Page 83 of What You left in Me
Today, I’ve had enough. I need answers and I need them now. The words gather in my throat like a sour pill when I enter the living room where Mom is sitting with a newspaper.
“Mom,” I start, careful. “That man at the hospital. The one who asked for money… Waren? Who was he?”
Eleanor’s hand stills on Richard’s wrist. For a heartbeat, she is a statue. Then she reaches for the water carafe and pours, the stream perfectly steady. “A nuisance,” she says.
“That’s not a category of human, it’s a description. Who was he?”
“Someone who wanted attention.”
“And money,” I remind her pointedly.
“That too,” she admits, a brittle shine entering her voice. “There are always people who appear when tragedy smells fresh. They sniff it and come to see what can be cut off and sold.”
“He knew Dad, didn’t he?” I push, gentler than I feel. There’s a tiny spark in my chest that feels like a match struck in a dark room, hope or dread, who can tell anymore. I know more than she thinks I do.
Eleanor puts the glass on the bedside table, angle neat, condensation ring perfectly aligned with the coaster because of course. “Ariane, Richard needs peace. This is not the time for gossip.”
“Gossip is when you whisper about the neighbor’s facelift. This is…” I lower my voice. “Mom. He came to the hospital. He asked for money. I want to know why.”
Her gaze slides to my face, cool as pond water in October. If it were anyone else, I’d call it maternal concern. With her, it’s inventory. “You should focus on your father, not me,” she repeats, like she’s hitting play on a recording. “Please bring the chamomile from the kitchen when you come back.”
“That’s not a fucking answer!”
“Ariane!Language! And it is the only one you need.” She flips to the next page of her newspaper and just like that the conversation ends. I stand there with questions quivering in my hands like birds that aren’t allowed to fly.
I carry the basket of laundry to the mudroom just so I have something to do with my hands. Partly, because it’ll piss my mother off to do the maid’s job.
The mudroom smells like wet shoes and old lemons. I fold towels like I’m wringing a neck. Somewhere, the lake laps the dock, indifferent. I imagine hurling my phone into it and then imagine diving after it because I’m not actually an unhinged sea creature, just a woman who occasionally has poor ideas.
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At night, I roam the halls like a scepter. The estate feels larger than ever at night; it’s large enough to get lost in, especially when you’re trying not to think. The portraits watchme with bored faces. The brass sconces cast half-hearted halos over the runner rug. I pass Finn’s room and tell myself not to peer inside. But then, I look all the same… because I’m only human and apparently not even a particularly disciplined one.
The door is closed.
It has been closed all week, like a mouth deciding not to say something.
Where did he go? What could possibly keep him away from this house for seven days straight, when his father is jokingly ordering the nurse to stand at attention and his stepmother is turning into a ghost that carries a phone? Did he regret it? Did he wake up the next day, look in a mirror, and decide I wasn’t worth the ruin? Or did he leave because staying would make us both combust, and despite everything he’s a man who sometimes chooses survival over fire?
I hate that I miss him. I hate that missing him has a crushing weight makes my chest ache and throat tighter. I hate that I have a position on the lake I stand at in the mornings because the light hits the water there, and my brain keeps offering me a memory: Finn’s hand wrapping around my waist, his lips parting softly. I hate how his absence is louder than Julian’s texts ever were.
Julian. Fuck. He’s relentless. If apologies were calories, I could live on his for a year. He texts in paragraphs, in bullet points, in a tone that veers between contrition and PR damage control.It was a misunderstanding. I didn’t text her. I don’t even know who she is. Don’t we mean anything to you?
We. As in, the two-headed hydra of our edible arrangement life.
My favorite so far, if we’re using “favorite” loosely, is“Ariane, be reasonable. We have friends, a future. Don’t throwit away.”I stared at that one until my eyes burned. I imagined my heart in a sequined bikini making card flourishes.
Then I deleted the message and put the phone facedown because if I didn’t, I might hurl it against a wall in a haze of red.
I know if I called him back, life would get easy again. People would stop tilting their heads at me like I’m an abstract painting that’s been hung wrong. I could go to work, well… when I find a job—and grade essays aboutThe Great Gatsby, underlining metaphors.
When I’d come home there’d be a bouquet and a man who loves a version of me that has ceased to exist. The thought makes my stomach turn. I’m allergic to predictability now.
Throughout this week, there have been days when I had no appetite and forgot to eat entirely. Janice, the nurse, noticed and tutted at me the way the clock does. Now, she leaves yogurt on the counter with a spoon already in it and writesEat meon a sticky note like the yogurt is auditioning for a role inAlice in Wonderland. I eat it.
Mom doesn’t ask why my eyes are puffy. She asks where I put the spare batteries for the blood pressure monitor and then forgets to take the monitor out of the box. When I offer to help arrange a rotating schedule for Richard’s meds, she shakes her head: “I’ve got it.” The problem is she doesn’t, not really. She’s present and absent at once, like she’s doing caregiving as a series of tasks that can be delicately checked off, not a thing you live in.
On day five I try again. “Do you want me to call the accountant?” I ask in the study, where Richard’s framed photographs of the ocean refuse to hang straight. “To make sure all the hospital billing is handled? Or the gallery manager, to rearrange the opening next month?”