Best Kept Secret: A Novel

After complying with Jess’s order to stay at her house overnight, I’m hunkered down in her guest room, snuggling with my son. Following the controlled chaos of a tomato-sauce-laden lasagna dinner, Charlie and I changed into borrowed pajamas—he in one of Jess’s T-shirts and me in one of Derek’s—then crawled into bed. I curl around Charlie in the exact manner I used to wrap myself behind my sister. Big shrimp, little shrimp. His butt is pushed into my belly and his fragile spine rests against my breasts.

“You’re all squishy, Mommy,” he said when we first climbed beneath the covers. He wiggled against me, adjusting to find his comfortable spot.

“Is that a good thing?” I asked with a warm smile. I’m pretty sure my son is the only male on this earth who could call me “squishy” and not only get away with it, but have it make me happy.

He nodded. “For mommies, it is.” He closed his eyes and let out a long breath, a spinning top finally winding down.

“Well, thank you, then,” I said. “Hey, baby boy?”

His eyelids lifted a bit, but didn’t open all the way. “Mm-hm?”

“I’m really sorry I snapped at you today.” I kissed the back of his soft head. He smelled faintly of Johnson & Johnson’s baby shampoo and the fudge pop Jess fed the boys for dessert. I’m out of practice at the tasks of motherhood; I forgot to make him brush his teeth.

“ ’S okay. Everybody gets mad sometimes,” he mumbled, and something inside me that had been held captive suddenly lifted and was set free.

How is it that he knows this, at five? I wonder after he falls asleep. How is it so easy for him to forgive and let go? He didn’t learn this from me—or his father, for that matter. Maybe it’s something we’re all born with, this ability to accept another person’s failings and imperfections without lingering contempt. Maybe harboring resentment is an environmental hazard, habitual pollution absorbed into our blood. I wonder if I could get some kind of emotional transfusion. Out with the bad blood, in with the good.

I sigh and my gaze travels through the darkened air around me. The guest room in my sister’s house is small, with space enough only for a double-mattress-size Hide-a-Bed couch and a tiny nightstand with a lamp. The door has to be shut before opening the bed; if it’s not, privacy while sleeping becomes a logistical impossibility. Two of the walls are built-in bookshelves; a small, porthole-style window lets the moonlight spill in from the night sky to pool on the hardwood floor.

We are used to this bed, Charlie and me. We spent many nights here when Martin and I first separated. The quiet in my own house was deafening. I needed the ordinary rhythms of a household—the sound of a toilet flushing, the low murmur of Jess and Derek’s voices to help lull me to sleep.

At the time, anxiety gripped my every breath. My mind spun on its side—an engine stuck in high gear. I regretted every decision I’d ever made. I told myself I should have kept my job at the paper. I never should have married Martin. Once I married him, I should have been a better wife. I should have tried harder to work it out. I should have quit working completely so I could have focused all my attention on being the kind of mother Charlie deserved. I should have been a nicer person so I’d have more friends and a better support system. I should, I should . . .

Oh, how I remember that first swallow of wine. Relief, I thought. Respite. I didn’t know enough then to realize how false that feeling was, a chemical peace of mind that would turn on me. It silently ran wild in my blood and attacked my best defenses. It was an insidious, habitual process; a sip-by-sip, day-by-day gradual prison built. Once trapped, there was no easily recognizable method of escape. I wandered around, banging against impenetrable walls, no tools to chip away at them, no weapons to fight against this invisible foe.

I have no problem accepting the physical aspect of addiction. I did manage to learn a few things in treatment. I get how the brain becomes addicted to a hit of the pleasure chemical dopamine when certain substances are ingested. Gradually, a tolerance is built to the ingested amount; a person needs more of the substance to get the same pleasurable payoff. I get this. It’s science; it makes sense. I see how it happened with me. Some people’s brains are more easily addicted—our physical chemistry sets us up this way.

