It Starts with Us: A Novel (2) (It Ends with Us)

I called Sutton after I dropped Josh off at my house and asked her to meet me at Bib’s. I got here an hour before we agreed to meet. I’ve never cooked for her, so I’m hoping my making her a meal does something to her. Pleases her, puts her in a decent mood. Anything to make her less combative.

My phone pings, so I step away from the stove and look at the screen. I told her to text me when she arrived so I could let her in. She’s five minutes early.

I walk through the dark restaurant and flip on some lights on my way through. She’s standing near the front, smoking a cigarette. When she sees the door open, she flicks the cigarette into the street and then follows me inside.

“Is Josh here?” she asks.

“No. It’s just me and you.” I gesture toward a table. “Have a seat. What do you want to drink?”

She regards me silently for a moment, then says, “Red wine. Whatever you have open.” She takes a seat in a booth, and I head back to plate our food. I made coconut shrimp because I know it’s her favorite. I saw her fall in love with it when I was nine years old.

It was on the one and only road trip she took me on. We went to Cape Cod, which isn’t all that far from Boston, but it’s the only time I remember my mother ever doing something with me on a day off. She usually slept or drank her way through her days off, so the day trip to Cape Cod where we tried coconut shrimp for the first time is not something that went unappreciated by me.

I place our plates and drinks on a tray and walk it out to the table she’s seated at. I set the food and wine in front of her, then take a seat across from her. I slide silverware to her side of the table.

She stares at her plate for a beat. “You cooked this?”

“I did. It’s coconut shrimp.”

“What’s the occasion?” she asks, opening her napkin. “Is this an apology for assuming you could actually parent a kid like him?” She laughs like she told a joke, but the lack of noise in the restaurant makes her laugh fall flat. She shakes her head and picks up her glass of wine, sipping from it.

I know she has twelve years on me with Josh, but I’m willing to bet I already know him better than she does. Josh probably knows me better than she knows me, and I lived with her for seventeen years. “What was my favorite food growing up?” I ask her.

She stares back at me blankly.

Maybe that was a tough one. “Okay. What about my favorite movie?” Nothing. “Color? Music?” I give her a few more, hoping she can answer at least one of them.

She can’t. She shrugs, setting down her wineglass.

“What kind of books does Josh like to read?”

“Is that a trick question?” she asks.

I settle back against the booth, attempting to hide my agitation, but it’s living and breathing in every part of me. “You don’t know anything about the people you brought into this world.”

“I was a single mother to both of you, Atlas. I didn’t have time to worry about what you liked to read when I was busy trying to survive.” She drops the fork she was about to use. “Jesus Christ.”

“I didn’t ask you to come here so I could make you feel bad,” I say. I take a sip of my water, and then run my finger around the rim of my glass. “I don’t even need an apology. Neither does he.” I look at her pointedly, shocked that I’m about to say what I’m about to say. It’s not what I came here to say to her at all, but the things I selfishly came here for aren’t what’s nagging at me. “I want to give you an opportunity to be a better mother to him.”

“Maybe the issue is that he should be a better son.”

“He’s twelve. He’s as good as he needs to be. Besides, the relationship you have with him isn’t his responsibility.”

She scratches her cheek and then flicks a hand in the air. “What is this? Why am I here? Do you want me to take him back because he’s too much for you to handle?”

“Not even close,” I say. “I want you to sign your rights over to me. If you don’t, I’ll take you to court, and it’ll cost us both a ridiculous amount of money that neither of us wants to pay. But I’ll pay it. If that’s what it takes, I will drag this in front of a judge, who will take one look at your history and force you to undergo a year of parenting classes that we both know you have no interesting in completing.” I lean forward, folding my arms together. “I want legal custody of him, but I’m not asking you to disappear. I don’t want you to. The last thing I want is for that boy to grow up feeling as unloved by you as I felt.”

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.