Sara returns to her seat. Only twelve more numbers to go.
“Ben looks like Bill,” I say.
“He does.”
“Is that hard?”
“Is it hard for you when the kids look like Tom?”
“Sometimes.” A tear slips out, and Sara pats my hand gently.
“I feel like this conversation might need more alcohol than this church basement can provide,” she says.
“You have no idea.”
“What were you saying before? What’s the part I don’t know?”
“I’m not sure you’d even believe me if I told you.”
“Try me.”
The music starts again as some older girls with their hair in ringlets take the stage. Their costumes are stiff with embroidery. Sara’s told me how much those costumes cost, and she’d thanked her lucky stars she had only sons.
“Not here,” I say.
“Come by later? I think there are still some good bottles in the wine fridge above the garage. I think Bill was hiding them from me when he was living up there.”
A light bulb goes off. Maybe Sara can solve two problems at once.
“I’ll try but . . . This might sound crazy, but can I borrow that room above your garage?”
“Why?”
“I need to hide something there.”
• • •
Several hours later, I’m up in my room, going through my nightly routine. As I lather my face in the same cream I’ve used for twenty years, I eye Tom’s toothpaste lying on the counter. His toothbrush is still in its holder, charged up for its next use. His comb and brush and razor are all here, too, keeping me company like they do every night. Why am I holding on to these things? I always told myself it was for the children, so they wouldn’t know or guess how things were between us. But maybe I was the one who couldn’t accept it.
I pull the garbage can from under the sink and sweep my arm across the counter, collecting toothpaste, toothbrush, etc., all the things Tom left behind. It makes a satisfying clang as it hits the sides of the metal container. I open the medicine cabinet and empty that, too, of the expired medications and the special dental floss he used. I should dispose of this properly, in a safe manner, but right now putting it in the trash is what I need to do.
I finish up the bathroom—dandruff shampoo, be gone!—and walk to our closet. I open the doors, and my energy dissipates. A lifetime of Tom’s clothes stares back at me. This is hours of work. I should let the kids participate, deciding what they want to keep, if anything, and make a thing of it, a ceremony. Or maybe I’ll tell them to pick one thing to remember him by and then call a charity to come and pick it all up. Some of these suits might be worth something to a charity shop.
I hear a car door slam. I look out the window. It’s Cassie, running up the front walk as a car drives away. I check the clock. It’s after ten, way past curfew even if she’d asked me if she could go out. I listen to her shuffle up the stairs.
“Cass,” I say, “come in here.”
She walks into my bedroom looking sheepish. “Sorry, Mom.”
“Did you sneak out?”
“Just to right outside. So technically, I didn’t even leave the property.”
“Technically?”
“Okay, I totally did. But Kevin wanted to talk.”
Her eyes are bright, and she’s wearing lip gloss that’s partially faded away. I know that look, the look of a girl who’s been kissed.
“Oh, honey.”
“I’m sorry, Mom. It wasn’t a big deal, and I would’ve asked you, but I thought you might say no and . . .” She sits down on the edge of the bed. She touches her lips with her fingertips. “He kissed me.”
I stifle the urge to call this boy’s mother and tell her to keep her son away from my child. Tom. These are the times I need Tom. This is why I let him move back in, because doing this without him, watching them grow up and change and experience all the firsts they still have to experience is too much for me to do alone.
“Was it nice?” I ask, trying to keep my voice even.
“You’re not freaked out?”
“Of course I’m freaked out. I want to strangle this kid. I’m trying to be the cool mom. How’m I doing?”
She stands up and trips into my arms. “You’re doing great.”
She buries her head in my shoulder. We’re the same height now, and sometimes when I look at her it’s like flipping through one of the photograph albums my mother curated so lovingly. My first kiss was from a boy named David. He stole it at a school dance.
“I miss Dad.”
“Me, too, honey. Me, too.”
“You do?”
“Of course.”
“Even though—” She stops herself. She doesn’t have the right words yet to express what was going on with her father and me, even the little she knows, and I’m not about to tell her what happened between him and Kaitlyn.
Can what Kaitlyn said be true? That they had a digital relationship that never went beyond one stolen kiss? And even if it is, is it better that Tom let me think the worst of him? Or did he know that even if he’d told me the truth, it was too much to forgive? That the fact that he’d participated in it at all, had sought it out, showed him something in us that was broken that he didn’t want to take the time to fix? Though he did try to tell me. He did, and I didn’t want to hear it. He could’ve tried harder, he could’ve persisted, but he let it go when I asked him to. Whose fault is that?
“Even though, nothing,” I say. “I’ll always love your father. No matter what happened between us. I spent more of my life with him than without him. And he gave me you and your brother. I can’t imagine what my life would’ve been like without him.”
“But then you had to learn.”
“We