What I have a hard time buying into is all the other recovery rhetoric. The admission of powerlessness, the spiritual God crap the Promises staff shoved down my throat the first weeks I was there. Okay, maybe they didn’t shove. Maybe they strongly suggested. They gave me assignments to examine my concept of a power greater than me in the universe and other fluffy, overly emotional garbage. The only way I got through it was to look at these assignments like homework in college—get the work done, do it well, show the instructor I had been paying attention. Use perfect presentation to mask the fact that you find the work you’ve been asked to do totally asinine.

I lie here thinking about this and though I’m exhausted from this day, again, I cannot sleep. Charlie is out cold, his breathing deep and regular, lost to the wild of a little boy’s dreams. I prop my head up with my hand, elbow bent, gazing at my son to try to find my center. His smattering of freckles are perfect pinpoints, minute brown dots above the apples of his cheeks and across the bridge of his button nose. His dark eyelashes are the kind that movie stars pay makeup artists thousands of dollars to create. I reach to stroke the side of his face with the tips of my fingers, the perfect, smooth warmth of his skin. The muscles in his face twitch and I pull my hand back, afraid I will wake him. It is a miracle I had a part in creating him, this gorgeous little being. He is the sole evidence that his father and I once shared something other than acrimony.

He is the reason I can never drink again.

I awake the next morning in my sister’s guest room and Charlie is already gone. A brief sense of panic quickens my pulse, wondering where he is, but then I hear his high-pitched giggle and realize he is already playing in the living room.

“Charlie?” I call out, wanting to hold him again, desperate to make up for lost time. I hear the thwap thwap thwap thwap of his bare feet running down the hall and he rushes back into the room, jumping on the bed next to me.

“Morning, Mommy!” he says, leaning over to give me a kiss on the cheek. His breath is pungent and earthy after skipping his dental hygiene the night before; my mother would have a coronary if she knew I didn’t make him get back out of bed to brush his teeth.

“Morning, monkey,” I say. I try to snuggle him to me, but he wriggles away.

“Marley and Jake and me are going to play in the wrecked room.”

I smile. God, I adore him. “It’s the ‘rec’ room, sweetie. Not ‘wrecked.’ ”

“Oh. That’s what I said.” He leaps back off the bed and is gone in a flash.

I get dressed and proceed to the kitchen where Jess and I sit at the kitchen table, sipping huge mugs of coffee as we watch her husband cook breakfast. Sunday morning means Derek’s fancy-pants pancakes at my sister’s house. He and I are kindred spirits when it comes to food preparation. No boxed mix for this man. He makes them from scratch, doctors them up with vanilla, cinnamon, or lemon. Whatever he has on hand.

I started cooking when I figured out it would please my mother that she didn’t have to. Over the years, I learned that it was a practice that soothed me. Even today, if only for a moment, following a recipe removes me from the prattle led by the chorus of crazies in my head into a world where careful steps taken, measurements made, lead to expected, predictable results. How I wish my life were like this: proper ingredients exposed to the right environment, blossoming into something tantalizing to the senses and easy to digest. Do the right thing, and the right thing should happen. I made a huge mistake, but I did the right thing—I stopped drinking, I’m in treatment. It follows that I should get my child back. It’s driving me out of my mind how little control I have over any of this.

Derek stands in front of the stove now, using a pastry brush to coat the griddle with butter. He rolls up to the balls of his bare feet and bounces to an unheard rhythm, pausing a moment from the task before him in order to conduct an invisible band with his pastry brush. Jess rolls her eyes and laughs.

“Hey, Harry Connick Jr.,” she says, winking at me. “Don’t burn breakfast this time, okay? Our fire alarms are tired of being prodded with a broomstick on Sunday mornings.”

Derek flips around to face her and shakes his pastry brush at her in mock irritation. “Listen, woman,” he warns, the lines around his warm brown eyes crinkling up as he tries, and fails, to keep from smiling. “Don’t start with me. And stop trying to show off in front of your big sister.” His normally well-groomed, salt-and-pepper hair is flipped up in the back: a two-inch alfafa sprout. A small beer belly pushes at his sweatshirt; the weight he gained on par with Jess when she was pregnant with the twins was not as easy to lose as hers. I’m not sure why it is that men can gain twenty pounds and still be considered attractive, but if a woman gains the same, it’s time for a food addiction intervention on Oprah.

