Chapter 37
BILLIE
Packing up my things was always going to feel bittersweet, but as I looked around the room that had become my makeshift home—my safe, orderly little retreat for the past weeks—the bitter far outweighed the sweet.
Everything was in my bags except for what I’d be wearing tomorrow and my toiletries, and it was all I could do not to cry.
I ran a hand over my pillow, breathing in the faint scent of dryer sheets.
I saw a strand of blonde hair from one of the girls on it and felt an unexpected swell of grief rising in my throat.
The walls, which had seemed so blank and impersonal when I’d first moved in, now bore the ghosts of construction-paper hearts, glitter glue, and the sticky fingerprints of two creative-affectionate kindergartners.
I’d only been there a short time, but they loved crafts and made me multiple pictures a day, and I was physically unable to throw away any of their artwork.
While I lived here, I displayed it on the wall, now I took it down, and it was in my bag.
I’d found a rainbow-loom friendship bracelet in the pocket of my coat and a crooked little sign taped to the inside of my closet door that read, “BILLEES CLOSSET” with a heart and unicorn border. Even the typos made me want to cry.
But I’d made up my mind. I was leaving tomorrow.
Andi had bounced back after her fever broke. She’d insisted on going back to school that morning and, from all accounts, had done well back in the classroom. Joey was her usual outgoing, talkative self and had made two new “best friends” while Andi was out sick.
Adam was recovering, too. Besides the sexathon, he’d stopped wincing every time he sat down, and he’d started working on the house again. This morning he’d cleared out half the garage, reorganized the pantry, and pulled the vacuum out of retirement, like some kind of domestic superhero.
For weeks, we’d played house and acted like a makeshift family.
I’d expected to feel like an outsider, but the opposite had happened: I’d gotten attached.
Dangerously attached. And now my room was packed, my exit strategy set, and I was even more daunted by the idea of leaving than I’d ever been by the prospect of staying.
My mind wandered: What would happen to the girls when I was gone?
Would Adam remember to move the laundry before it mildewed?
Or make their lunches? Of course he would.
He was a damn Navy SEAL before this. He was the most competent person I knew.
Would he remember to eat dinner, or would he just subsist on raw protein shakes and beef jerky?
That one I wasn’t so sure about. The truth was, I knew Adam and the girls would be fine without me, what I really wondered was, would he even notice that I was missing?
A sharp creak of the hallway floorboard snapped me out of my internal spiral.
I turned and saw Adam standing in the doorframe, silhouetted by the soft glow of the hall light.
He was wearing a gray navy t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants, hair still damp from the shower.
His arms were crossed over his chest, and he looked, for all the world, like a man who’d just finished a long, hard shift at work, except the job was raising two daughters while convalescing, and the shift never ended.
“So,” I said, packing as much nonchalance as I could muster into that single syllable, “you made it up the stairs.”
“I made it up the stairs,” he echoed, with a half-smile.
There was a long silence, neither of us sure who’d go first.
“You’re leaving,” he said finally, voice neutral.
“I’m leaving.”
“Tomorrow?”
I nodded.
He looked down at my bags, then at me. “We need to tell the girls.”
“I told them,” I confessed, suddenly sheepish. “They saw me packing before I read to them. I didn’t want to…you know, lie.”
He didn’t respond.
“I was going to wait and talk to them with you, tomorrow, but they asked and I didn’t want to lie to them,” I repeated. I did that when I was nervous. Apparently, I was nervous. It wasn’t an emotion I was too familiar with.
“No, that’s good. That’s the right thing.” He stepped into the room and put his hands in his pockets. “How did they take it?”
I swallowed over the lump in my throat at the memory of the girls’ bottom lips trembling and watching the tears slide down their sweet little cheeks. “They were upset, but I told them it’s because you are so much better now.” I waved my hand towards him, indicating him being upstairs as exhibit A.
He inhaled through his nose and exhaled through his mouth. “So, this is really it.”
“Thank you for letting me stay,” I said sincerely. The past weeks had meant more to me than I could even put into words, so I didn’t want to try.
He smiled, soft and a little sad. “Thank you for helping me. It’s been really good having you here. It was like old times.”
He looked away, picked at a chipped spot on the doorframe, and then, just when I thought he’d leave, he doubled back.
