Chapter 4: What Maria Did Without Asking Me
We checked out without talking much.
Maria paid for her things at the next register and met me at the exit.
The automatic doors opened and the afternoon air hit my face and I stood there for a second longer than I needed to.
"You okay?" she said.
"I think so." I looked at the parking lot.
"I don't know."
"That's a reasonable answer."
We walked to my car.
I put the bags in the trunk and closed it and leaned against the bumper and Maria leaned beside me, and for a minute neither of us said anything.
Then she said, "I posted it."
I turned to look at her.
"The video." She held up her phone.
"I trimmed it to the part where he tells you to cover yourself through the part where he says your husband should have kept you home.
I posted it twenty minutes ago."
"Maria—"
"I know.
I should have asked." She met my eyes.
"I'm asking now.
Do you want me to take it down?"
I looked at her phone.
She turned the screen toward me.
The video had been up for less than half an hour.
It already had 340 shares.
I stared at that number.
"It's moving fast," she said quietly.
"I can delete it right now if you want.
No argument."
I thought about Nora at home on Dan's chest.
I thought about the four minutes it had taken me to leave the house.
I thought about standing in that aisle holding my own shirt open, apologizing.
"No," I said.
"Leave it."
Maria nodded once.
We got in my car and she turned the heat on even though it wasn't cold, and I sat there while the engine ran.
"He really thought I was going to keep saying sorry," I said.
"I know."
"I was going to.
Before you got there."
"I know that too." She looked at me.
"That's not a flaw.
That's what happens when someone catches you off guard in a vulnerable moment.
It's not weakness.
It's just — being human."
I looked at my hands in my lap.
"He said Dan should have told me to stay home."
"He did."
"Dan has never once in his life told me to do anything."
"I know," Maria said.
"That's why you married him."
I laughed.
It came out wrong — too sharp, too sudden — but it was real, and once it started I couldn't stop it, and then I was crying and laughing at the same time in a grocery store parking lot while my milk soaked through a second layer.
Maria didn't say anything.
She just reached over and put her hand over mine.
By the time I got home, the video had 1,200 shares.
Dan was still on the couch with Nora on his chest, both of them asleep.
I stood in the doorway and looked at them for a long moment.
Then I got my phone out.
There were fourteen notifications I didn't recognize.
May you like
And one message from a number I didn't have saved — four words, no punctuation, sent eleven minutes ago.
*you should be ashamed*
