My head was pounding and my mouth was parched and my eyelids were too heavy to open, but I felt you.
I felt your breath on my cheek. Your fingertips were on my jaw and you traced them all the way down to my chin.
You thought I was asleep—that I couldn’t feel you touching me, watching me, but I had never felt more than I did in that moment.
It was the exact moment I realized that I loved you. I kind of hated realizing something that monumental in the middle of such a shitty day, but it hit me so hard I thought I was going to cry for the first time in years and I didn’t know what to do with that feeling.
But, man, Lily, I had gone my whole life not knowing what love felt like. I didn’t have the love a mother and son should have, or a father and son, or a sibling. And until you, I had never spent that kind of time with anyone unrelated to me, especially a girl. Not long enough to truly get to know a girl, or for them to get to know me, or for us to connect and deepen that connection, and then for that girl to prove to be caring and helpful and kind and worried and everything that you were to me.
