Pictures of You

Chapter 67

age TWENTY-SEVEN

67

Evie

It’s Saturday morning at home and I’m up early, as usual. Also as per usual, Oliver was out late working on some corporate merger in the city, so he slept in the other room when he eventually got in after 2 a.m., which is when I finally fell asleep.

I’m worried about you, Evie—you’re burning the candle … Mum’s words echo in my head as I try not to make noise while I set up the coffee machine and then watch as the liquid drips into the glass jug. It’s her job to worry. And surely this insomnia is just a temporary patch.

But as I fill my favorite mug, it triggers what has become a daily morning observation: Another twenty-four hours has passed and he hasn’t left me.

I seem to spend every day worrying about when the divorce asteroid will hurtle into our marriage’s atmosphere and explode on impact. Surely he’s as unhappy as I am? We come to life only at social events where other people are present, and that’s only because it’s easier to pretend things are okay than to explain ourselves.

My phone pops up with a reminder: Drew’s mum’s anniversary.

I set the annual alert the day after she died, so I’d remember to message Drew each year, tell him I’m thinking of him and apologize, again, for missing the funeral. He’s ignored me every single time. Obviously, he took my instruction never to contact me again and ran with it. Probably blocked me or hid my messages, so it’s futile reaching out.

A memory of that train wreck of an afternoon barges in. Me standing firm on not taking Oliver back, trying to get to the church to support Drew. Oliver utterly losing it, falling at my feet, and practically begging me to take him back. The classic playbook of short-lived promises: I’ve changed, Evie, I’m working on myself, doing everything I can to deserve you.

I’d stood firm. I left the house and got in my car and started heading for the church, determined to stand beside my friend the way I’d promised. But before I could get there, my phone rang with an unknown number. I shiver even now.

“Are you Evie?” It was some guy—a random jogger. “I’ve got Oliver here.”

“Where?”

“The cliffs at The Gap …”

I made it there in record time and found Oliver prowling the clifftop, eyes wild, searching for me in the gathering crowd. He lurched at me when I got to him, gripped me by the shoulders, forehead pressed against mine, fusing us together in his desperation.

“Give me one last chance, Evie. Promise you will.”

“Let me go, Oliver.” I was terrified he would take me with him, over the edge.

“One chance. Just one.” His voice was strangled as he shook me. And I knew there was no way out. The answer he forced out of me became the promise that locked me to this future.

But even that was not enough.

“Give me your phone,” he said. That’s when he typed that message to Drew about pretending we’d never met. He handed it back. “Send it.”

“It’s his mother’s funeral …”

He held my hand and stepped back, closer to the edge, not even looking behind him. His foot shifted some rocks that tumbled over the edge and smashed at the ground. He was going to kill us both at this rate. “Send it, Evie.”

“I’m begging you, let me send it later?” I felt sick about the timing, after I’d promised to be there for Drew. But I was caught in a hopeless, life-and-death situation with a man I felt responsible for. Wasn’t it me, and my rejection of him, that had caused this? How could I walk away and have his inevitable choice on my conscience?

So I chose Oliver. Again.

And again, and again, and again. At every instance surrendering another piece of myself I could never get back.

The doorbell rings now, and I’m relieved to be dragged out of the memory. I set the coffee mug down. I don’t know what kind of person visits a household unannounced before eight in the morning on a Saturday, and I’m surprised to open the door and find a woman about my age standing there, with a little girl asleep in a stroller.

“Evie?” she begins tentatively. How odd that she knows my name. She looks haggard—way worse than I feel, in jeans and a white T-shirt, gray cardigan and sneakers, simple ponytail sweeping mousy blond hair out of worried brown eyes.

“Yes?”

“I’m so sorry to barge in.” She seems genuinely apologetic and genuinely distressed. “I’m Chloe? An old friend of Oliver’s.” She looks like she’s hoping I’ll know exactly who she is, but I don’t. “I found you through a mutual friend of his on Facebook and they let me know your address.”

