Chapter 20
CORA
Finn is acting like a moody teenager. I think he’s actually pouting, and I have no idea why.
It’s Friday afternoon, and he’s supposed to be leaving from his office for a weekend trip for work.
Now he’s suddenly home early and has let me know the trip has been canceled but he’s going out for drinks with his coworker Buddy LaFond tonight.
We’ve barely said a word to each other for a couple days, and now I see his missing laptop is sitting on the counter. That’s curious, isn’t it? I unload a bag of groceries and realize I forgot coconut milk for the curry I was going to make for Mia and me tonight.
“Holy shit. Your hair,” Mia says, coming into the kitchen in her perpetual pajamalike outfit. She was at a friend’s overnight, so she hasn’t seen it.
“Yeah, I thought it was time for a change,” I say.
“Daaang. You never let me get extensions,” she whines.
“When you can pay for them yourself, you can get ten-foot-long hair if you want.”
“I like it. It’s, like, so blond. You look like the chick from Game of Thrones if she were old,” she says, then grabs an apple from the fridge.
“Thanks,” I say, patting my hair, and she bounces off to her room. She seemed almost...like her old self instead of a gloomy recluse for a minute there. I put bran flakes and peanut butter into cupboards with a lighter heart.
My phone rings for the second time today with a number I don’t recognize. There was no message after the first call, so I don’t answer because it’s spam as far as I’m concerned.
Finn comes into the kitchen. He opens the fridge, and again, like a teenager, he stands hunched in front of it, looking for a snack.
“Your missing laptop reappeared,” I say, against my better judgment, but I am starting to really not care anymore.
“Yeah. Wonder how that happened,” he says, curtly.
I stop in midreach from the counter to slide a box of pasta on a shelf, and my back tenses, and I freeze a moment.
I should just leave the room and avoid a repeat of yesterday.
I should sit and explain in all sincerity that I promise I had nothing to do with it, but instead I say, “Maybe you lent it to one of your girlfriends and forgot.”
I can feel an electricity in the air—a palpable tension all around me. Then I hear the cover of his laptop slam shut.
“Are we doing this again? Cora, fucking really? Really? I am not in the mood for this bullshit today,” he hollers, and I shush him and look down the hall, making sure Mia doesn’t overhear.
“Why are you in such a foul mood?” I ask, because even in one of these old infidelity arguments, he never raises his voice when Mia is home. That’s an unspoken rule, so something is going on with him.
“How would you feel,” he says, “if I were constantly accusing you of something you weren’t doing? Oh, and who’s the new Barbie hair for? Some drunk guy at the piano bar who comes in to see you?”
“What?” I say.
“Ya like that? You’re just out in the world, working, minding your business, and you’re constantly hounded, doubted, accused. We’ve been over this too many times. I’m done,” he says, stuffing his computer into its cover.
“Done with what?” I ask, calmly.
“This conversation. Don’t—don’t do that—twist my words, make it seem like I meant...”
“I just asked a question for clarification,” I say.
“This is what you do. You’re manipulative, but you think you’re this innocent, put-upon wife. I don’t buy the act. In fact, I’m pretty sick of it. You need help, Cora. You should go see whoever it was you saw last time you spun out like this.”
“Dr. Higgins,” I offer.
“Yes,” he says, not even really paying attention anymore, but looking at his phone.
“Ah. Maybe I do need to talk to someone,” I say, but he doesn’t hear. His fingers are furiously texting, and then he announces he’s meeting Buddy.
“It’s four o’clock. I thought you were getting drinks later tonight,” I say, and he sighs and goes to pick up his coat where he’s tossed it over the side of the couch.
“This is exactly what I’m talking about” is all he says before I hear his footsteps down the hall and the garage door opening. I sit down on a kitchen stool and bury my face in my hands.
“Mom,” I hear a small voice say. I look up, and Mia stands in the arched entry into the kitchen with her hands lost inside her sweatshirt sleeves, looking like a little girl.
“Honey, hi. Are you okay?” I ask, and she runs over and wraps her arms around me.
“Oh, sweetheart, what? What’s wrong?” I ask, pulling out of the hug to look at her. There are tears in her eyes.
“He was so mean to you.”
“Oh, baby. I’m so sorry you had to overhear that. No, no. He’s just, yes, he’s being a bit of a...”
“Dick,” she supplies.
“He’s under a lot of stress, and things just boiled over today. I am so sorry that we let our stupid argument affect you. That’s not okay. Everything is fine,” I reassure her.
“Okay,” she says. “And for the record, I still like your hair. It’s not Barbie. It’s cool,” she says. My heart swells with love for her. My little empath girl who tries to be so hard for the world around her.
“I like it, too,” I say, and I can tell it’s a rare moment where she wants more from me. She doesn’t want to run to her room or go out with a friend. She wants her mom.
“I have triple ripple fudge I hid in the back of the freezer if you want,” I suggest.
“Does it have a fur coat of freezer burn on it?” she asks.
“Possibly.”
She shrugs, and we sit on stools at the kitchen island as the sky gets dusky with streaky pinks and reds. She sits cross-legged, and we eat right from the half-gallon container with two spoons.
“Are you gonna, like, get divorced?” she asks, and I feel a nausea like motion sickness move through me.
“Nooo,” I say, a knee-jerk response. Then, after a minute or so I add, “How would you feel if we did?”
Mia doesn’t rush to tears or look shocked. All of a sudden she looks like a kid who knows so much more than I ever gave her credit for.
“I wanna tell you something,” she says. Every part of me tenses. It’s the sentence and tone together a mother doesn’t want to hear because it could be any horrible thing that comes next. She looks down and taps her spoon on the counter, nervously.
“You’re always asking, like all the time, what’s wrong with me lately.
