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“I won’t. But he’d be surprised if he ate it and got as strong as you are.”
“I am strong!”
“You’re the strongest boy I know,” Sandra said.
The sun rising angled perfectly into the house, the light-filled kitchen inspiring her. She sat at the table while he ate. This would be the first summer that they’d be home together. He was just getting interesting, too. His little sense of humor was developing.
He rolled up his pajama top and made a muscle. “Did my dad have muscles?”
“He did,” Sandra said, thinking she’d better get some photos of Brent for little Brent.
Then the reality that there wasn’t one photo of her and Brent together struck. She’d get some from Pam and have someone photoshop her into the pictures. She’d do it for her son.
“Oh my god,” she muttered. “Am I going to stoop to lying about that, too?” And then she answered, “Yes.”
Wednesday morning, Pam woke up with the worst hangover she’d had in years. The small amount of sun coming in a crack in the drapery hurt her eyes. Stumbling to the bathroom, she avoided looking in the mirror. Wanting nothing more than to be in her house alone, she sent Hocus a text to please take the day off and use the outside entrance to her apartment rather than coming through the house.
Okay,she answered.I hope you’re okay.
Pam replied, I’ll live.
After showering, which didn’t help, she pulled her hair into a bun, brushed her teeth, and went out into the public rooms of the house. The veranda smelled like a brewery, at least a dozen beer bottles on the table and around the floor, her empty wine bottle and disgusting glass covered with greasy fingerprints a testimony to her behavior. The smell from an overflowing ashtray with the remnants of a cigar made her gorge rise.
“You’re a pig,” she mumbled, carrying the offensive item out to the trashcans for disposal.
Her phone rang.
“Are you alive?”
“Oh god, don’t call me again, please!”
She hung up on Dan. Quickly taking the bottles out to the recycling at the side of the house, she needed all evidence hidden from her own eyes so she could get on with the day, doing what, she didn’t know. Pretending she was the caring grandmother wouldn’t even cut it.
Going through the mudroom to get back into the house, she heard the doorbell ring. “Oh jeez, who the hell is that?”
She marched through the foyer to the front door and saw Dan, looking worse for wear, through the sidelights.
“Will you leave me the hell alone?”
“No. Can you fix me coffee? My power is out.”
“Oh bull. Go to Adam’s and get coffee.”
“I can’t because Lily is there. I got a text from Lisa this morning that Lily told her she knows Ryan is Madelyn’s father.”
Standing aside, Pam waved him in, her head pounding.
“What does this have to do with me?” she asked. “Ryan’s not my kid, remember? He just acts like he is.”
“I’m sorry about last night.”
“No, you’re not. You’re tormenting me because you can. I’m so sick of this crap.”
Back in the kitchen, she got the coffee beans out, the smell nauseating as she emptied the bag into the coffee machine. The noise of the grinder set her teeth on edge, the smell of the milk frothing earthy and sickening.
“I don’t need any of that girly crap in my coffee.”
“You’ll drink it the way I serve it to you or get out.”
