“I really can’t. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, sweetheart.”
He leaned down and kissed her cheek and grabbed the tote and was out the front door before any of us got up.
The pie sat there in the middle of the table like a witness.
My mother sat back down slowly. She picked up her fork. She set it down. She folded her hands in her lap.
“Mom. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, honey.”
She wasn’t. I knew it, and she knew I knew it, and neither of us said so.
And then Chloe — who had been standing at the front window watching his taillights — turned around and grabbed her jacket off the hook.
“I have to run out. I’ll be right back.”
“Chloe, it’s dark—”
“Don’t worry, Mom.”
The door slammed.
Forty Minutes Later She Came Through the Door With His Bag
I stared at that door. Then at my mother. Then at the untouched pie.
“Well,” Mom said, with a small brittle laugh. “That’s certainly one way to finish out a birthday.”
“He’s an idiot.”
“Avery.”
“He is. Whatever he’s hiding, he picked the worst possible night to hide it.”
I started clearing plates just to have something to do with my hands.
Ten minutes. Fifteen. Twenty.
“Should I call her?”
Mom looked up from the table.
“Give it a bit. She probably needed to clear her head. She’ll come back.”
I paced from the kitchen to the living room and back again about forty times, chewing the inside of my cheek. Because Chloe had a look when she went out that door. The look she gets right before she does something I’m going to lecture her about for a week.
