Gage’s blanky.
Stella let out a low, strangled sob and pressed the soft blanket to her face. Shoulders shaking, she wept broken glass and razor blades. She sank to the floor and rocked with it against her for a long time.
She hadn’t seen this blanket in...years. Long, long years. The last time she could remember seeing it, it had been in Gage’s bed beneath his pillow where he kept it even though he’d outgrown the need to take it with him everywhere long before.
Months ago, she’d found a soft stuffed baby that used to be a favorite toy of Gage’s in Tristan’s bed. She’d pushed aside her discomfort at the time, but this...this... It meant that Tristan was repeatedly going into Gage’s room. The room that had been closed since she’d lost him, her brilliant boy, her firstborn. Tristan was going into Gage’s room and touching things. Taking them. How many things had he stolen?
Stella tossed the mattress, dumped the drawers, dug into the back of Tristan’s closet to pull out crates and boxes of old school papers and keepsakes. She texted him every five minutes, getting no reply, until finally she stopped in the middle of the chaos. Panting, weeping, she gathered up all of Gage’s things—his blanky, his baby, the small clothes. The photos. She took them all from Tristan’s room and stood in front of Gage’s closed door, but could not make herself open it.
Grief swelled and tore at her, making her shake.
Stella pressed her forehead to the painted wood. She put her hand on the knob but didn’t turn it.
Earlier she’d given herself a pep talk to convince herself that not only did she have the right to search her son’s room, but she had the responsibility to do it. Now there was nothing she could do to make herself open the door. It had been closed for too long. She couldn’t bring herself to go inside and see how everything had been left unchanged, minus the things Tristan had taken. Everything but their entire lives.
She took Gage’s things and put them in an empty cardboard boot box she pulled from the top rack of her closet. A noise in the hall outside drew her attention; on unsteady feet and with swollen eyes, she opened her bedroom door to find Tristan standing in the hall, staring into his room.
His face, pale but for two bright red spots on his cheeks, swung toward her.
“What the hell did you do?” he cried.
Mandy paused on the stairs, not daring to come up any higher. Tristan backed away from his mother, shaking his head. Stella came out of her bedroom, aware too late that she needed the support of the doorframe to keep her from stumbling.
“Your room was a mess,” she told him. “And you didn’t call me like I told you to! I texted and texted you! You’re in big trouble, young man!”
Too late, she noticed the other couple of kids behind Mandy, all of them giving each other guilty-eyed glances. Tristan gave her a look of such horror, such disgust, that Stella had to back up a step.
“You’re...drunk,” Tristan said. “I didn’t text you because you said we could come back here, so that’s what we were doing.... But I’m out of here! You trashed my room! You trashed my stuff! What were you doing in my room, Mom?”
“Looking for cigarettes!” she cried, triumphant at the instant look of guilt and chagrin on his face. “Did you think I wouldn’t notice that you stole mine from the dresser?”
Tristan looked so blank-faced for a moment that she was sure she’d been wrong. Then his expression twisted. Full of disdain.
“I stole those, like, forever ago.” He looked so much like Jeff right now that it kind of made her want to puke.
Stella looked past him, to his shuffling, embarrassed friends. She was drunk, she realized. The floor beneath her was tipping, tilting, and she reached for the doorframe to steady herself.
“Your friends should go home now, Tristan. We have some things we need to talk about.”
Shaking his head, he backed away from her. Down the stairs. “I’m outta here.”
“What? Wait a minute—”
But he was already at the bottom of the stairs, and though Stella would’ve said that there was no way a single one of those teenagers could’ve moved without footsteps of thunder, the four of them were almost completely silent as they left.
“Where are you going?”
“Dad’s,” Tristan shot back, voice already faint and distant and disappearing.
The front door slammed shut. Stella sank onto the top step and put her face in her hands. She ought to have stopped him. Right? Gone after him? But she’d been unable to make herself. Let Jeff deal with him, she thought, swallowing convulsively. Let his father handle it for a while.
She needed to lie down. Or take a shower. Her stomach was churning. She could see Gage’s closed door from where she sat. She could see it when she closed her eyes.
How long had Tristan been going inside, helping himself to his brother’s things? And what should she do about it? Stella shuddered, suddenly chilled.
She forced herself to her feet, swaying, nearly taking a tumble down the stairs before she caught herself on the railing. In her bedroom, she looked at the spatter of wine on the bedspread and thought about pulling it off to put in the wash before the stain could set, but the best she could manage was to pull it to the foot of the bed, where it stuck from being tucked beneath the mattress.
Stella sank, sank, sitting with her back to the edge of the bed and her knees pulled up. She pulled out her phone, opened the Kik app. Typed. Matthew. I need you.
D, D, D... Minutes passed while Stella let her head fall onto her knees. Tears burned and choked her. When she looked again after ten or so minutes had passed, the D had become an R, but Matthew had not replied.
