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“Keep telling yourself that, Mack.”
I hear the bedroom door open upstairs, the sound of droll voices spitting out scientific facts spilling over the balustrade and then cutting off again as the door closes. Footsteps sound above, and Jonathan and I both look up to see Bailey standing at the top of the stairs, leaning his thin arms against the railing, his hair an unruly mess of damp, blonde curls.
He’s wearing flannel pajama bottoms and the oversized sweatshirt I bought him when I went to Seattle last year. It’s his favorite because it’s got the Space Needle on it.Space.Anything to do with space, and he’s all in. Poor kid, he’s so easily pleased.
“Hey, Bailey,” says Jonathan with a quick tip of his chin. “What’s happening? How was school today?”
Bailey stays frozen at the top of the stairs. He doesn’t tell Jonathan hello back. He doesn’t tell him what’s happening or how school was. He just glowers down at him before folding his arms over his chest, shifting uncomfortably from one foot to the other.
“It’s alright, Bailey, you can say hello,” I tell him, though I’m not sure why I bother. Bailey has expressed to me on a number of occasions since the divorce—in his very unique, very cryptic, very Bailey kind of way—that he’s angry at Jonathan for what he did. They were brothers as far as Bailey was concerned. He looked up to him. He thought the world of him. I think Bailey is confusing anger with hurt and disappointment, but I’m not going to label him or his feelings. People have been doing that his entire life.
“Level four positions at NASA are special-sensitive jobs involving top-secret information,” Bailey suddenly blurts out, folding his arms even tighter across his chest. “Level three positions are critical-sensitive.”
Jonathan looks at me with a confused expression.
“I think he’s telling you to mind your own business.”
“Screw you, Mack!”
“Houston we have a problem.” Bailey rocks back and forth on the balls of his feet, swaying slightly. His eyes shift to the side. “You went into her bedroom.” His voice drops slightly as the words leave his mouth, but the resentment is still there, and behind that resentment is a kid who doesn’t know how to handle big emotions. “You went into her bedroom,” he says again, a little louder this time. His eyes snap straight to Jonathan and his cheeks grow red. “Very wrong.”
“It’s okay, Bailey,” I speak softly. “Calm down.”
“Not okay!” he shouts, and then he turns and runs back into his bedroom. The door slams behind him, leaving me and my ex-husband alone in the foyer.
“What have you been telling him?” Johnathan practically yelps, his eyes narrowing in on me. “What the hell have you been telling him?”
“I told him the truth.”
“He’s a fucking kid, Mack. He doesn’t need to know all the gory details.”
“I didn’t tell him all the gory details, but I had to tell him something. You know how his mind works. He takes everything so literally, takes it to heart. It took him a while to understand why you suddenly weren’t living with us anymore. He thought you left because of something he did. He thought he did something wrong. I wasn’t going to let him think that, so I told him what really happened.”
“Are you serious?”
“He’s mad. He’s hurt. And rightly so.Youdid this to him, not me. And yet again, just like always, I’m the one left to clean up the mess.”
There is absolutely no remorse in Jonathan’s eyes as he turns his back on me with a grunt of clear disapproval, and then he stomps toward the basement. On the way, he glances up at the bare white wall that once housed our framed wedding photograph.
It doesn’t any longer.
“Didn’t take you long to get rid of that.” His expression is fiercer than I’ve seen it in a long time. “My side of the bed ain’t even cold yet, and you’re destroying all evidence of me.”
“Your side of the bed was cold long before we separated. And it has beentwo years. How is Charlene by the way? You still see her around? Oh no, that’s right, she was forced to move back to Nebraska with her parents once Brandon’s lawyers were done with her. Such a shame their marriage fell apart. Brandon’s a good guy. He deserves better.”
Not a word. Not a single sound.
Gripping the doorframe, he pauses momentarily. A muscle in his jaw moves like he’s grinding his teeth.Good. I know he’s wondering how I know so much about Brandon and Charlene’s personal life, let alone their financial situation.
God bless Andrea and her extensive stalker skills.
“If you’re getting your stuff, hurry up about it.” I eventually grumble, shaking my head. “I’ve got plans tonight.”
I don’t have plans. Of course I don’t have plans. I never have plans, and when I do actually have plans, I almost always cancel them. Tonight, my plans consist of wine, lasagna, taking a long hot bath, and then changing into sweatpants to watch a Christmas movie on Netflix.
Yeah, yeah. I know.
“But it’s not December, Sienna,”I hear you cry.
