AllFreeNovel
Share Us
We spend time with sea otters, then walk through to the underwater dome for a bit of shark spotting, where Charlie tells me that sharks have cartilage instead of bones and did I know that they have eyelids and that they can only swim forward? Then she hugs me, suddenly, her face buried against my belly.
“I love you, Mama.”
“I love you too, sweetie.” I kiss the top of her head.
Outside, we walk to a bench on the waterfront. She leans against me and I put my arm around her.
“Mommy might not be staying with us much longer,” I say.
She looks up abruptly. “Why?”
“No reason. She’s looking for a house to move into. She’ll still be close by.”
“Does that mean you’re not leaving us?”
“Leaving you? No! Who told you that?”
But then I remember with a twist in my heart that it’s me who said that, after the incident with the pony.
“No! I’m never leaving you, Charlie! Never!”
“You promise?”
“I promise,” I say. I promise fifty times. She puts her arms around my neck and stays there a while. Then she tells me on the way home that Mommy doesn’t like her. It sends a stab of pain into my heart.
“Why do you think that?”
She shrugs. “She’s always angry with me.”
“What do you mean?”
It comes in spurts. The myriads of ways Bronwyn is annoyed, or disapproving, or outright hostile. It’s because Charlie is too slow, too messy, she doesn’t take care of her new expensive clothes. She likes the wrong things.
Just a couple more days, I whisper. We just have to hang in there until Wednesday and then it will be over.
I don’t tell Jack what Charlie told me. Later, I will wonder why I didn’t because if I had, everything would have turned out differently. But in this moment, I am afraid he won’t believe her either.
Later that afternoon, Jack and Charlie sit at the dining room table and finish the urban wildlife monitoring project. Whatever that is.
At least the dining room table is clean again, so there’s that.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Monday. Jack got up before dawn to catch his flight to the conference in Portland. I watched him from the bed as he got ready and I could tell how excited he was, in spite of the weirdness of the last few days.
He kissed me on the way out. “My flight back lands just before nine tonight. I should be home by nine thirty. I love you.” And he was gone.
* * *
Just one more day.That’s what I tell myself all the way to the gallery. It’s Summer’s day off, so I’m by myself today. I spend the day catching up on all the work I should have been doing the past few days. After lunch I text Bronwyn, tell her I’m picking up Charlie. She doesn’t text back.
I almost expect to see her at the school gates, but she’s not there. Erin is there, though. She’s talking to a woman I recognize, another mother. They shoot me odd looks and it occurs to me they’ve never been welcoming, and I wonder what lies Bronwyn has spread about me. Then Erin comes over to say hi.
“Oh God, Laura. Honey. I’m so sorry. I should have called. You okay?”
For a moment I don’t know what to say. “Why do you ask that?”
She leans closer. “Bronwyn told me about you and Jack. I didn’t want to sound like I was prying…”
