Chapter 28
Mary eats alone at her kitchen table. She always eats alone.
A floor below, he eats alone, too.
Sometimes Mary thinks that it’s not unlike being pregnant. When she’s home and she feels alone, she’s really not. She will never forget that feeling, the alien movement within her—a miniature foot to a rib, a tiny fist against her bladder.
The chicken turned out well. Tender and fragrant, with the lemon just right. She wonders if he likes it.
Mary thinks of Greg on occasion, the man she wishes she had married.
Of course, it was too late by the time she met Greg.
She’d been married to Ed for so long, and Owen was fourteen.
And if she’d met Greg when she was young, before she’d met Ed, she wouldn’t have chosen him.
It took many years, it took time being married to Ed, for her to recognize Greg as an ideal sort of husband.
When she was a teenager, she would have proclaimed him boring.
Too short, too bespectacled, too nerdy. He wasn’t exciting or handsome like Ed.
But he would have been a good father. He wouldn’t have broken her heart.
He did reach out to her, after the murder. But she never responded to his message. It wasn’t his fault, what happened, yet she couldn’t help but blame him. If it hadn’t been for him, for the things she felt for him and he for her, everything would have been different.
Mary finishes her dinner and her wine. She rinses her plate and glass, then loads them into the dishwasher. Later, she’ll open the basement door to retrieve the rest of the dishes from the top step, but not yet. He won’t have put them there yet.
She cleans the counters, a spritz of grapefruit spray and a paper towel.
That nerve in her back still pinching, Mary wants desperately to settle onto the sofa for the night, but when she throws the paper towel away, she realizes that the can is far too full.
She should have taken it out yesterday, and trash pickup is in the morning.
Mary tugs the bag loose, knots the top, and carries it out to the larger can in the garage.
She keeps her eyes cast down as she rolls the can to the end of the driveway.
If there are any neighbors out, she doesn’t want to see them.
They don’t greet her pleasantly or genuinely, her neighbors.
They don’t call out, “Hey, Mary. How are you?” They don’t want her here, don’t understand why she’s stayed all these years.
They wish she’d leave. Soon, their wish will come true.
But as she parks the can at the curb, she senses a presence, and she can’t help but glance up, peering through the golden light cast by the descending sun.
Janet, across the street, is in her own yard, hose aimed over her front garden.
Janet smiles tentatively and lifts a hand in the briefest of waves.
Mary, relieved, returns it—the smile, the wave—before turning back toward her house.
It’s something. It’s enough. More than any other neighbor would offer.
And perhaps more than Mary would want from anyone else.
Janet, a mother of grown children, one of whom still lives with her, is possibly the only neighbor who doesn’t make Mary feel like she’s something shameful, something that doesn’t belong.
Mary slides beside her car, back toward the door to the house.
She’s been putting off cleaning out the garage, knows it will be almost as unpleasant as cleaning out Owen’s bedroom.
The memories it holds aren’t as painful, but the volume and weight of the things stored in here are overwhelming.
But she’s running out of time. She’ll have to tackle it one box at a time.
She scans the array now, the cardboard boxes and heavy plastic containers stacked against the walls, perched on rickety metal shelves Ed had built himself. In the back corner, there’s a glint of green, of black rubber, and it causes a stabbing in her chest.
She knows what it is. She should go inside.
It’s time for a bath, to lie down with her heating pad, a novel that can transport her someplace far away, someplace far happier than here.
But she can’t help herself. She squeezes between the boxes, steps closer, tugs at the handlebars, and unearths Owen’s bike.
His first bike, his only bike. Fluorescent-green metal, shot through with white and black accents.
They bought him the bike for his fifth birthday. It rained that morning, the driveway damp and water pooling because they needed to have it repaved, the concrete cracking and dipping in places.
They forgot to buy him a helmet. “I’ll run out to the sporting goods store and get one,” Mary said, car keys already in her hand.
“He’ll be fine,” said Ed, and that was when the sick feeling began, trickling into Mary’s gut, the knowledge that whatever was to come wouldn’t be good.
Mary found her old helmet, the one she used to wear when she was in her early twenties and would ride her bike to the diner where she worked, when Ed wasn’t available to drive her.
They had gotten rid of the bike during one of their previous moves, but somehow the helmet had made it from house to house.
It was too big for Owen, slipping over his eyes even once she’d tightened the straps as much as she could.
An hour later, Owen was crying, left knee dripping blood that was collecting in his sock.
“Stop crying,” Ed hissed. He had a way of speaking to Owen on those rare occasions when they were out front, where neighbors could see him. He had the ability to lace his tone with cruelty even while his face was placid, his body language loose.
“Get back on.” Ed flicked a hand toward the bike. “Falling is part of learning.”
“I think we can take a break,” said Mary. “Get his knee cleaned up.”
“He’s fine.”
Owen, decidedly, was not fine. He was five. Mary’s parents were coming later that evening for cake and ice cream, and Owen was gulping wetly, staring at his father with a hatred that Mary understood all too well.
“You’re not a baby anymore,” said Ed sternly. “If you don’t want to get back on the bike, we’ll take it back to the store.”
Mary’s heart was aching.
“I don’t care,” said Owen. He was looking at his shoes.
If they hadn’t been out front, on the driveway, Mary had no idea what Ed might have done.
But they were, and Janet, across the street, was outside, too, pulling weeds from the little garden around her mailbox.
So while Ed’s eyes bulged in a way that made Mary’s stomach churn, he said nothing.
He spun around and went into the garage.
The door slammed, the house rattled, and Mary collected her boy in her arms. His breaths slowed and evened out, and his fingers dug into her back.
She held him close, and she didn’t tell him she was sorry, although she was.
She just couldn’t bear to explain precisely why.
It was so complicated for a five-year-old.
It was more, sometimes, than even she could understand.
Ed never took the bike back to the store like he’d threatened, but he also never offered to teach Owen how to ride it again, and Owen didn’t ask.
And here it is, tucked against this back wall all these years, old but perfectly intact. Mary will donate it along with Owen’s other possessions. Things from a childhood so auspicious to start, but that had gone so spectacularly wrong.
She closes the garage door, goes back into the house. It’s time, at last, to rest.