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“I’m just curious.”
“Her name was Beth.”
“Beth?”
“Someone from his work, I think.”
“And is it over with Beth?”
“Jesus, Summer. What are you saying? Of course it’s over.”
She tilts her head at me. “It doesn’t worry you? That he had an affair?”
“No! It doesn’t worry me! He wasn’t with me back then. It’s ancient history.”
She nods, like she gets my point. “Whatever you say, boss. I’ll see you at work.”
TWENTY-ONE
The rest of the weekend passes in a cloud of misery. I didn’t tell Jack that I knew he’d kissed Summer and yet, obviously, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I convinced myself it didn’t matter because it was about putting Bronwyn off, but technically it was me he was engaged to, so it was me he was being unfaithful to, if you’d count a kiss as unfaithful. Which I would, I think. But I didn’t confront him about it.You’re such a pushover, Laura. Total wet blanket.Instead, I slammed doors in his face—but not too loudly so as not to upset Charlie—and pretended to be angry because when I told him what Bronwyn had done, he didn’t believe me. Although I was angry about that too.
“Don’t you know,” I said, “how sick she is? She’s not right in the head, Jack!” I kept stabbing at my temple with my finger, vaguely aware I was the one looking not right in the head but unable to stop.
He took my wrists and held them tight. “You have to stop getting so uptight, Laura.”
“Are you serious? She brought a pony to the birthday party and pretended it was a gift!”
“It was just a misunderstanding!”
“Yeah. right.” I snorted. “I’m just trying to get through—”
I didn’t hear the rest. I walked out, slamming—sort of—the door again. But Charlie wouldn’t speak to me. At all. She wouldn’t speak to Jack either, but he wasn’t trying very hard. She spent the rest of the weekend sobbing on her bed, her face in her pillow, wailing forTallulah!and it was all I could do not to kill Bronwyn. Bronwyn, of course, was fine. She lolled about the place, drinking G&Ts and eating ice cream straight out of the tub.
“This is your fault,” I hissed into her face. “So you have to do something to help her. Go and explain, go and say something, anything, just make her feel better.”
“Okay,” she said simply. “I’ll do it.”
I gnawed at a fingernail as I contemplated how easy it would be to strangle her. I could do it right here, right now. I was so tempted I had to shove my hands deep down in my pockets. She walked out and I heard her going up the stairs. “Mommy’s here, Charlotte, it’s all right. Mommy will make it all better.” And I rolled my eyes so far up my head they were in danger of leaving their sockets all together and bouncing around the floorboards. I waited a few minutes and hurried silently behind her, then spied on them through a gap in the door. They were lying on Charlie’s bed, Bronwyn with her arm around Charlie’s shoulders, awkwardly, like she’d never done it before and she didn’t know how, while Charlie sobbed into her armpit. Bronwyn glanced up at me and I understood then that she knew all along I would be watching, and that was why she left the door ajar.
“You don’t need to worry about Laura, Charlotte. Just ignore her. We all do.” And honestly, at this point, a part of me wished her and Jack would get on it and just put me out of my misery. I mean, they shoot horses, don’t they?
No one was hungry after a day of party food and birthday cake and misery, so everyone made their own sandwiches. I made one for Charlie—peanut butter and jelly, her favorite—with a cup of hot chocolate and brought it upstairs, knocked on her door.
“I don’t like you anymore. Go away.”
I bit the inside of my mouth, told her about the sandwich and left it outside her room. She never ate it. In the kitchen, someone had left the tub of vanilla ice cream on the counter. Bronwyn, obviously, probably after she licked a spoon dipped in it, which is the maximum amount she’ll allow herself. I shoved the tub back in the freezer and was about to close it when something caught my eye: a small white triangle of paper sticking out between the frozen peas and an old store-bought cheesecake. I tugged at it, unfolded it, smoothed it out against my thigh.
In large capital letters, the word,MAMA, had been scrawled in blue sharpie, then crossed out with one single line through it, and beneath that, in the same childish handwriting, same blue sharpie, the word,LAURA.
* * *
But then, a miracle. Charlie comes downstairs to ask Bronwyn if she could help with her math homework.
“What, now?” Bronwyn replies.
“Miss Lee says I have to practice divisions because I missed the class,” she says. Her tone has turned whiny. I peer around the corner and through the gap in the door, I catch sight of Bronwyn scrolling on her phone. She looks up at me and steps back. “Charlotte, I’m busy. Ask Laura to do it.”
Oh God. Yes, please. Thank you, Miss Lee.
