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“Everly, I’m so sorry, sweetie, but you have to believe me. It was an accident. I would never…I never…”
I glanced at the bottle on her bedside table. It was half full.
“You’re lying,” I spat. “You’re lying to me. I’m not Isaac. I’m not some little kid who will just believe whatever you tell me. Not anymore.” I grabbed the bottle off her table and held it up high. “Since when do you take sleeping pills? Since when do you…since when do you take a few too many?” But I could barely finish my sentence, because my throat was closed up tight, so full of emotion and hurt and fear that I was nearly choking on it.
What is happening to my family?
“Don’t tell anyone,” she said, her voice breaking. “Please, no one can know.”
Something was so wrong about the way this conversation was going. I was the kid here. Me. Seventeen years old. Since when did my mom beg me not to tell on her? When did that happen?
“Everly, please…”
“Why?” That knot in my throat loosened up, and suddenly the tidal wave inside rolled over and over until
there was no stopping it. “Why are we hiding? Why are we pretending that everything is freaking A-OK in this house?” I took a step back. “Jesus, it’s exhausting!”
My mom looked shocked, and I guess she should be. I’d never spoken to her like this before, but then again, I’d never scraped her up off the floor either.
“Everly.” Her voice was stronger now. “I’ve already told you that it was an accident. I…I had trouble sleeping last night—”
“Trouble sleeping? Since when? Since Dad started sleeping in his office?”
Again, my mom looked shocked, which was ridiculous. What kind of bubble was she living in? Didn’t she think I’d notice the blankets and pillow in his office?
“Your father and I are having a rough patch, but we’re working things out.”
Her face was blank. She’d found the mask she’d discarded last night, and she was firmly back in her camp of denial.
I thought of that conversation I’d heard a year ago. The conversation I’d been trying to unhear ever since. And I thought about all of his trips to the city, all the times he was away.
I looked at the sad and lonely woman before me and I just lost it.
“Taking too many pills isn’t working things out. Dad going to the city all the time and doing whatever it is that he’s doing there isn’t working things out. Lying to me, lying to Isaac, to your friends, and to God? That’s not working things out. But the most pathetic thing of all is that lying to yourself sucks way worse than everything else. How can you think he’s working things out? He’s screwing around on you, Mom! He’s in love with someone else!”
Her eyes were as wide as saucers, with papery thin smudges of blue beneath them. “Why would you… How can you…”
“Does it really matter?” I spat, tossing the capsule bottle onto the bed where it landed with a thud and then rolled onto the floor, spilling the remnants of the pills. I watched them roll away, under the bed, like little insects scurrying for cover.
I’m not sure how many seconds or minutes ticked by, but when I glanced up, my mother’s face kind of crumpled in on itself. She blew out a long breath, smoothed her hair back, and spoke so quietly, at first I wasn’t sure I’d heard her.
“I know about…about your father.”
My jaw dropped. Like literally dropped open. She knew? I hadn’t seen that one coming, and her admission became this heavy, meaty thing that punched me in the gut so hard I could barely breathe.
She knew. All this time I’d held this secret close because of her and Isaac…and she’d known all along.
“But it’s so much more complicated than you know. There are things…there are things between him and me, and we just need some more time.”
“You need more time,” I said numbly. “Wow.”
She was crying again, but there were no tears inside me. No need to comfort. There was nothing but that heavy, meaty thing, and it was cold and sharp and black.
Hands clasped over my mouth, I stared at my mother, hating myself for knowing. Hating her for knowing.
But most of all, I hated my father for letting us find out.
Chapter Fifteen