I’ve never heard him mention her before, and we’ve been together since we were sixteen, so you’d think I’d be aware of all the old friends. I shepherd her across the doorstep and into the kitchen, where I can offer her some of the coffee.

“He had a late night,” I explain. “He’s still in bed.”

She nods and checks on the sleeping child in the stroller, whose blond ringlets fall across her face as she sucks her thumb. When Chloe looks back at me, there’s anguish in her eyes. My heart sinks, the way a heart can before a brain catches on. I don’t know what’s going on here, but it involves this little girl, and it’s bad.

“I need to talk to Oliver,” she says, blinking back tears. “I’m so sorry.”

Sorry for what? All this apologizing.

I look back at the little girl, and several things strike me all at once. How pale she is. How blond. How she has dimples in both cheeks—like Oliver—and the same perfectly symmetrical features. All of that, and the fact that there seems to be some sort of catheter sticking out of her chest, covered in surgical tape.

No. No, no. Pieces of a puzzle I wasn’t aware of until this moment seem to descend at once and my mind attempts to assemble it. I think I’m meant to feel enraged. Shouldn’t I be wild with fury?

The little girl stirs and opens big blue eyes. Waking in an unfamiliar place, she looks for her mum. When she sees me, she stares for a moment, curious, before deciding she can trust me and breaking into an enormous smile. I am acutely aware that there are defining circumstances in your life that require you to rise above something very, very bad, for a higher good—and that this might be one of them.

“I’ll wake Oliver,” I say, unable to pull together my emotions, or even properly identify them at this point, let alone articulate them.

This is his child, I can guess that much. And while part of me wants to storm into the spare room and throttle the man, I suspect he’s about to be faced with bigger problems than that.

“Chloe?” he says, startled, as he staggers into the kitchen looking annoyingly good for someone who just rolled out of bed. The sight of her wakes him up fast. His eyes dart straight to me, and he looks ready to gallop into a frantic explanation, but then he rounds the bench, notices the stroller, and his explanation morphs into questions.

There have been very few occasions when I’ve seen my husband at almost a complete loss for words, but here we are.

“This is Harriet,” Chloe says. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about her before.”

Now she really is crying. I should be too, but there’s just … nothing.

“How old is she?” Oliver asks.

“Three years and three months,” Chloe explains pointedly, before looking at me. “He said you’d broken up …”

I’m glad I’ve had that coffee, because my brain needs the caffeine to do the math. Three years and three months, plus the pregnancy. It does put this back around the time I graduated.Around the time Drew’s mum died. A flash of that kiss with Drew hits me and softens my burgeoning anger. I might have cut off the kiss at the time, but I’ve thought about it countless times in the years since. Clearly, Oliver did more than kiss this woman.

He remains speechless, which annoys me, but then he steps across the kitchen and stands in front of the stroller, examining Harriet. I watch as he crouches down, looking at her with wonder, no doubt seeing what I saw—a mini-replica of himself. I can’t help feeling sorry for him that he’s missed the crucial start of her life.

Was it while we were broken up? I’m recalculating, just to be sure, but coming up with the same timeframe. We’d definitely split; Oliver gets off on a technicality. But shouldn’t my heart be shattering over this? It’s definitely breaking, but not in the right way.

The dull ache in my lower abdomen heralds another month in which Oliver and I have failed to achieve what he clearly had no difficulty accomplishing with Chloe. Our marriage might not be conducive to raising a family, but secretly, selfishly, perhaps, I long for the companionship and distraction of a child in my lonely world.

What also strikes me, though, is the telling fact that I was hoping the dates were wrong. Wishing Harriet was somehow my “out.” Wanting an excuse—something to nail him on. Blame to cast. A reason to leave …

Then Oliver looks up at Chloe, concern spreading across his face as he meets her devastated expression. “What’s wrong with her?”