“Oh, no,” I say, setting my mug down on the table. “Don’t blame me for her bad behavior. I had enough of that growing up.”

Jess reaches over and smacks me lightly on the top of my thigh. “Hey! You did not. I didn’t have bad behavior when we were growing up.”

I snort. “Yeah, right. I saved your butt on a regular basis with Mom, and you know it. I can’t even count the number of times I took the blame for you. Mom was always mad at me, anyway. It was just easier that way.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jess says, incredulous. “I was sweet and innocent.”

Derek snorts at this one, steps over, puts his meaty hand at the base of her neck, and kisses his wife on the top of her head. “Not even close, honey. I wouldn’t have married you if that were true.” He moves back over to the stove, picks up a ladle, and starts pouring batter onto the griddle. A toasty, sweet scent infused with vanilla bean and lemon zest wafts through the kitchen almost immediately; my stomach growls in response.

Jess grins impishly. “Why was Mom always mad at you?”

I shrug, reach for my coffee again, and take a sip, looking at her over the rim of the mug. “You know why. Because I wasn’t more like you.”

“And how was I?” Jess asks.

“Like her.” I smile at my sister. She knows I’m right about this, though she’ll argue the point. From the time she could tie her shoes, Jess was the kind of child who washed the dishes the minute a meal was over and went about her chores without grumbling. She picked up her toys and put them away when she was done playing. She kept her side of the closet organized by season and color, her dresser drawers were full of neatly folded shirts and perfectly rolled socks. I, on the other hand, much preferred escaping into a good book or spending hours writing in my Holly Hobbie diary to performing any kind of manual labor. Most days, I was lucky to find a clean pair of underwear or a shirt without some kind of telling stain. I spent a lot of my time trying to emulate my younger sister. I tried to be the kind of daughter it was obvious my mother appreciated.

“You’re so organized, Jessica,” my mother was fond of pointing out when we were kids. “What a wonderful quality to have.”

I stood next to my sister, my body erect, my mind alert, primed to hear what wonderful quality my mother thought I possessed. When she said nothing, I solicited a response. “What are mine, Mom?”

“Your what?” she asked. Her mind had already moved on to other things.

“My wonderful qualities.”

“Oh,” she said. “Well, let me see. We can’t all be organized, now, can we? You’re creative. Creative people tend to be messy.”

Our mother also took note of how alike she and my sister were. One of my clearest memories is that of our mother sitting on the couch in our small living room with us both, one on each side of her. I was twelve and Jess was eleven; it was a rare evening Mom was home early from work. I had made spaghetti for dinner.

“Did you like the sauce, Mom?” Jess asked. “Cadee made it, but I added the basil.”

I shot Jess a dirty look for trying to take credit for the work I’d done. Nobody cared about a stupid teaspoon of basil.

She smiled at Jess, tousling my sister’s hair. “My little carbon copy.”

“Am I your carbon copy, too?” I asked, wriggling my way over on the cushions to snuggle more closely with my mom. As the oldest, I came first. I was certain her answer would be yes.

“Oh, sweetie,” she said, wrapping her arm around my shoulders and giving me a quick squeeze. Her fingers smelled pleasantly of garlic. “A person can’t have more than one carbon copy.”

I looked at the floor, then back up at her, forcing a smile. “Whose carbon copy am I, then?”

She paused, assessing me. “My mother’s, I think. You’re starting to look like her.” Her hazel eyes narrowed the slightest bit. “Around the eyes, mostly. She had that wild mop on her head, too.” Both my mother and sister’s hair, though dark like mine, was straight as a board. After months of begging, Mom finally broke down and took me to have mine chemically relaxed. A week later, after all my curls broke off in uneven chunks, I ended up with what the hairdresser mercifully called a pixie style, but more truthfully resembled a marine’s boot-camp buzz cut. This was an undoubtedly sorry look for a chubby adolescent girl.

