Chapter 2
Now
I spend the entire drive home oscillating between hope and despair.
Maybe I’m catastrophizing and my family won’t be that upset about the divorce?
Doubtful. Liam is everyone’s favorite golden boy. They’ll be devastated, and it will be my fault for ruining the trip.
But maybe I can come up with a more elaborate excuse for why he can’t come? An emergency at the hospital? Something he absolutely can’t get out of?
Probably not. Gramps has too many connections at Liam’s workplace. It would take about three seconds before my bluff was called.
When I get home, the house is dark and cold, like no one’s been here in ages, even though I’ve been gone only a few hours. I turn on the lights, preemptively flinching as the front hall comes into view.
No matter how many times I set foot in here, it feels like walking through a minefield of emotional booby traps.
The foyer used to be lined with photographs. Liam and me on our wedding day. Skiing in Tahoe with my family. Christmas at my grandparents’. But after he moved out, I couldn’t stand to look at them. Now all that’s left are dust shadows where the frames once hung.
I remember showing Liam the listing for this house a few months before our wedding five years ago. How he’d patiently let me gush over the white shutters and the blue trim and the spacious kitchen before kissing me on the forehead and whispering, Sorry, baby, but it’s outside our budget.
I’d begged him to go with me and see the house anyway.
Just for fun. But once we got inside the hundred-year-old two-bed two-bath in Seattle’s Phinney Ridge neighborhood, we’d both been utterly charmed.
You could use the second bedroom as a writing office, Liam had mused.
And the dining room is big enough that we could host your whole family for Christmas.
A week later we’d signed the papers.
At the time our future felt indisputable. We were in love. We were getting married. We were buying our first home, where we planned to have children and build a life together.
Everything felt so certain, so sure. Like nothing could ever derail our dreams.
Now the same house that once felt like a brick-and-mortar confirmation of everything we had feels like a reminder of all the things we’ve lost. A future that’s no longer ours.
Everything from the pair of Liam’s shoes collecting dust by the front door, to the bookmark tucked into the Jonas Salk biography on his side of the bed that he’s never going to finish, all echo the same thing: It’s over.
He’s gone. And whatever life we had here is gone now, too, replaced only by ghosts and haunted memories.
I kick off my shoes and tie my unruly curls in a bun before shimmying out of my jeans, eager to get back to the same dirty pair of sweats I’ve been living in the last few weeks. Once I feel appropriately gremlin-like, I take a deep breath, pull out my phone, and find Liam’s contact.
Our communication has been sparse, approaching nonexistent, since he moved out, and I have no idea how he’ll react to hearing from me. Will he be mad? Insist on telling the truth? Screen my call? But I have no choice. We need to sort this mess out. And the sooner, the better.
Three rings later, the familiar drawn-out timbre of Liam’s British accent comes through clear and deep, bringing with it the image of dark eyes and sandy hair and the lingering scent of citrus and spice. “Roslyn? What’s wrong? Is everything okay?”
I’m unsure what catches me more off guard, the question, or the worry threading through his voice. Does he know why I’m calling? Did Grammy and Gramps already ask him?
Then I realize.
A couple of weeks after Liam moved out, I had a nightmare reliving the fatal car accident that killed my mom. I woke up with my chest hurting so badly, I thought I was having a heart attack, or worse. So I called the only person I could think of. I called Liam.
I can still hear the low vibrations of his voice in my ear as he’d told me to stay where I was. I’ll be right there.
Fifteen minutes later his key was in the door, and he was stroking my hair, telling me everything was going to be all right.
I’m here. You’re okay.
He’d held me until I fell asleep. When I woke up, he was gone, almost like the whole thing hadn’t happened. Which, to be honest, I wish it hadn’t.
“I’m fine,” I say curtly. “I’m calling because we have a problem.”
“What kind of problem?”
“You know how the family vacation is coming up?”
I can hear the bob of his throat as he swallows. “Yes.”
“Well, my grandparents have decided to renew their vows this year and…they asked if you would officiate.”
“Officiate?” he repeats.
“Yup. They want you to perform the ceremony and talk about enduring love and commitment.”
“Fuck.”
“Fuck is right,” I say with a humorless laugh. “So what are we going to do?”
For a long moment he’s silent, and I can practically see the way his eyes are narrowing, brows furrowing like they always do when he’s thinking.
It’s an expression I used to find sexy. In fact, there was once a time when I found most everything about Liam sexy, from his accent to the way his forearms flexed when he washed the dishes.
But the same traits that once had me dragging him to the bedroom now feel like salt in a wound—inconvenient reminders that the once bright flame of passion between us has all but fizzled out.
“I suppose we’ll just have to tell them the truth,” Liam says at last. “About the…”
My throat squeezes. Though I can’t tell if that’s because of what he’s just suggested, or the fact that he can’t quite say the word divorce.
“But we agreed we wouldn’t tell them yet,” I say. “Not until the moment was right. And trust me when I say my grandparents’ vow renewal isn’t the right moment.”
