never laid a hand on her and she didn’t intend to start now, but she wasn’t going to let her behave that way either.
“Don’t speak to me that way. Now go to your room until you can be civil. If you want to talk about it with me, you can, but you can’t be disrespectful.”
“I have no reason to respect you!” Megan said grandly from the safety of the doorway, and then slammed the door, and ran into Peter’s room and told him what had happened. But instead of sympathizing with her, he called her a bitch and told her to apologize to her mother. “Whose side are you on anyway?”
“Hers,” he said bluntly, “she’s done everything for us, and she loved Dad just as much as we did. But she’s all alone, there’s no one to help her or take care of her, she works like a dog for us, and to keep Dad’s law office open. And besides, Bill’s a nice guy and I like him. We could do a lot worse, so if you want to know whose side I’m on, I’m on their side. Don’t ask me for sympathy if you’re acting like shit with Mom, Meg.”
“You’re an asshole!” she shouted at him, with tears brimming in her eyes. “And besides, she has us, she doesn’t need some guy to sleep with.”
“She can’t sleep with Jamie for the rest of her life. What happens when we go to college? I’ll be gone next year, you’ll be gone in two years. Then what? She’s supposed to sit here waiting for us to come home from school so she has a life again? She has no life without Dad, Meg. Look at her, all she does is work and drive carpool. She deserves better than that, and you know it.”
“Not yet,” Megan said, overwhelmed by what he’d said, as she sat down on his bed and started crying. “It’s too soon. I’m not ready.” He sat down next to her and put his arms around her then, he had grown up immeasurably in the past year, even more so since his accident, and they all knew it. “I miss Daddy,” she wailed, sounding like Jamie.
“So do I,” Peter said, fighting back tears of his own. No matter how much he had grown up, or how sensible he was, he still missed him. “But whether or not Bill is here, it won’t change that. Nothing will. We just have to accept what happened.”
“I don’t want to,” she wailed, getting mascara all over his T-shirt. “I want him back.” There was nothing he could say to her, he just held her while she cried, and they both thought about their father.
And finally, after Peter talked to her for a while when she had calmed down, Megan went and apologized to her mother. She stood awkwardly in the doorway, after opening it without knocking.
“I don’t like him, but I’m sorry for what I said about you.” It was the best she could offer, and her mother acknowledged the apology with a serious expression.
“I’m sorry you’re so unhappy, Meg. I know this isn’t easy.”
“You don’t know what it’s like for us, you have him now,” she said accusingly, and Liz sighed as she looked at her.
“Being with Bill doesn’t make me miss Daddy any less. Sometimes it makes me miss him more. This isn’t easy for any of us. And I know how hard it is for all of you.” It was getting better for all of them, but slowly.
“Do you really love him, Mom?” Megan still looked horrified by what her mother had said, and she wished she’d never heard the words.
“I think I do,” Liz said honestly. “I need time to figure it out. He’s a nice man. That’s all I know right now. I still have a lot to sort out about Daddy.”
“It seems like you want to forget him,” Megan said sadly.
“I can never forget him, Meg. No matter what I do, or where I go … I loved him for half my life, and we had all of you … things just happened. It wasn’t fair, for any of us. But now we have to make the best of it, and go on, the way he would want us to.”
“You’re just saying that to make yourself feel better.”
“No, I’m saying it because I believe it.”
Megan just shook her head then, and went back to her own room. Her mother had given her a lot to think about, and she didn’t even want to share it with her sisters. And after Megan left the room, Liz went quiedy to the jewel box she kept in her closet, and took off the wedding ring Jack had once placed on her finger, and she felt as though she were ripping her heart out as she did it. But she knew that the time had come. Peter noticed it the next morning, but said nothing to his mother or the others, although it even made him sad to see it.
But for the next two weeks, whenever Bill came to pick Liz up, Megan was a little more respectful. She didn’t say much to him, but she wasn’t rude to him either, and Liz was grateful. It was the best she could hope for, for the moment. Jamie and Peter were still his most ardent fans among the kids.
Liz was spending a lot of time with Bill, and they went to his apartment and made love whenever he had some time and was off duty. Sometimes they spent time together when he was on call, and he would have to leap out of bed and grab the phone, but Liz never objected. She had a strong respect for his work, more than for her own these days. She had told him more than once that her family law practice depressed her. She no longer seemed to enjoy what she was doing. It had been fun with Jack, but it wasn’t anymore. It seemed frivolous and argumentative and so pointless. The only thing she really liked these days was structuring good custody arrangements for people’s children.
“Maybe I’m losing it,” she said to him one day when they met in the hospital cafeteria for a sandwich. She had just been to court, and she was furious with one of her clients, who had behaved like a boor to his wife in court in front of the judge. She had been tempted to walk off the case, but she hadn’t. “I don’t even enjoy going to court anymore.”
“Maybe you just need a breather.” She’d only had two weeks off in the past year, she worked weekends and nights, and she was carrying a double workload.
“Maybe I should go to beauty school and get a job in a beauty parlor. It might be more useful.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” he smiled at her, but she still looked unhappy.
“Jack loved family law work, it was really more his thing than mine. I just got good at it from working with him. But I don’t know now …” She was one of the best divorce lawyers in the area, and it was hard to believe she didn’t like it. Her clients would have been stunned by what she was saying. She was always so full of energy, bright ideas and creative suggestions. But lately, she felt like a windup doll whose batteries had run down. She didn’t enjoy it