“Didn’t you say your mother was crazy?” I said. Our mother had dropped enough comments about her mother’s erratic behavior and subsequent hospital stays for me to be curious to learn more. This seemed a perfect opportunity.

“Mm-hmm,” my mother murmured, closing her eyes and leaning over to kiss Jess on top of her head.

“How was she crazy?” I asked, a tiny nugget of fear materializing in my belly.

“She just was,” my mother responded. There was a sharp, irritated edge to her words.

“But how?” I persisted. “What kinds of things did she do?” I didn’t like the look on my mother’s face when she said I reminded her of her mom. I wanted to do everything I could to avoid seeing it again.

“She wandered the neighborhood in the middle of the night in her nightgown,” my mother said with a sigh. “She’d be barefoot, singing show tunes at the top of her lungs. When my father would bring her home and I asked her if she was okay, she picked up her shoes and threw them at me.”

As children, Jess and I had giggled at this image of our grandmother standing in the entryway, chucking a pair of penny loafers at our mother. But a still, small, cold space inside me reserved judgment. I felt sorry for my grandmother. From the bits and pieces of the stories our mother had told us over the years, I gathered that she had been abandoned when she was three years old to be raised by an elderly, distant aunt. She married our grandfather when she was only sixteen and gave birth to our mother less than a year later, losing a lot of blood and her ability to have more children in the process. As our mother told it, throughout her childhood, our grandmother popped in and out of the hospital, the doctors prescribing medication that never seemed to work. While she was gone, our mother became the woman of the house.

“I was cooking my father dinner by the time I was seven,” she told us. Her chin lifted as she spoke. “I learned to be self-reliant a long time ago, girls. You would do well to do the same.” Her father left when she was twelve. Old enough, he said, to sign her mother into the hospital when she needed to be there. He never came back.

As a child, my grandmother’s death—years before I was born—scared me. I was left with no way to confirm whether or not what my mother said about her being crazy was true. I took her at her word. She was my mother; what other choice did I have? I worried that insanity might follow me the way my grandmother’s curly hair and dark, round eyes had. Did instability already flow through my veins? I swallowed my fears, pressing them into a hard ball inside my chest.

The sound of a thin, metal spatula scraping across the griddle snaps my thoughts back to the present. “How’s treatment going?” Derek inquires.

I suck in a breath, set my coffee down. Derek is a salesman; he goes right for the kill, every time. “It’s fine, I guess,” I say, trying to keep my voice even. “But I do feel kind of stupid getting an attendance slip signed at AA meetings.”

“Why do you have to do that?” he asks.

“To verify I showed up. It’s a requirement of the program I’m in. I have to show it to my counselor every week.”

“What about the custody case?” Jess asks. She reaches behind her head to pull her ponytail tighter. “What’s going on with that?”

“I have my first meeting with the guardian ad litem next month. May fifteenth.”

“The guardian ad what-what?” Derek asks, turning around to look at me, his eyebrows scrunched in confusion.

I give him a halfhearted smile. “Guardian ad litem. He’s appointed by the court to make a recommendation for who should have custody. He’s supposed to represent what’s best for the child. Charlie, in this case.” Again, it seems unfathomable to me that I’m sitting here discussing how someone else will decide what’s best for my own son.

“Oh. How exactly does he figure that out?”

I shrug. “By talking to everyone involved, according to my lawyer. Gathering information, looking at all the facts. He’s supposed to be a neutral party.” Though I was uncomfortable about meeting Mr. Hines, I was trying to approach it like a job interview. I’d never interviewed for a job I didn’t end up being offered. I had my mind set that this situation would be no different.

“Are you nervous?” Derek asks, transferring a stack of pancakes onto a platter, then sliding it into the oven to keep our breakfast warm.

