August 19, Wednesday
JOSH ANSWERED the call with a slice of pizza folded in half, halfway to his mouth, and behind him Lily slumped onto the couch with the boneless posture of someone who'd been crying recently.
"Hey, guys."
"Hey," Josh managed around a mouthful of crust.
Lily didn't say anything at all, just stared at some point below the camera, her eyes rimmed pink, jaw set in the particular way that meant she was either about to cry again or about to say something designed to wound.
"This whole thing is insane," she finally said, voice thick. "When are you coming home?"
"I don't know, sweetheart. It's probably going to be a while longer."
Her chin wobbled, and for a second I thought that might be the whole of it—just grief, just a sixteen-year-old missing her mother. Then something hardened behind her eyes instead.
"Well, you should probably hurry," she said, with a brittle little laugh that had no warmth in it at all. "Or Heidi's going to redecorate the whole house before you get back."
Heat climbed my neck. I pictured Heidi Hoyt's manicured hand pulling my slightly dated curtains off their rods and putting up sheers and replacing the worn denim sofa with something modern and cool.
Bizarrely, the thought flashed through my mind, Go for it, Heidi.
I didn't hate the idea of coming home to a newly decorated house.
"I'm sure that's not going to happen," I said instead.
Lily shrugged, already retreating back into herself, apparently satisfied with the damage.
"How's school going?" I asked, redirecting because it was the only tool I had left. "Are you two sleeping all right?"
"I fell asleep in Chemistry yesterday," Josh offered, not looking up from the pizza. "Does that count?"
"Josh."
"What? I'm just answering the question."
"Lily?"
"I'm fine," she said, in the flat tone that meant she was very much not and had no intention of elaborating.
"How are your classes?"
"Fine."
"Anything interesting happening? Any assignments, tests coming up?"
"It's school, Mom. It's just school." She picked at a thread on her sleeve, unwilling to offer anything more substantial, and Josh, sensing an exit forming, took it.
"We gotta go," he said. "Movie's starting."
"Okay. I love you both. Take care of—"
"Bye," Lily said, cutting me off, and the screen went dark before I'd finished the sentence, before I'd gotten out each other, before I'd gotten out anything at all that might have closed the distance instead of confirming it.
I thought of Jill's question from Monday—are you worried about your family—and understood, sitting there, that worry had become too small a word for what I was carrying.
Somewhere underneath it was a colder, more specific fear: that I had made a serious miscalculation, that the version of independence I'd hoped this separation might teach my children was instead teaching them something else entirely, something closer to abandonment, and that I might not be able to undo the lesson once the trial finally let me go home.