She dialed his number this time. She listened to it ring, twice, then got his voice mail, which meant that he hadn’t missed the call. That would’ve taken at least six rings. No, he’d sent it directly to voice mail. On purpose.
“Matthew, please call me. I’m having a really rough night. I had a fight with Tristan, and...” She drew in a breath. “I found out he’s been smoking, and he stole some things...from Gage’s room.”
The weight of Gage’s name pushed her to silence after that. She breathed into the phone, eyes closed, knowing this wasn’t like the days when someone could hear a voice on an answering machine and choose to pick up a call they’d previously been ignoring. She could wait forever, and Matthew wasn’t going to pick up this call.
“Please call me back,” she whispered. “I hope Louisa’s feeling better. I need to talk to you. Please.”
Stella disconnected the call and put her phone in the alarm clock dock. She dragged herself to the shower, which she ran hot enough to scald. She lay on the shower floor with the water pounding all over her.
Her grief rose and slaughtered her.
And when the shower ran cold, she let the needle-prick of the frigid water abuse her while she shivered and twitched, until finally her head cleared and she forced herself to get out. Wrapped in her thick robe, towel on her hair, Stella went to her bed. She pulled back the covers and got underneath them, still shuddering with cold. She looked at her phone, but there were no messages.
Eventually, she slept.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Matthew didn’t call her back or even Kik her until four o’clock on Saturday. The Kik came through while Stella was busy folding all the sheets and towels she’d collected and washed from Tristan’s room, and at first, she didn’t even reach to pull her phone from the dock where it had been since the night before. She could see the alert message from where she stood on the other side of the bed, but even if she’d been unable, she knew it was from him—Matthew was the only one who ever Kik’d her.
She’d woken earlier than normal for a Saturday in which she had no plans. Clearheaded, not hungover, but wide awake just the same. She’d spent the morning stripping her bed and Trista
n’s, gathering all the laundry and working on getting the stain out of her comforter. It had faded to a pale pink, but she was never going to be rid of it. That’s what happened with stains; they were reminders of the mistakes you’d rather forget.
She hadn’t heard from Tristan at all, though she’d put a call in to Jeff to make sure their son had indeed gone to his father’s house. Cynthia had left a message while Stella was in the shower that Tristan was there, that he was fine and he could stay as long as he wanted. Stella had not returned Cynthia’s well-meaning but slightly bewildered call. Stella needed to talk to Jeff about everything, and much like with the night before in which she’d known what she ought to do about her son but had been incapable of making herself do it, all Stella could do was listen to the answering machine and delete the message.
Her phone booped a few minutes later as she was fitting her pillow into a new case, and because she was standing next to her nightstand, she took the phone from the dock. She swiped the screen, bringing up the app and the messages Matthew had sent. As she read them, Stella’s lip curled.
Hi.
Then, later, Louisa’s fine. Fever gone. We passed up the birthday parties for movies at home all day.
He would be able to see that she’d read the messages, just as she could see when he did, and Stella strongly considered not replying—except that she refused to play those stupid games, wouldn’t be the woman who held herself hostage for spite. She sat on the edge of the bed. Her fingers moved over the phone’s keyboard.
Good, she typed. I’m glad she’s feeling better. Sorry you’re missing the birthday party madness.
D became R, but Matthew didn’t answer.
“Fuck you,” Stella said aloud. “Fuck you so much.”
Sunday, she kept herself busy catching up on the miscellany of household chores she always put off. Dusting the baseboards, washing curtains. Spring cleaning. It was the sort of work that should’ve left her feeling content at finishing it, but by six o’clock, all she felt was grimy, exhausted and pissed off. She reheated leftover chicken and ate it at the kitchen table while she read, which was at last enough to soothe her jangled nerves.
By seven, she’d cleared away her dishes and wiped down the kitchen table and counters, and taken her book upstairs to read in bed. Fresh sheets, the scent of the lavender she’d sprinkled on her pillow, clean pajamas. Soft music playing from her phone in its place on the speaker dock. It was a perfect Sunday evening alone, Stella told herself, though she couldn’t stop herself from looking at the clock every few minutes, noting the passage of time.
The girls would be home with Caroline by now. And yet her phone didn’t ring. Didn’t ping or boop or buzz. Eventually, she was able to lose herself in the powerful words of Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale, a classic and one of Stella’s favorites.
The message was waiting for her when she came back from the bathroom, where she’d gone to empty her bladder one last time before going to sleep. She hadn’t heard the Kik come in, but she caught the flash of her phone’s lit screen, showcasing the alert. A minute later and she’d have missed it.... But she knew better than that. She’d have checked her phone one last time before turning out her light anyway.
You awake?
It would’ve been easy enough for her to ignore it. Easier than answering, anyway, because by now she’d become convinced that no matter how their conversation began, it was going to end in an argument. But again, Stella didn’t want to play those sorts of games, making him guess at her mood, biting her tongue to keep the peace. She’d spent too long with Jeff in that sort of back-and-forth, passive-aggressive battle. She refused to do it again.