“I don’t think ‘nervous’ is strong enough of a word.”

“Why aren’t you meeting with him sooner?” Jess asks.

“My lawyer told me most GALs like to give the emotion of the dispute some time to calm down before they talk with all the people involved. He’s not meeting with Mom until July. I wish we could just get it all over with.” I have no idea what I’m going to do with myself while I wait for these meetings to happen. Hours and days and weeks loom in front of me. Time that used to be filled with my son. What was I going to do now?

Jess sets her coffee down and reaches over to give my arm a reassuring rub. “You’ll do great. Just be honest with him. Be yourself, do what you normally do.”

“You mean I should down a bottle of wine beforehand?” I intend this as a joke, but it falls flat. Neither Derek nor Jess cracks a smile.

“So, how often is Charlie with you?” Jess asks.

“Every other weekend and Wednesday nights for dinner.” Before either Jess or Derek can respond, my cell trills. I reach for my purse to catch the call before it goes to voicemail.

“Hello?” I say, standing up and stepping down the hall toward the living room. I can feel my sister’s eyes on my back.

“Cadence? It’s Laura.” Laura was one of my roommates when I was still an in-patient at Promises Treatment Center, where I ended up after the psych ward. She was a twenty-two-year-old girl with a high IQ and a heroin habit. We shared a mutual passion for chocolate and tacky reality television shows and a similar practice of weeping in the dark.

“Oh, Laura, hey.” It’s strange to have her call me. She isn’t part of this world here, with my sister, my family. It feels oddly intrusive, like an adulterous lover showing up uninvited to a family event. “I missed seeing you at group last week. Are you okay?”

“I guess so,” she says. “I relapsed last week. Didn’t they tell you?”

“No,” I say. “They didn’t. Andi said you were sick.”

She laughs. “That must’ve been what my mom told her, so I wouldn’t lose my place in treatment. I think I get one get-out-of-jail-free card, though. Hopefully, they won’t kick me out.” She pauses. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to shock you.” Another pause, her deep inhale of breath in my ear. “So . . . I’m having a really hard morning.”

I am quiet, not sure what to say to someone who has relapsed on heroin. “Just say no” seems entirely inadequate.

“I really feel like using,” she says. “I want to shoot up.”

“Oh.” I swallow, dropping to the couch, and look out the front window at another sunny spring morning. It’s only ten o’clock and I haven’t even finished my first cup of coffee. It seems a little early to be talking to someone about her desire to stick a needle in her arm. But Andi did say we should call each other if we needed to talk. I just haven’t felt the need to pick up the phone. “Did you? Shoot up, I mean?”

“No. But I didn’t sleep, either. I kept having dreams. Waking up, reaching for the needle I used to keep on the table next to my bed.” She pauses. “Have you had those kinds of dreams?”

“Not of needles. But drinking dreams? Yeah, I have.” I say this quietly, my eyes stealing down the hall to make sure Charlie hasn’t come looking for me in the kitchen. I hear Derek laugh and the sound of silverware tinkling and plates being set on the table. I don’t want Charlie to hear me talk about drinking; I’m afraid he’ll think I haven’t really stopped. I pull my legs up onto the couch and bend them so my heels are jutted up against my backside. I rest my chin on top of one knee.

“Like, what do you dream?” Laura asks, her voice small.

I sigh, softly. “Well, the one I have most is of being in my front yard, trying to cover a hole filled with empty wine bottles with dirt. And there’s not enough dirt. All my neighbors are standing around, watching me, shaking their heads.”

“But you’re not drinking in that dream. You’re just ashamed that people might find out that you did drink like that, right?”

I nod, as though she can see me, then realize she’s waiting for me to answer her. “Yeah, I guess that’s what it means, huh?” I clear my throat. “Are you going to be okay, sweetie?”

“Oh, yeah. Sure. I’ll be fine. Just trying to do what’s suggested, you know? Call someone when you feel weird?”

