Chapter 9: The Drive to His Mother's House
We didn't talk much in the car.
Julian drove.
I watched the road.
The morning was gray and soft, the kind of light that makes everything look like it's still deciding what it wants to be.
About fifteen minutes in, he said, "I keep thinking about what you wrote.
The bathroom floor."
I didn't answer right away.
"I've thought about it all night," he said.
"You sitting there alone at three in the morning, not calling me because you didn't think I'd want to be woken up." He paused.
"When did I make you feel that way?
When did that become who I was to you?"
"It wasn't one moment," I said.
"It was a hundred small ones.
You sighing when I asked for help.
You going quiet when I talked about how tired I was.
You making me feel like my exhaustion was a problem I was creating rather than something we were in together."
He kept his eyes on the road.
"I didn't know I was doing that."
"I know you didn't," I said.
"That's almost the harder part."
We passed a gas station, a stretch of trees, a school with an empty parking lot.
"Dana told me something," I said.
"About what your mother said to her."
Julian's hands shifted on the wheel.
"She told Dana that you run when you're frightened.
That the people closest to you pay for it."
He didn't deny it.
"She's right," he said quietly.
"I know she's right," I said.
"I think you know it too.
I think some part of you has always known it.
The question is whether knowing it is enough to change it."
He pulled off the highway onto the smaller road that led to his mother's neighborhood.
The houses here were older, well-kept, with wide front lawns and tall trees that had been growing for decades.
"I want to go to the therapist," he said.
"The one in the letter.
I want to go together."
"I made the appointment already," I said.
"Thursday at eleven."
He glanced at me.
"You made it before you knew whether I'd agree."
"I made it because I wasn't going to wait to find out," I said.
"I was done waiting."
He nodded slowly.
"That's fair."
"Julian." I turned to look at him.
"I need you to understand something.
I haven't decided anything yet.
I haven't decided whether we can come back from this or whether the damage is already too deep.
I don't know the answer to that.
What I know is that I'm willing to find out — but only if you're willing to be completely honest.
Not careful.
Honest.
About Kristen.
About Dana.
About every time you chose easier over present.
If I find out later that there was more you didn't tell me, that's the end.
I won't come back from being managed."
"There's nothing else," he said.
"I need that to be true."
"It is."
He turned onto his mother's street.
Her house appeared at the end of the block — white with blue shutters, a rosebush by the front steps that she had been tending for twenty years.
As he parked, the front door opened.
His mother, Elaine, stood on the step.
She had a dish towel over her shoulder and her reading glasses pushed up on her head.
She looked at the car, at both of us inside it, and something in her expression settled.
She raised one hand in a small wave.
Julian let out a breath.
"She knew," he said.
"She knew this was coming for years, didn't she."
"Yes," I said.
He was quiet for a moment.
"She came anyway," he said.
"When you called her.
She came for you."
"She came for the girls," I said.
"And yes.
She came for me."
He opened the car door.
I opened mine.
We walked up the path side by side, not touching, not speaking — but together, which was more than we had been in a long time.
Elaine held the door open and looked at her son.
"The girls are in the sitting room," she said.
"They've been waiting."
Julian stepped inside.
I followed.
From the sitting room came a sound — two small voices, not crying, just making the soft busy sounds that babies make when they are warm and fed and safe.
Julian stopped in the hallway and pressed the back of his hand to his mouth.
Elaine touched my arm gently.
She didn't say anything.
She didn't need to.
I walked past Julian into the sitting room.
Both girls were on a blanket on the floor, surrounded by soft toys.
When they heard my footsteps, two small faces turned toward me.
May you like
I sat down on the floor between them.
And for the first time in four days, I held both my daughters at once and let myself feel something other than strong.
