CHAPTER SIX
After a quick bath, Lisset climbs straight into bed. No arguments fall from her lips tonight regarding bedtime, which tells me how tired she is.
“Mom,” she whispers sleepily, “please leave the nightlight on.”
I stroke her hair back from her forehead. “Why?”
“I’m scared of monsters.”
My chest tightens. Only when she’s older will she realize monsters lurk in the light too.
“I’ll leave it on,” I say. “Goodnight, sweetheart.”
I think she’s asleep before I’ve even exited her bedroom.
I’m heading downstairs when a memory resurfaces of how Lisset used to read for ages in bed before falling asleep. I would sometimes have to instruct her to turn off her light because she had to wake up for school the next day. Yet another Lisset-shaped detail that’s guiltily slipped my attention. Yes, I’m a single mom, and I’m tired and overloaded more days than most, but I have to do better than this.
I start tidying up—straightening cushions, folding laundry, stacking the dishwasher. The temptation to leave the house in its current state is almost overwhelming. I can’t help feeling, however, that if I give in, even once, to the temptation I’m in danger of setting a pattern. And if I’m unable to keep my house in order, what hope will there be for my life?
Tess sometimes teases me for being a control freak. Maybe I am. It’s just, I don’t know, the world is chaotic enough without me inviting that chaos into my home.
An hour later, I’ve finished tidying up and I drag myself upstairs to shower, brush my teeth, and change into my pajamas. Slipping into bed, I avoid looking at my bedside table, at the top drawer and the contents inside.
Tonight, I’m not opening that drawer.
I scroll through my phone for a while, looking at the feed of other food stylists to see what’s trending, but nothing on the screen holds my attention. With fatigue pulling at me, I put my phone away and switch my bedside lamp off. This is a time I both long for and dread. It’s finally a moment for my body to unwind, but it also means I have time to think.
And I don’t always enjoy the road trips my thoughts take me on.
During the day, the buzz and busyness of work consumes me, while the evenings are filled with Lisset’s bubbly chatter and endless questions.
But now, alone in my cold bed, the dark and the quiet press in on me, bony fingers tap-tap-tapping on the padlocks of all the memories I’ve chained in my head.
Most nights I’m able to ignore them, but tonight they’re insisting on a response.
And so I give them one. To blunt my memories and to forget what’s inside my bedside drawer, I make my way to the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, take half a sleeping pill, and knock myself out.