“You know, the other day, Andi was asking me about my mom,” he said, voice tentative.
“I realized I hadn’t really talked about her with anyone for a long time.
Not really since you.” He glanced at me, as if weighing whether to go on.
“She wanted to know what my mom was like. All I could remember was…music. She liked to put music on. Billy Joel—” He motioned to me, referencing our first conversation.
“—and sing and dance around the kitchen. And she loved to plant flowers, make Halloween costumes.” He smiled at the memory, but there was a distance in his eyes.
“That’s pretty much it, that’s all I remember. ”
Shit. His mom. The secret crouched in the corner of my mind, ugly, anxious, heavy, a stray that had been following me everywhere.
I had been looking for the right way to tell him what I’d found out, as if there were ever going to be a right way, as if there was a version of this conversation where I didn’t break something elemental between us.
I’d sat on the knowledge for a week, convincing myself I was protecting him, when I think the truth was, I was protecting myself from his reaction to me going behind his back.
But this was the perfect opening. If not now, when?
I wiped my palms on my jeans and gestured at the chair by the window. “Can you come in? There’s something I want to talk to you about.”
He stepped inside but didn’t sit, just stood in front of the chair. “About what?”
Anxiety bubbled up inside of me. His mom had always been a raw nerve for him.
It was his most sensitive subject, which was why I felt like I had to do what I did.
He needed to have closure if he ever had a shot at having peace in his life.
He deserved closure. Also, I had been concerned about the money.
“About your mom.”
His reaction was so subtle, if you didn’t know him, you’d probably wonder if he’d heard you. But I knew him. I saw the clench of his jaw.
I took a breath that hurt so badly because my chest was so tight it felt like it threatened to shatter my ribs.
“Just say it, Billie. Whatever it is.” His voice was low, raw, threatening. I knew it wasn’t towards me, it was the subject matter.
“I know you always said you didn’t care what happened to your mom. That she made her choice, left and never came back. But when you made that comment about not getting answers from the ring, I thought you deserved answers.”
His face didn’t move, but something behind his eyes flickered. There was definite feeling there, I just couldn’t tell what it was. It was the emotional equivalent of a coin landing edgewise instead of heads or tails.
“So, I hired a private investigator to look into it.” The words fell like dishes off a shelf.
“What?!” His voice was harsh and explosive, like he’d bit down on a filling.
“I hired a P.I.,” I repeated, the words sounding almost ridiculous to my own ears now, but I’d done it, and the past couldn’t be un-bought. “Just to see what they could find out.”
I watched as his chest started to rise and fall in short, shallow pants. He was still standing, but I worried and wished he would sit down.
I licked my lips, nervous, and tried to keep my voice steady. “Do you want to know…?”
He stared at me, eyes narrowed, jaw set, and he crossed his arms in a defensive or protective stance, I couldn’t quite tell. “That’s why you brought it up, right? You know something. Just say it, Billie.”
I folded my hands together, squeezing them so hard my rings dug into my fingers. “Your mom passed away, Adam. When you were twelve.”
His arms fell to his sides. He stared at me like I’d just told him everything he knew about his world was a lie, which I sort of had. I watched him rewind his life and replay it through the truth I’d just revealed.
“Twelve?” he repeated and then sat down with a force that rattled the chair against the floor.
“Twelve,” I confirmed, softer now, wishing I could reach across the room and fix the way his lived reality was crumbling like a sandcastle being washed away by the wave of this new information in front of me.
He didn’t say anything for a long minute, just stared into the middle distance of the room, jaw working. I could see the pulse in his throat, frantic.
I went on, because silence was worse, filling in the blanks.
“She was in and out of mental health hospitals and treatment facilities for substance abuse. She died from heart failure. And,” I braced myself, “your dad knew. He was notified as the next of kin. He identified the body and the death certificate was mailed here. I don’t know why he never told you. ”
He punched his hand on his thigh and let out a sound that was more exhale than words. “Of course he knew. Of course he did.”
“I’m so sorry.” It sounded thin and useless in the face of everything.
Adam’s head was in his hands now, elbows digging into his thighs. For a second, I thought he’d tuned me out completely.
“I always wondered,” he said, his voice muffled.
