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She did forgive him, in a sense. But she couldn’t forget what he’d done. It would be impossible to look at him from then on and not be reminded of how close they’d come to losing everything.
Whenever she thought about it, she became angry. Tears had long since stopped falling. Now it was bouts of sheer, blinding rage she fought against. After Matt left, her rage started finding its focus on Kevin. And when Kevin was in too much pain to bear her rage, she focused it on herself.
By the time she got Liv tucked into bed—there were protestations because the sun was still up—and pried the iPad from her hands, the familiar nagging sensation of anger had begun to bubble up inside her again.
What was Matt thinking, getting a nine-year-old such an ostentatious gift? Clearly he was overcompensating for what a dismal father he’d been and continued to be, but now Alice looked like the cheapskate parent.
She was pissed at Matt for being…well, for being Matt. And she was mad at Kevin because he was so mired down in his own hopelessness he’d forgotten how to behave like a human. In turn, he was starting to drag her down too. The honest truth of it was Alice was terrified if she didn’t find something to buoy her to the surface, she was going to sink to the bottom, and soon she wouldn’t know how to find the easy joy in life the way she once had.
Sitting down at the table, she stared at the empty space of her kitchen, motes of dust floating in the air to remind her how long it had been since the house had had a proper cleaning. There were still dishes in the sink from days earlier, with a crust of food on them that would need a lot of elbow grease to scrub clean.
For a good ten minutes she sat motionless, assessing the damage her absence had done. A mental list of calls piled up in her mind, and the menial household chores she and Kevin typically split up that would now need to be done by her alone. Even basic things like taking the garbage out—easy stuff she tended to make Olivia do—would fall to her for the time being.
When the list got so long it defied mental tabulation, Alice stared at the fridge. Inside was a half-full bottle of cabernet that was practically beckoning to her. She could let herself have some. Sit at the table and drink the remainder, and send herself to bed in a half-woozy state. She’d surely wake with a nasty wine hangover, but maybe it would be worth it to have a nice feeling of fluttery nothingness for a few hours.
She got the wine out and poured some into a glass, resisting the urge to empty the contents into one of her big-bowled red wine goblets and drink it all in one sitting. She stared at the glass as the coolness of the liquid made condensation fan out over the surface.
Who drank cold red wine?
She did the dishes, leaving the full glass untouched.
Do this and you can have it.
An hour later the wine had warmed to room temperature. Alice had cleaned the kitchen, dumping out the rotten produce that had accumulated during the week. She threw in a load of laundry and made the bed in Kevin’s bedroom, smoothing out the sheets and fluffing the pillows to give the space a welcoming quality when he came back.
When all that remained was the vacuuming, which would wake Liv, she sat back at the table with the tepid wine in hand.
Now.
Instead she pulled out her phone and called Alex. She hadn’t thought about doing it until the phone was already in her hand. His name, so thoughtful in its alphabetical orientation, was among the first to greet her in the contact list. The line was ringing before she had a chance to hesitate or second-guess the gesture.
Only when he answered did she take her first sip from the glass. “I’m home,” she informed him.
“I’m on my way.”
It had begun to rain by the time Alex pulled into her driveway, the early evening made darker from the presence of the looming clouds. Though the blue Sierra truck was unfamiliar, she knew it had to be him.
Waiting in the doorway, she watched as he ran from the driver’s side through the sheets of cold rain and up her front steps. In spite of the short distance, he was still soaked by the time he came through the front door.
Something about him being there, coming so quickly, and the way his skin and hair glistened in the dim hallway light, made Alice keenly aware of him. The smell that made him distinctly Alex was lost in the rain, but he seemed much bigger and more real than she remembered him.
He was the kind of thing that could keep someone anchored.
She reached out and touched him. The gesture wasn’t meant to be a come-on. She only wanted to know if he was real, like any moment he might vanish into the ether, leaving her in the deathly quiet of the house, alone with her miserable thoughts.
Her first instinct when he proved to be tangible was to start crying. Yet the tears wouldn’t come. It was possible the trials of the last several days had bled her dry, leaving her with nothing more to come out.
“You’re here,” she said instead.
“Of course.”
“You’re really, really here?” Her hand was still on his chest, the dampness of his shirt under her palm creating a bizarre adhesive that wouldn’t let her release him.
“Did you think I wouldn’t come?”
She shook her head, not sure what she’d expected at all. It was hard for her to believe he was standing in her hallway again, when he was supposed to be on the opposite side of the country. They were never meant to be back in such close quarters like this. She’d written him off, told herself nothing would come of it and not to waste foolish hope on a guy like him.
A guy like him.
