Chapter xlviii
xlviii
I DON’T KNOW HOW YOU FELT WHEN OUR RELATIONSHIP first started, but I had all these moments of: Should I call him? Text him? Would he write back? Would he ignore me? Would it feel worse if I reached out and he didn’t respond, or would it feel worse if I didn’t reach out at all and instead sat wondering how he was doing? That next week, I had the same feelings about the kids. Should I call them? Text them? Would they write back? Would they ignore me? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
I gave them Sunday. I spent the morning with Eva, the afternoon reading through the scripts for the next batch of episodes of Tiger & Bunny , and the evening organizing the house and eating carrots with hummus for dinner, with a spoonful of Nutella for dessert. Sometimes it felt good not to cook.
Monday afternoon I sent a message to Violet. Thinking about you and your brothers, like I always do. Hope you all had a good start to your week.
I heard back from her after dinner. We’re dealing , she wrote. The boys haven’t said much about it. Dad hasn’t mentioned it at all. At least not to me. I still can’t believe you cheated on him.
I closed my eyes, took a breath. Maybe I should have insisted we tell them when they had another few nights at my house. But I thought Darren would want to be with them, would want to be with Sam, and that I owed it to Darren to give him those days, but … I don’t know. Maybe it was the wrong choice.
I’m so sorry, Vi. You can ask me whatever you want , I wrote back. See you all on Thursday for Sammy’s art show. Love you.
I held my breath, waiting to see what she’d say, the way I used to with you.
You too finally came through, and I let out a breath.
Eva said to lead with love. That it would all be okay if I led with love. I took her words to heart. I didn’t only lead with it, I followed with it, too. I wanted them to feel my love everywhere.