“Well, I’m glad you did. And I’m really sorry to cut this short, but I need to eat breakfast with Charlie and get him back to my ex-mother-in-law’s house. I’ll see you tomorrow at group?”

“Absolutely. Have fun with Charlie.”

I hang up, unsettled, though I’m not sure why. I tell myself I’ll call her later tonight to make sure she is okay. I’ll offer to take her out to dinner sometime. It’s better than being stuck home all alone.

I take a deep breath and pull myself off the couch. As I’m about to step back down the hallway, there’s a knock at the front door. “I’ll get it!” I call out, reaching for the glass knob and swinging the door open.

My mother stands before me, slender and lovely, in a lavender pantsuit. Her crisp white linen blouse is ironed in perfect lines beneath her jacket. She looks like spring. She regards me, surprised, but manages to rearrange her features into an immediate smile. As a dentist, she is her own best advertisement. Her dazzling, bleached white teeth practically send out a beacon of light twenty feet in every direction. Her hair is newly cut in a chin-length, sleek bob, about three inches shorter than my sister’s. I wouldn’t be surprised if they go to the same stylist.

“Cadence!” she says, stepping in to give me a kiss on the cheek, surely leaving a lipstick mark of perfect pale pink. “I didn’t expect to see you.” She sniffed the air and then crinkled her nose. “Are you wearing perfume?”

“Hi, Mom. Charlie and I spent the night. And it’s a body spray.” Our mother never allowed me or my sister to wear perfume when we were growing up; she told us it gave boys the wrong idea, but we convinced ourselves she was just being strict.

“Ah. Did I tell you I made my office a fragrance-free workplace? There are a lot of people with allergies to any kind of scent, you know.”

“No, I didn’t know that.”

“You’re both here?” She sets her purse down on the entry table. “Where is that wonderful grandson of mine?”

As if on cue, Charlie comes bounding down the hallway. “Nana!” he exclaims, running over to hug my mother’s legs. “What did you bring me?”

“Charlie,” I scold gently. “Watch your manners.”

“It’s all right, Cadence.” My mom pats him on the head. “I didn’t know you were going to be here, darling. So I didn’t bring presents. But here,” she says, reaching over to her purse. “I think I have some quarters.”

“Mom—” I start, but she cuts me off.

“Now, Cadence. Don’t deprive a grandmother the chance to spoil her grandchildren.” She rustles in her wallet, then hands Charlie six quarters. He holds them cupped in his hands like treasure, his eyes bright. “Make sure you give two each to Marley and Jake, as well, dear.”

“I will!” Charlie says, racing back down the hall.

“Charlie, say ‘thank you’!” I call out after him.

“Thanks, Nana!” he says, not looking back. He stops at the top of the basement stairs and hollers, “Marley! Jake! Nana gave us money!”

I laugh, shaking my head. “You always made me work for my allowance, Mom.”

“It’s not my job to teach him responsibility, honey. Children learn by the example of their parents.” She smiles, this time hiding her teeth with closed lips. “It smells wonderful in here. Derek must be making breakfast!”

Jess steps into the living room and comes over to give our mother a hug. “Hi, Mom. You’re early.”

I look at Jess. “You were expecting her?” She hadn’t told me this.

“Not until noon,” Jess says, not meeting my gaze. “We’re going shopping for a new bedroom set for her.”

“Oh. Well.” I keep my voice light. “That’s right when I have to get Charlie back to Alice’s house, anyway.”

“That’s what I figured,” Jess says. She must have planned it this way. She didn’t want me to be hurt that my mother hadn’t thought to ask me or didn’t want me to come along. My mother has only called me twice since I got back from my in-patient stay at Promises. One call was to make sure I got the flowers she sent me in the hospital and another was to ask when she could see Charlie. After much collusion by Jess, she did come to the family counseling session offered by the treatment center; however, once there, she sat with her hands perfectly folded in her lap and didn’t say more than ten words.

“How was the hospital?” she inquired during her first call, before the family session. She asked this in the same tone a person might ask how I enjoyed a trip to Hawaii.