“Even when I said I didn’t care. I thought maybe she’d call, or write, or show up when I graduated.
I used to dream about it. Like, she’d just knock on the door and explain everything, and I’d finally get it.
I figured she was just... somewhere. Not dead. ”
I wanted to go to him, touch his shoulder, but I hovered at end of the bed, something stopping me. Maybe I knew if I did, I’d beg him to let me stay, to make this marriage real.
“I’m sorry I went behind your back,” I apologized. “I just…I would have wanted to know. I didn’t want you to go your whole life not knowing.”
He scrubbed his hands over his face. “I get it. I do. I’m just…” He shook his head, then finally looked at me. “When did you find out?”
I took in a shaky breath. “At the wedding. I got a text right before we danced. I was going to tell you bu—”
“Is that why you were so weird around me this week?” he cut me off.
“Have I been weird?”
“Yes.” He nodded.
“Oh.” That was news to me.
“I thought it was because of…because we slept together. Again.”
“No, it wasn’t…” I felt my cheeks burn. “I didn’t know how you were going to react and I didn’t want to say the wrong thing. And I didn’t want to make it about me, if you were mad at me. I was scared you would hate me.”
He stared into my eyes and looked, almost hurt. “I could never hate you.”
Well, you ghosted me for twenty years so…
I didn’t see any reason to bring that up, especially now. What was the point?
I tried to smile, but it felt wrong on my face. “I can give you all the paperwork. There are some hospital records and photos. The investigator said she really did like working with flowers. She was good at it. She owned a nursery for a little bit and named it Adam’s House.”
He nodded, slow and deliberate. “Okay, yeah, and thanks for telling me.”
We sat in silence, the air heavy with all the things we’d never said.
“I don’t know if I’m supposed to be sad, or mad, or what,” he finally spoke.
“Whatever you feel is valid.”
He exhaled in a sharp breath. “I think I just want to punch my dad. I want to hit him.” His hands fisted. “Is it bad to say that?”
“No, it’s not. I want to hit him, too. But I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and you know I was never a fan of your dad, and I’m not making excuses, it was wrong, but maybe in his way he was trying to protect you.”
“Maybe.” He shrugged. “Or maybe he was just doing it because it was cuntvenient.”
“What?” I was sure I’d heard him wrong.
“Andi asked me what cuntvenience was.”
I covered my mouth. “I’m so sorry. I should have known she would have picked up on that, I couldn’t help myself. Mrs. McDonald is a see-you-next-Tuesday.”
Adam chuckled.
“She’s a cunt,” I clarified.
“I know what see you next Tuesday means.”
“Okay, well, I just didn’t want it to get lost in translation.”
He shook his head, still smiling. “You always know how to make me feel better, even when it’s the worst shit.”
“Glad to be of service.” I grinned and dipped my head pretending to curtsey, happy I could lighten the mood, even if it was with the language I’d worked so hard to clean up.
His smile dropped, and the energy between us shifted.
It crackled with electricity. The same sparks that were always there whenever we were in a hundred yards of one another.
They were easier to ignore when we were with the twins, they acted as tiny little chaperones, but when the girls weren’t with us, when it was just the two of us, well, we saw what happened.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood and every cell in my body was singing with life. The atmosphere around us felt like a pressure cooker. It grew thicker and thicker, until I couldn’t take sitting in it any longer.
As if we’d choreographed it, Adam and I stood at the same time. He turned towards the door, and we were just a few inches apart. I had to tilt my chin up to see him.
“The girls are really going to miss you.” His voice was deep, raspy and it washed over my body like a cool breeze on a hot summer day causing goosebumps to rise on my bare skin.
“I’m going to miss them, too.”
His eyes dropped to my mouth and a tingle spread through me from head to toe in anticipation. I felt the heat of his breath as his head lowered himself closer to me. My eyes automatically closed, and I expected to feel his lips on mine when I heard, “Goodnight, Billie.”
When I opened my eyes, I saw his retreating back.
I watched as he walked out of the room while disappointment and relief intermingled and overwhelmed me in equal parts.
It was better this way, not to get physical again.
I knew that. But did I wish I was standing there kissing Adam right now instead of going to bed alone like I would be doing for the foreseeable future? Yes. Yes, I did.