But, like, for a year. Not that it’s, like, your business, but things.
..I don’t know, changed for me...then. Whenever.
I just mean, that pot you found, back in January and I said it was a friend’s.
It kind of was. Someone did give it to me, but the point is, the joint a few weeks ago, it really wasn’t mine.
Like, I get why you’d say what you said to Dad is all I mean.
I’ve thought the same thing a couple times.
..just had a feeling,” she says. I don’t ask her for more information.
I don’t ask her what she means. My heart suddenly breaks at the thought that she has to worry about who Finn is fucking.
It infuriates me. But my only worry is about her now.
“Who gave you the joint?” I ask.
“That’s the thing. It’s, like, I’m afraid to make you guys mad, but, Mom, for God’s sake. I’ll be a legal adult in, like, a few months, so it’s not a big thing.”
“Okay, true, so what’s ‘not a big thing,’ then?”
“So Caleb Moretti, he gave me that joint back in January. Well, he gave a lot of people more than joints. He was kind of the guy to go to for that sort of thing...” she says, and I don’t want to stop her, but I’m so absolutely shocked, my hand flutters to my heart.
Paige thinks her son was a dean’s-list college student with a Boy Scout background, impressive volunteering record, and zero flaws.
He cannot have been the neighborhood drug dealer.
“What? What do you mean the guy to go to?” I say, louder than I meant to.
“Mom,” she sighs.
“No, I just—I’m just a little—Caleb? I don’t—So, what—so what are you saying, exactly?”
“Well, Caleb said Dad bought stuff from him sometimes, so when you found that joint in the laundry, I’m just saying that I would tell you if it were mine.
It wasn’t. That’s all, so...” and I want to find Finn and press my fingers into his throat until he stops breathing for allowing her to know this about him—to worry, to carry this around—but I can’t.
More than that, I want to take the burden of knowing this away from her.
“So wait, then. What did you mean when you said I’ve been asking what’s wrong—I still don’t know what’s been wrong,” I say, thinking there is more. She shifts in her stool and puts her spoon down.
“I really liked him. I know. I know he was older,” she says, and I swallow down the words Five years older!
instead of screaming them. Fine, five years means nothing at my age, but teenager versus full-grown man does make a difference, and the thought of it makes my cheeks burn red, but I keep calm.
“So you were...dating him?” I ask.
“No! I mean...no. We were close. Friends,” she says, shyly.
“Why didn’t I know this?” I ask, because I feel like I have known Paige my whole life and that our kids grew up together, but really, if I think about it, she only moved in ten years ago.
This would make Mia seven and Caleb twelve.
Caleb went to private school. We are more backyard-wine and book-club friends than family-barbecue types.
I guess, when I think about it, they knew each other very little before they were pseudoadults.
Just bikes-in-the-neighborhood sort of acquaintances with a giant age gap separating them.
“For God’s sake, Mom! Nothing ever happened. He didn’t like me back.”
“Oh, thank God,” I can’t help but blurt out.
“Okay, really?” she says.
“No. Sorry. It’s just... So you’re telling me he was a drug dealer. Is that what you’re saying?”
“Oh, big-time,” she says and sees my mouth gaping. “But he was like this really amazing soul, y’know? Like you could tell all the drug stuff wasn’t really him,” she says.
“So you were not seeing him, though,” I try to confirm.
“No, I sorta wanted to, but he was seeing someone else, but, I mean, since he died, I just—I don’t know, haven’t been myself. I feel...guilty. I don’t know,” she says, and I can feel her pushing back, her defenses coming up.
“Why? Why would you feel that way?” I ask, confused.
“I don’t know. I just, I miss him is all.
I wish I could have helped him,” she says, and then the tears come.
I’m suspended in this surreal moment of being horrified that Paige doesn’t know her son was a drug dealer and that my daughter maybe almost dated him.
..and also want to save this moment with her head on my shoulder.
I wipe the tears from under her eyes with a swipe of my thumbs and look her in the eye.
“I’m so sorry I didn’t know and you were dealing with this all by yourself.
He was your friend, and I didn’t know that, and you’ve been feeling a lot of grief ever since,” I say.
Sometimes I hear Dr. Higgins when I recite these active learning tools I have come to know.
“You couldn’t have fixed him, though, and it wasn’t your job. ”
“I know,” she says, looking down at her hands.
“We used to go sit in the swings in the park behind the Kinneys’ house at night sometimes and, I don’t know, just talk.
A lot. I still just can’t believe what happened to him,” she says, trying to compose herself now.
So this is why she changed overnight. She was in love with a guy who didn’t love her back, and then was killed, and I don’t know what else.
.. Did she do more drugs than she’s letting on?
I just thought she was getting to the I-hate-my-parents stage, even though she was never that person, and all the while, she’s been grieving.
I feel like the worst mother in the world.
“Anyway, it’s fine. I just thought you should know...about the joint,” she says, standing and going to the fridge to pull out a soda. Then she’s shuffling to her room, already with phone in hand, looking through TikTok.
My phone rings again. It’s that same number. I pick it up this time, my frustration fueling me.
“Yes?” I snap. “What? I don’t know a June Barrett. I think you have the wrong person,” I say.
“She’s absolutely insistent that you know her and that you’re the only person who can help her.
Very insistent. She has a baby, Avery, and says you’ll pick her up.
Is there any way you could just come down and help sort this out?
” the man’s voice says. Avery? Oh, my God. What in the hell is going on?
“Okay, yeah. I’ll be right there,” I say and hang up the phone.
Is this a joke, maybe? Does this have something to do with Finn?
I’m so utterly confused. In a fog over everything that has happened in the last two days, I grab my bag and get in my car to go bail some stranger who knows my name out of jail.