I set the phone down and pushed it away from me. I lay back, facing the ceiling in the dark, ignoring my phone as it beeped again. We'd had two sorta-dates already, and they hadn't gone so well. The first time, he'd tried to kiss me, and then he'd gone cold when I didn't let him. The second time, we'd nearly had full-on sex, but then got into that argument over my neighbor kid. Things were definitely headed somewhere, and it promised to be dramatic.
The phone beeped again, so I grabbed it.
Sawyer: Hellooooo?
Sawyer: Battery died again?
Sawyer: I'll just swing by and pick you up at ten tomorrow morning.
The phone beeped again in my hand, and I made a startled noise.
Sawyer: I'll be there at ten, so just text me and say yes.
Me: Yes. Ten sounds fine.
Sawyer: Good. I hate it when you ask out a cute girl and she makes some dumb excuse instead of just telling you you're despicable.
Me: I'm in bed.
Sawyer: Well, that escalated quickly! We're already in the sexting phase?
Me: I'm tired so I'm going to sleep.
Sawyer: In that case I just deleted some really weird stuff I'm glad I didn't send.
Me: See you at ten.
I turned the phone off without waiting for a response, and then I took it back into the living room and jabbed in the charger.
In the morning, all it took was one cough from Bell to make me feel like shit.
She coughed as we were putting on her coveralls—the ones she was a little big for, but insisted on wearing because “Nemo had to go to school.” The fish applique on the coveralls bib looked nothing like Nemo—it was green, and looked more like a whale than a fish—but you can't argue with kid logic.
After she coughed, I tried to decide if it had sounded dry, or like the beginning of a cold. Winter was over, but I knew colds and flus could happen any time. Should I keep her home from school? The school had a policy of sending contagiously sick kids home, so they didn't spread their germs to everyone.
I had a date with Sawyer that day, so more than usual, I really didn't want her to be sick. Selfish me. She didn't cough again, but she seemed to be moving groggily, hesitating.
Finally, I sat down across from her as she slowly ate her cereal.
“Bell, is something wrong? Do you feel sick? I should take your temperature.”
She gave me a new kind of look, one I didn't recognize.
“I think I'm sick.”
“What kind of sick? Is it your tummy? Or do you have a cold?”
She gave me the look again, and then coughed, into her elbow like they'd taught her at school.
The cough seemed very deliberate. Exaggerated, and not sounding of phlegm.
Her eyes kept darting over to the side, and I turned my head to follow her gaze. The new television set.
She said, “If you're sick, you don't go to school.”
“And are you sick?”
She bit her lower lip with concentration and nodded.
I sighed. “You can stay home with me, I guess. There won't be any television, though, because I need some help with laundry and a whole bunch of things. That's what I do when you're at school.”
“I can't watch TV?”
“Nope. TV is not good for you when you're sick.” Oh, the lies we tell the children, to counter their lies.
Her little rosebud lips scrunched together, her face revealing her internal struggle.
I considered launching into a lecture about lying to me about being sick, but my own lie still hung in the air over us.
She glared up at me, her little blue eyes blazing with something. Was she onto me, and all the lies I'd told her over the last three years?
I said soothingly, “Your friend Taylor would miss you if you didn't go to school today.”
“Okay.”
“Okay… you don't care, or okay, you're going to school?”
She coughed again, watching me sidelong as she did.
“All done.” She held her hands up. “Not sick anymore.”
“Great,” I said, though I didn't feel that great. As she'd been testing my gullibility, I'd heard those whispering voices telling me I chose this.
I chose this, and chose wrong.
The whispers said I would have been better off on my own. I should have dropped Bell off at the police station with a note, and gone on my way. But I couldn't have, because she was only four, and I'd grown to love her over those years. She needed me as much as I needed her.
I should have run away when we first moved in with Derek, when she was still too tiny to have much personality. But even then, her tiny fists had grabbed hold of my heart. If I'd made myself cold and disappeared, everything would have been different, and I'd be on my own now.
And then I had the darker thought. That everything would have been better if she'd never existed. Maybe I'd be at college right now. Maybe if I hadn't been up late getting her bottle and soothing her, I would have gotten better grades in school and earned a scholarship.
I bowed my head from the shame of these thoughts, looking up only when she banged her spoon on the table and declared that she was done.
Squirming on her chair, she kicked her feet against my knees until I looked up again.
She caught my gaze and pointed to the green fish on her coveralls.
“Nemo!” she cried. “I found him!” At times, Bell acted much older and more mature than her seven years, but I enjoyed these times where she regressed to baby talk.
She laughed, her pink tongue poking out between her two front teeth, the way it always did when she was being silly.
I had so much love for her that sometimes it flooded me, and I heard this love in my mind, fierce like the roar of a lion. If anything happened to her, or if I let her down, I'd never forgive myself. My grief would suffocate me, and I would deserve to die.
“Blub blub,” she said, flicking the fish applique.
“Blub blub, let's get you off to school.”
Chapter Fifteen
SAWYER JONES
Aubrey had been telling me, in her own way, to keep my distance. But then, just when I was about to back off, she invited me in.
She stood three steps up from me, on those stairs with their dark blue carpets, and said, “There is no husband.”
I honestly thought we were going up to her place for another beer, or to talk about what she'd meant.
Not many of my friends were married, but of the ones that were, all the women wore two rings: the engagement ring, with the diamond, and the wedding band that fit alongside it. Something about Aubrey's plain gold band had never seemed right to me. No way would any man on this planet, no matter how broke he was, not give a woman that beautiful something equally pretty to show off to her friends.
I'd actually had this crazy thought that maybe she was in a religious cult, and they were all married to their cult leader or something. That happened in a movie I'd just watched, so it was fresh in my mind. I didn't really believe it, but I knew something was weird about her situation.