“It was fine, I guess. As psychiatric units go.” I made a noise I intended to be a laugh, but it came out more like a fractured breath. “I guess you were right about me, huh, Mom?”

“How was I right?”

“That I’m like your mother.”

She was quiet. “I have to go now, honey,” she finally said, ignoring my comment. “I have a patient.”

That was the way we left things, the last time we spoke, before seeing her today.

“You never were one for decorating, honey,” she says to me now, as though that conversation had never taken place. “Jess has such a lovely eye for what will work in a particular space. Like what she did with my office. My patients all ask for the name of the design firm I used.” My mother’s office is all glass, chrome, and leather, effectively warmed with lush groupings of tropical plants and thick, luxurious throw rugs. Calm, practically hypnotic melodies are piped in through the sound system; tiny Zen sand gardens rest on every table sitting next to a chair, strategically placed there by my sister to ease the stress of the patients about to have a whirring metal drill pressed against the sensitive nerves of their teeth.

“Yes,” I say, “she’s very talented.”

Derek comes up behind his wife, wrapping his arms around her waist and kissing her on the neck. He looks up at our mother. “Hey, Sharon. Are you staying for breakfast? There’s plenty.”

“Oh, I might have one,” my mother says. “No butter, though.”

“Come on, Mom,” I say, “live a little. Don’t you have any vices?”

“We all have plenty of those, don’t you think?” The carefree tone of her voice doesn’t match the strange cloud in her eyes. A lump forms in my throat and I try to swallow it with a false smile.

“We better eat before the boys devour it all,” Jess says, saving me. I shoot her a grateful look. Charlie comes bounding back down the hallway, runs over to me, and grabs my hand, pulling me back toward the kitchen with him.

“C’mon, Mama. I want you to sit by me and I put the biggest pancake from the stack on your plate for you!”

“With lots of butter, I hope,” I say. I can almost feel my mother’s body tense at those words.

“Yep!” he says. “But I’ll let you pour the syrup.”

“Oh, well, thank you. How generous!” Once again, my heart fills with a sense of gratitude that he seems to have completely forgotten my brief loss of temper the day before. I squeeze his hand, smile at the rest of my family, and let him lead the way.

My family spends over an hour making pleasant chitchat over breakfast. With my mother there, no one brings up what is going on in my life: the psych ward, my internment at Promises, the custody dispute. My humiliating trifecta.

Instead, my mother goes into more detail about her new boyfriend: a pediatric nurse who came in to her office for a root canal and left with our mother’s phone number.

“Geez, Mom,” Jess says. “What do you do to these guys when you have them in the chair?”

“Jessica!” my mother exclaims, setting her fork down on her plate with a clatter. “I am a complete professional with my patients!” Her expression is more pleased than angry, her voice filled with false indignation.

Jess winks at me. “Oh, sure. Okay, Mom. Whatever you say.”

I couldn’t have gotten away with teasing my mother like that. But Jess is the baby. The favorite. The rules are different for her—they always have been. It’s silly for me to expect them to change now.

When I pull up in front of Alice’s house a few minutes before noon, there is an immediate weight in the pit of my stomach at the site of Martin’s car. “Daddy’s here!” Charlie cries out from the backseat.

What’s he doing here? I wonder. It was he who requested that I pick up and bring Charlie back to Alice’s house and not his. Maybe he wants to talk. Maybe he is coming to his senses and wants to work things out with the custody issue. Maybe he’s had a change of heart. I feel my heartbeat quicken with this thought, tiny hopeful seedlings popping up within me. I get out of the car, then help Charlie disengage from his seat belt. He scrambles out the door and toward his grandmother’s house, leaving me to amble behind him.

Martin steps out of the front door, arms crossed over his chest. The skin is dark under his eyes and he hasn’t shaved. He still looks handsome.

I give him what I hope he interprets as a friendly smile. “Hey, there. Where’s Alice?”

