Chapter 5: What You Do With A Broken Afternoon
I sat in the car for a long time.
The balloons were still there.
One of them had started to sink, its ribbon trailing down onto the seat.
The cake box was still on the passenger side.
The little plastic pick said Happy Birthday in gold letters.
I took the pick out of the frosting and held it.
Then I put it in the cupholder and drove home.
The house felt different when I walked in.
I couldn't explain it.
Nothing had moved.
The same furniture, the same smell, the same afternoon light coming through the kitchen window.
But I kept looking at things like I was trying to remember them.
I sat on the couch.
I didn't turn on the television.
I didn't call anyone.
My phone buzzed.
Tyler's name on the screen.
I set it face-down on the cushion.
It buzzed again.
Then again.
Then stopped.
I don't know how long I sat there before the knock came at the door.
I almost didn't answer it.
But something — some automatic part of me — got up and opened it.
My neighbor Ruth was standing on the porch.
She was seventy-one years old, had lived next door for as long as Tyler and I had been in this house, and she was holding a covered dish with both hands.
"I made too much soup," she said.
I stared at her.
"I always make too much," she said.
"You'd be doing me a favor."
I stepped back from the door.
She came in, went straight to the kitchen like she'd been there a hundred times — because she had — and set the dish on the stove.
"Sit down," she said.
"Ruth, I'm fine."
"You're not fine.
Sit down."
I sat at the kitchen table.
She found two bowls without asking where they were.
"You want to tell me?" she said.
"Not really."
"Okay." She ladled soup into both bowls and brought them to the table.
She sat across from me.
"Then we'll just eat."
We sat there in the quiet for a while.
The soup was good.
I hadn't realized I was hungry until the first spoonful.
"He has a son," I said.
"With someone else.
He's been keeping it for five years."
Ruth set her spoon down.
"Six years old," I said.
"The boy is six years old."
She didn't say anything right away.
She just looked at me with the kind of steadiness that takes a long time to build.
"What do you want to do?" she asked.
"I don't know yet."
"That's all right," she said.
"You don't have to know yet."
"Everyone knew but me.
His brother.
His coworkers.
The woman." I pressed my hands flat on the table.
"I was the last person."
"That's the part that cuts deepest," Ruth said quietly.
"Not just what he did.
Who he let carry it with him instead of you."
I looked up at her.
"My first husband did something similar," she said.
"Not the same.
But similar." She picked her spoon back up.
"I'm not going to tell you what to do.
But I'll tell you this — the decision you make in the next hour is not the decision you have to live with.
Give yourself more time than that."
My phone buzzed again on the counter.
We both looked at it.
"Is that him?" Ruth asked.
"Probably."
"Don't answer it tonight," she said simply.
"Tonight you eat soup."
I almost smiled.
Almost.
Then the phone stopped buzzing — and a text notification appeared.
Not from Tyler.
From Danny.
Tyler's brother.
*Amanda.
Please don't do anything yet.
There's more to this than Tyler told you.
May you like
I need to talk to you first.
Please.*
