Chapter 5: Since Before She Even Said Yes
The drive home took forty seconds.
Neither of us spoke for any of them.
My husband locked the front door behind us and stood in the hallway with his hand still on the deadbolt.
"Since September," he said.
"I heard her."
"That means the entire relationship—"
"I know what it means."
He turned around.
"Ann."
"I know." I pressed my fingers against my forehead.
"I know."
We stood there in the front hallway at three in the morning, and the house was quiet, and upstairs our daughter was asleep — or pretending to be — and neither of us knew yet how much of what she believed about the last eight months was real.
I was the one who went up.
I knocked softly.
No answer.
I opened the door anyway.
She was in bed with the lamp still on, still wearing the gray hoodie over her pajamas.
Her phone was on the pillow next to her face, screen down.
Her eyes were closed but her breathing was wrong — too careful, too even.
"Maddie."
A beat.
Then: "I'm asleep."
"I know you're not."
She opened her eyes.
She looked at the ceiling.
I sat on the edge of the bed.
I didn't say anything for a moment.
"What did the Brennans say?" she asked.
"Tyler's going to talk to you.
In person.
Tomorrow."
She made a small sound that wasn't quite a laugh.
"Great."
"Maddie." I stopped.
Started again.
"How long did Tyler tell you it had been going on with Cassidy?"
She turned her head to look at me.
"A few weeks.
That's what he said at the dance.
A few weeks, it was nothing, he was going to end it."
I held her gaze.
She read my face the way she's been reading my face since she was four years old.
She sat up slowly.
"Mom."
"I need you to hear this from me, not from him tomorrow."
"Mom, how long."
"Linda Brennan told us tonight.
Since September."
Maddie didn't move.
Her face didn't change.
That was somehow worse than if it had.
"September," she said.
"The week before school started."
She looked down at the hoodie.
At the sleeves still pulled over her hands.
She was very still for a long time.
Then she said, quietly: "I said yes to him in October."
"I know."
"He asked me to homecoming.
He — he made a whole thing of it.
He had flowers.
He asked in front of my locker." Her voice was completely flat.
"And the whole time he already had her."
"It looks that way."
She pulled her knees up to her chest.
Wrapped her arms around them.
"Did she know about me?" Maddie asked.
"I don't know."
"Because if she knew — " She stopped.
"If she knew and she let him ask me out anyway, that's a different thing."
"Yes," I said.
"It is."
She rested her chin on her knees.
Her eyes were dry.
That worried me more than tears would have.
"I need to think," she said.
"Okay."
"I don't want to talk anymore tonight."
"Okay." I stood up.
I smoothed the blanket near her feet — a useless gesture, but I needed to do something with my hands.
"I'm going to leave my door open."
She nodded.
I was at the doorway when she spoke again.
"Mom."
I turned.
"The message you saw on my phone tonight." She was looking at the wall.
"What did it say?
The first line.
What exactly did it say?"
I'd been waiting for that question since the kitchen.
I told her.
She was quiet for a long moment.
"That's not an apology," she said.
"No," I said.
"It isn't."
I left her door half open and went back downstairs.
My husband was at the kitchen table with both hands around a cold cup of coffee.
"She knows," I said.
He looked up.
"How did she take it?"
"She asked if Cassidy knew about her."
He set the cup down.
"Do we know the answer to that?"
"Not yet."
He was quiet.
Then: "We need to find out before Tyler does his in-person talk tomorrow.
Because if Cassidy knew—"
"Then it wasn't a mistake," I said.
"It was a choice.
Every single day for eight months."
Neither of us slept much after that.
At 6:14 in the morning, Maddie's phone lit up on her nightstand.
May you like
I know because she came downstairs twenty minutes later, sat across from me at the kitchen table, and placed the phone between us face up.
"It's from Cassidy," she said.