“She isn’t feeling well,” he says. The sound of his voice braids my stomach muscles into messy, complicated knots. Why is that? I wonder. I’m not in love with him anymore. I don’t regret the divorce. I suppose it’s the guilt. Or, more likely, the humiliation I feel knowing that he knows exactly how far I’ve fallen.

Charlie launches himself against his father’s legs. “Oof! Careful, there, champ,” Martin says.

Charlie looks up at his father, keeping his skinny arms latched around Martin’s thighs. “Is Omi sick?”

Martin pushes Charlie’s hair back from his forehead and smiles. “Yeah, buddy, she is.”

“What’s wrong?” I take a few more steps so I am standing at the bottom of the stairs. My legs are shaking; I tense them to get them to stop.

Martin pauses, searching my face. “Head inside, okay, Charlie? But don’t bother Omi, you understand? She’s resting in her bedroom.”

“Can I watch television?” Charlie asks hopefully.

“Yes, you may. The Disney Channel only, though. And not too loud.”

“Okay.” Charlie lets go of his father, looks back at me.

I smile at him. “Come give me a hug good-bye, sweetie. I’m going to miss you.”

Charlie rushes back down the steps and leaps into my open arms. I hug him tightly, breathing him in. “You are my best boy, you know that? I love you so much. I am so proud to be your mama.” I don’t know how to go about my life without him, how to let him simply walk away from me like this. It goes against every fiber of my being.

“I know,” he says, dropping back down to the stairs. “ ’Bye, Mama!” The door slams behind him and Martin cringes.

Silence weighs between us. Our eyes are locked on each other. I look away, clearing my throat before speaking again. “Nothing serious, I hope? With Alice, I mean.” I raise my eyes to him again.

Martin shakes his head. “It’s the anniversary,” he finally says.

It takes me a moment, but then it dawns on me what he is talking about. Thirty-three years ago today, Martin’s father was crushed to death on one of his building sites. It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t anybody’s fault. A vital, rusted bolt had snapped and the crane fell. Every year on this day, Alice remains in bed, mourning the loss of her husband. At first, when Martin told me about her ritual, I thought it was a little over the top, but I gradually learned that Alice’s grief was authentic. She loved her husband and one day a year she found a way to honor him. It was sweet, actually. It was one of the few things I liked about her.

When we were married, Martin had the day circled on the calendar in our kitchen. He made no other plans than to be with his mother.

“Really?” I said, the first year he told me he spent this day with her. “The whole day?”

“She needs me,” he explained. At the time, this show of love for his mother endeared him to me. I loved that he was there for her when she needed him so much. I believed he’d be there for me, too.

“Sorry. It’s been a few years,” I say now, reaching out an arm to rest my hand on the black metal railing. I grip it for reassurance. “I forgot what day it was.”

“Yeah, well, it’s hard for her,” Martin says.

“I know,” I say. “I’m sorry she’s having such a hard time. I would have brought Charlie back to your place later, if you had called.”

He shrugs. “Not a big deal. I was here with her anyway.” He looks at me, his blue eyes dimmed by an emotion I can’t read. I used to be able to read every one of his thoughts.

I feel a thousand things. I want to scream. I want to beg him to forgive me. I want to cry. Instead, I take a deep breath and make sure I’m looking him straight in the eye as I softly speak. “It kills me that I’ve hurt him, Martin.”

A muscle beneath his left eye twitches and he blinks, but Martin doesn’t respond. His mouth opens, as if to speak, but then he closes it again.

Andi was right. The tension between us holds an unbearable weight. Even with Charlie inside the house, any more discussion of us, my drinking, or the custody dispute is too dangerous a risk.

“You okay?” I manage to say.

“I’m fine,” he says, and I know it’s not true. I know he carries the bulk of his mother’s grief. He helps her manage it so she doesn’t have to bear the burden alone. There was a time when I would reach out to him, when I would have found a way to offer him comfort. But today, there is no way. Too much sits between us. It’s a distance too vast, far too treacherous for us to cross.