AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“What did his family say?” Lily asks.
“That they don’t know where he is. That they haven’t spoken to him.”
Lily asks, “Do you think they’re telling the truth?”
“Honestly? I don’t know. I can see Jake’s parents lying for him. I suppose he could be staying with them. They say no, but I don’t know what to think or who I can trust anymore.”
Lily gives me a genuine smile and says, “You can trust me.”
I appreciate that. I know that I can. I say, “You’re a good friend, Lily. I’m really so grateful that I have you.”
A few minutes later, the waitress comes back with our meals.
“Can I get you anything else?” she asks.
“No,” I say, “thank you,” and she leaves. I reach for my fork, though I don’t know that I’ll be able to eat. My eyes were bigger than my stomach, and I don’t have much, if any, appetite of late. “My mother is staying with me now,” I say to Lily, apropos of nothing other than that I want to talk about something other than Jake for a change. These days, he’s monopolizing all of my thoughts, my conversations and my dreams. I can’t breathe without thinking of Jake.
Lily looks up from her plate. “Oh?” she asks, visibly surprised. “You didn’t say.”
“Well, not for good. I just couldn’t stand to be alone in the house. I needed the company and my mother probably shouldn’t be alone either. It’s just until Jake comes home,” I say, trying to stay optimistic about him coming home. The thing that I find the most worrisome of all is how he hasn’t gone to work. To me, that’s more alarming than him not returning my calls or taking money out of the bank. Jake has spent twenty years of his life training to become a surgeon, from college, to med school, to his residency. He’s living his dream, following in the footsteps of his own father, who is also a neurosurgeon, close to retiring now. Jake wouldn’t risk losing all that. There must be something physically preventing him from going to work.
“How long has she been staying with you?” Lily asks.
It was just yesterday that I invited my mother to come stay with me. I hadn’t told her until last night what was happening with Jake. I tried keeping it from her because she isn’t wild about him. It didn’t help that, before she got sick, Jake gave me an ultimatum: him or her. If I didn’t stop spending so much of my free time with my mother, he said, he would leave. He was jealous and also, I don’t think he’s ever been a huge fan of her. My mother can be outspoken at times and Jake didn’t like her putting ideas in my head. When we were both home, he wanted me all to himself, which meant on the weekends I could never visit her. It was okay. We made it work. I told her what Jake said, what he wanted—about his stipulation that weekends were reserved for spending time with him—and my mother and I made more of an effort to see each other during the week, in the evenings, after school, but when he was still at work. Except that the evenings were never long enough, and after work I was sometimes too tired to visit. But then her vision started to go and it was all beyond Jake’s and my control. When she needed me, I had to go to her. I had to be with her.
When Jake didn’t come home Monday, I didn’t want to give my mother another reason not to like him. I thought this would all blow over in a couple days and that she wouldn’t have to know that he was ever gone.
My own father left us when I was six. He and my mother had a tumultuous marriage to say the least. I remember falling asleep every night listening to them fight. It wasn’t ever physical, but it was hurtful. They would scream at each other and call one another names. And then one night, in the middle of the night, my father left because he’d fallen madly in love with some other woman and he wanted to be with her. Growing up, my bedroom faced the front of the house. I remember waking up that night to the sound of him leaving, and creeping to the window to watch him go. For a while he would send me cards on my birthday or Christmas, but eventually that stopped. I haven’t spoken to him in twenty years. My mother never dated seriously again and she never remarried. She doesn’t trust men in general, which means, by default, she doesn’t trust Jake. It’s not Jake’s fault. It’s not because of anything Jake did.
After going to the police the other day and filing that missing person’s report, it was time to come clean. I didn’t want my mother to hear about Jake from someone else, before she heard it from me.
I also didn’t want to spend another night in that house alone.
“Just one night so far,” I say to Lily. “I picked her up yesterday. She’ll stay with me until Jake is back.”
Lily reaches for her water. “You should have invited her along for breakfast,” she says, taking a sip from her glass.
“It’s fine,” I say. “I wanted you all to myself. I can never get through a whole conversation with you anymore without us getting interrupted.”
“So she’s at your house now?” Lily asks.
“Yes.”
Lily takes another sip of her water and sets the glass back down. “Would you excuse me?” she asks and, as she stands up from the table, I see that her face has lost color.
“Yes, of course. Is everything okay, Lily?” I ask, concerned that she might still be sick from earlier in the week.
“I just need to use the restroom,” she says. She gets the attention of a waitress to ask where it is. The waitress points her in the right direction. “I’ll be right back,” she says to me. “Sorry,” she says, though there’s no reason for her to be sorry. I’m just worried about her.
Lily reaches for her purse before she leaves and I watch as she disappears to the bathroom, weaving between tables. I wait for her to come back. I don’t want to eat without her. I keep an eye on the bathroom door, but when I’m not watching the door, I people watch, running my eyes over the vast number of happy people, friends and husbands and wives with kids who fill the crowded restaurant. Everyone seems so happy. Everyone but me.
Eventually Lily comes back. She was gone so long that I was just starting to think I should check on her.
“What were we talking about?” she asks as she lowers herself into the seat across from me, avoiding my eye. She reaches again for her glass of water.
I say, “My mother.”
“Oh. Right,” she says, and I can see Lily trying to remember what we were even saying about my mother.