For another few minutes, she replied. I’m in bed.
Video?
Automatically, she considered her appearance. No makeup, hair a mess, dressed in pajamas. Not exactly her best look. Still, it had been days since she’d seen his face. How could she say no? Sure.
A moment later, Matthew’s face appeared on her phone. She wished she’d taken the time to have him call her on her laptop, where at least his face would be bigger.
“Hi,” he said at once.
“Hi.”
Matthew was also in bed. He sat propped against his headboard on a mound of pillows. Everything about him looked good.
“Busy weekend,” he said after a moment when Stella didn’t speak. “I’m wiped out.”
“I bet. How’s Louisa?”
“She’s fine. Had a fever of a hundred, that’s all. The Tylenol brought it down.”
A hundred was barely a fever, as far as Stella was concerned—her boys had always suffered with outrageously high fevers when they came down with colds. One hundred and three wasn’t uncommon. But, she reminded herself, Matthew hadn’t been raised by a nurse the way she had. Lots of parents overreacted to their kids being sick.
“But Beatrice, she was kind of out of control. Superhyper,” Matthew said. “She was upset that we decided not to go to the birthday parties, so she was really acting up. Caroline had to send her to time-out three times.”
Silence.
His expression, small as it was held captive in the tiny rectangle of her phone screen, nevertheless showed her that he knew he’d fucked up.
“Caroline,” Stella said into the awkwardness.
“Yeah...she came over to bring the inhaler and the Tylenol...” Matthew paused. “I told you.”
Stella kept her face as neutral as possible. “Uh-huh.”
“And then when we decided it would be too much for Louisa to go to the parties, and we were going to stay home, she just hung out to watch movies. That’s all,” he added, too quickly. Sounding too defensive.
“Why didn’t Caroline take Beatrice to the party while you stayed with Louisa, since it was your weekend to be the primary caregiver?” Stella asked in what she hoped was an entirely reasonable tone of voice. It didn’t feel reasonable. It kind of felt like barbed wire slashing at her throat and gums and tongue. “Or why didn’t she take Louisa home, if that would’ve made her feel better? Then you could’ve taken Beatrice to the parties.”
Matthew didn’t say anything. His mouth twisted. She watched his face work, as though he were trying hard to think of something rational to say, but failed. “It was my weekend to have them,” he said finally. “My responsibility. I couldn’t just pawn them off on her.”
“But you did, didn’t you?” Stella swallowed the bitterness she wished she could get past. “And I bet Caroline was right there, wasn’t she? Ready to help out.”
“She’s their mother,” Matthew said, stone-faced. “Of course she was.”
“And she’s not married to you anymore,” Stella told him. “Yet she’s still your wife.”
She disconnected the call.
Her phone rang a minute after that. She thought about sending it to voice mail, but answered it instead. Braced herself for Matthew’s anger—ready to own her words. They’d been bitchy, yes. But true.
“I’m sorry,” he said, surprising her. “I was worried about Louisa. That’s all. I didn’t know what to do.”
“I told you what to do. Take her temp. Give her Tylenol. Let her rest.”
Matthew huffed into the phone. “I was anxious about it, okay? Caroline’s the one who always takes care of them when they’re sick. She handles it much better than I do.”
“You know you’re not incompetent, right? Even if she makes you feel that way?”
“She doesn’t—”
“Caroline could’ve dropped off the inhaler and the Tylenol and gone home.” Stella paused to keep herself from launching into a full-on bitch attack. “But I bet she didn’t. Did she?”
Matthew coughed. “Stella...”
“How was the couch?”
“Hard on my back.”
She snorted laugh
ter. “Uh-huh.”
“It got late,” he said defensively. “What was I supposed to do? Tell her she had to go home?”
“Yes!” Stella cried so loud her voice echoed in the phone’s speaker. “Goddammit, Matthew. Yes. You were supposed to tell her she should go home, and you were supposed to take care of your girls like the competent and capable dad I know you are. And you were supposed to call me. You were supposed to be here,” she added, voice breaking. “I needed you.”
More silence. This time it stretched on and on, beyond awkwardness. Stella drew in a sobbing breath, hating that she was giving him this.
“Nothing happened with me and Caroline,” he said quietly.
Stella’s laugh hurt her throat. “You think that’s what this is about?”
“Isn’t it?”
“No,” she told him. “But should I be upset that you completely ignored me when I needed you?”
“You knew I was with my kids. You know they keep me busy, that they’re my priority....”
“I needed you,” Stella repeated. “I was having a really hard time.”
“How was I supposed to know that?”
She didn’t know how to answer that, at first. “You didn’t listen to my message?”
“No... I just thought you were calling me to say good-night or something. But I told you I’d try to call you,” he added hastily. “I just didn’t have a chance, so I figured you were—”
“What? Checking up on you? Desperate?” He didn’t answer, and Stella went on. “I am not Caroline.”