Chapter 15
When Tom called Cherry, he still came up in her phone as Emergency Contact.
She debated whether to answer. She was at work. She could always text him to see what he wanted—she and Tom hadn’t really
talked on the phone since they’d stopped fighting.
She got up to close the door to her office. “Hello?”
“Hey. It’s me . . . It’s Tom.”
“Yeah,” Cherry said. “Hi.”
His voice was tight. “How are you?”
Cherry’s was tighter. “I’m fine, Tom. How are you?”
“Oh. Fine, I guess. Um . . .”
Cherry waited a second, then prompted—“Tom. Why did you call?”
“Uh . . . right.” He exhaled. “I wanted to give you a heads-up. Or, um, figure out . . . I’m coming home next week. Back to
Omaha.”
“Oh.” That shouldn’t be surprising. Tom had to come back eventually. “Okay.”
“I was gonna pack up my stuff—whenever that works for you.”
“Right.” Right. This had to happen, too. “Okay,” Cherry said, “just . . . I guess, tell me when you want to come over. Maybe
you could do it while I’m at work?”
“I mean . . .” Tom sounded unsure. “We’ll probably have to talk about it, right?”
“No.” Cherry didn’t want to talk to Tom about anything. “Just come get your stuff.”
“Well . . . it’s our stuff, most of it.”
“What do you mean—what all do you want to take?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “What if I wanted something from the kitchen?”
The kitchen? “What do you want from the kitchen?”
“I don’t know, Cherry. I haven’t been home for almost a year.”
“And you’ve done without everything in the kitchen so far.”
“Well, I’ve been living in a fully furnished Airbnb.”
“Are you moving?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m getting my own apartment.”
“Oh.” None of this should be surprising. Tom had to live somewhere; they were getting a divorce. “Okay,” she said again, trying to ground
herself. “Well . . . you’re going to have to buy new stuff. You can’t just take our stuff. I’m using it.” She sounded defensive.
“Are you using the juicer?” He sounded exasperated.
“When have I ever used the juicer, Tom?”
He was quiet.
Cherry heard him take a deep breath. “This is the sort of thing we can talk about when I come home,” he said. “I’m not going
to take anything that you need. But I don’t want to just take things.”
“Yeah.” She rubbed her forehead. “Okay.”
“So—is there a day next week that works? It doesn’t have to be next week. I’ll be home for a while.”
“Where are you staying?”
“With my dad.”
Tom’s dad was a difficult person. To put it mildly. “Is that going to be okay?”
“It’ll be fine. It’s temporary.”
“You could come over Saturday,” Cherry said. “After lunch.”
“Great,” he said. “Thank you. I’ll see you then.”
“See you.” Cherry ended the call.
Then she closed her eyes and told herself that she wasn’t going to cry.
And then she cried.
And then she went back to work.