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“Would it kill them to provide real milk with the coffee?” I ask Lynn. “Haven’t we all suffered enough without enduring powdered creamer?” I do not especially care about anything I’m saying. I just want to keep the focus off myself.
She bites into one of the gross cookies. “Come on. Let’s get some decent coffee and have a chat.”
Apparently, we’re going to be putting the focus on me anyway.
Outside, the morning sunlight is too bright, and nothing feels real. She directs me up a long hill. I don’t actually want coffee, and I sure as hell don’t want to climb this big-ass hill for it.
“What did you mean in the meeting?” she asks. “When you said you got clean for the wrong reasons?”
I reluctantly start climbing the hill, letting the story of Beck and Caleb and some of the shit I did wrong unravel. I’d probably lie to her about the details if I wasn’t so tired. Laid out in all their glory, the facts make me sound evil, and not an evilqueen, as Beck would once have said. I’m too filthy and exhausted right now for anyone to see me as powerful.
She opens the door to the coffee shop. “It sounds like you have some amends to make.”
My teeth grind as we get in the very long morning line. I can’t believe I’m standing in line for coffee I don’t want only to have to listen to this crap. I still don’t entirely buy all the NA garbage about amends, and I can’t make up for it anyway. “Beck doesn’t want my amends. He wants nothing to do with me. He’s seen too much of my bullshit for too long to believe anything I say now.”
“I wasn’t talking about Beck,” she says. “I was talking about Lucie.”
I blink, awakened by rage. “Lucie?Why the hell should I make amends toher?”
“You’re telling me that you’ve spent months trying to make her think her boyfriend is cheating on her, and you met with her ex-husband to discuss framing her for drug possession.” Her hand rests on her hip. “Is it really not clear to you why amends might be called for?”
I sigh. “I didn’t go through with it. I just heard him out. And why the hell should I apologize? That bitch has two healthy kidsandshe has my husband. It seems like she’s got enough without amends from me.”
She gives me a gentle smile. “Less than an hour ago you said you wanted to be the old Kate, the one who wasn’t bitter and full of rage. So tell me something—would the old Kate be enraged by a single mom with kids? Would she take the side of a guy who’s trying totrapher into remaining married to him?”
Ugh. “No.”
We’ve reached the register. I order a latte and Lynn laughs. “Make hers a decaf. She’s about to go to bed. And I’ll take a large tea, thank you.”
I want to resent the way she just changed my order, as if I’m a child, but instead my eyes sting. It was sort of maternal of her. It reminded me of Mimi.
We move to the end of the counter to wait for our drinks. “Lucie represents all the things you want,” she continues. “Children, stability. So maybe the first step toward becoming that person is to stop hating someone who is. She doesn’t have your daughter. She doesn’t have the man you’re in love with. Stop blaming her for living her life and start figuring out how you can live yours.”
I suck in a cheek, fighting my desire to argue with her though she’s right.
At what point did all of this become less about Caleb and more about punishing Lucie for having the life I wanted? Because that’s what it’s been, for weeks if not months. From the moment Beck first kissed me, I haven’t missed my life with Caleb once.
“Maybe,” I finally reply. My voice is barely audible.
She grabs our drinks and hands me mine. “Come on. You can stay in my guest room. Things always look better after a few hours of sleep.”
I swallow hard and nod.
Mimi used to say that too.
* * *
Lynnand her husband Jamie live in a surprisingly nice two-story walk-up in North Beach, and are far better to me than I deserve. They insist I stay with them until I get back on my feet, which is good since I’ve got no clue where I’d stay otherwise. I haven’t heard a single word from Beck since I left.
Every afternoon, I help Lynn make a nice dinner and try to pretend that I’m happy, that I’m not waiting to feel my phone vibrate with a text that says I’m forgiven. It’s not the box of Hannah’s things that has a siren’s call for me these days—it’s Beck. It’s his photo I want to see. It’s the memories of us together I want to sift through my fingers like sand. It’s him I want to tell about my day.
Each morning, Lynn and I get up at the crack of dawn to attend that same NA meeting I went to on my first morning here.
Today, the woman whose son overdosed when he got into her stash wept as she told us that her husband had forgiven her.
“I don’t understand why he would,” I tell Lynn as we walk up the hill for coffee. “I wouldn’t forgive her.”
“It seems to me that’s kind of your problem,” she says. “You don’t expect anyone to forgive you because you don’t forgive anyone yourself,includingyourself.”