When he sighs, he sounds tired. “I know. I’m not exactly eager to look Grammy in the eyes and tell her we’re ending our marriage either…”
There’s a beat of discomfort in his voice, and my heart rate ramps up. This is good. If he doesn’t want to tell them either, maybe we can work something out.
“…But what other choice do we have, Roslyn? We can’t keep lying.”
My chest deflates. “There has to be something we can tell them. Some believable reason why you can’t come,” I say, my voice stretched thin with desperation. “Like maybe you’re up for a Nobel Prize? They’d definitely believe that.”
“Yeah, definitely,” Liam deadpans. “Right up until the moment they find out that’s not true.”
“Okay, what about you’re deathly afraid of ships?” I try. “Or you get seasick?”
“I’m fairly certain they won’t believe that, considering I was just fine on Gramps’s sailboat last summer.”
Damn. He’s right.
“What if you broke your leg?”
“Cruise ships are quite accessible nowadays per ADA regulations.”
I huff in frustration. “Okay, how about you hit your head, end up in an induced coma, and when you wake up, you have amnesia and can’t remember anything from the last few years?”
“Isn’t that the plot to that Channing Tatum and Rachel McAdams movie that always makes you cry?”
My jaw flexes, not sure what annoys me more, him remembering that I love that movie, or that he’s not contributing here. Maybe both.
“So what do you suggest?” I ask, unable to keep the frustration from my voice.
“I don’t see a way to get out of this without making things worse than they already are, Ros.”
I flinch at the sound of my nickname. It used to be something only he called me. Something that was especially cute when said with his charming British accent. Now it just feels like he’s mocking me.
“Besides,” he continues, “we’re all adults. I’m sure your family can handle hearing the truth.”
I swallow back a scoff. Easy for him to say.
“I think you’re underestimating how much they love you, Liam. How much this will devastate them. Grammy will definitely cry.”
“So why don’t you tell them? Since it was your decision.”
I bite back the urge to remind him that he’s the one who decided to leave, who didn’t even try. Who muttered fine before walking out without even a fight. Instead, I say, “Look, I just think we need to figure out a game plan here. Something to buy us a little more time.”
A sigh rattles through the receiver. After a long pause, he says, “I don’t want to tell them either, but I don’t see a way around this.”
I move toward the sink, gripping the porcelain basin as I imagine what it will be like to tell the truth. The gasps, and crestfallen faces, and questions. Oh God, the questions…
They’ll ask me when and why. And whose fault was it? Like the dissolution of our marriage was a car accident with an easily identifiable party at fault. Then they’ll ask, how could you let a man like Liam go? And I won’t know what to say. Or how to say it.
I won’t know how to explain the pit of grief I’ve been trapped in since my mother’s death. Or all the ways it led to the end for Liam and me. And even if I did, they wouldn’t understand.
My breath stalls, throat tightening like someone’s pulled a zipper up its length, and before I can stop them, tears prick the backs of my eyes.
Fuck. I hate that I’m crying over this. Over him.
I wish I were in the moving on part of my life.
The scene where I’m holding a paint roller, finally going over that green kitchen wall Liam and I painted together, feeling at peace, content, self-actualized.
Woman who is going to be okay. But I haven’t even been able to begin the divorce paperwork hidden upstairs, much less paint a wall. And I haven’t been okay in a long time.
I wipe under my eyes, about to make an excuse to end the call when I hear the faint sound of laughter through the receiver.
“Are you out somewhere?” I ask.
“No. Kevin just has some mates over,” Liam says. The laughter increases, and I hear someone shout Liam’s name in the background.
I look down at my ratty hoodie and sweats—my uniform of the last several months—and instantly feel a tug of annoyance.
It’s 9 p.m. on a Tuesday. I’m planning to fall asleep to the lullaby of trashy TV because I can’t stand the silence.
Meanwhile he and Kevin—whom he’s been crashing with—are having a party?
I can’t even remember the last time either Liam or I went out. Liam’s more of a stay-home-and-cook-dinner-on-a-Friday-night type of guy. But apparently New Single Liam hosts parties. On a Tuesday, no less.
“It sounds like a party,” I say, raising my voice to be heard over the increasing din.
“It’s not,” he says, just as someone in the background yells, “Liam, get off the phone! Katie wants to do a shot with you!”
Katie? Who’s Katie?
I open my mouth to ask when Liam says, “Listen, Ros, I’ve gotta go.”
“Don’t call me Ros—” But the call has already ended.
The fuck?
I’ve barely spoken to Liam in the months since he moved out, but I’d imagined (hoped?) he was at least a little torn up about the disintegration of our five-year marriage.
That the bitten-off fine he’d muttered before he left was indicative of a deeper emotional wound.
An inability to say how he was really feeling in the moment. But apparently, he truly is fine.
He’s going to parties. And doing shots with girls named Katie. Meanwhile, I’m decidedly not fine.
I look around the now-dark kitchen: the green accent wall we spent a Saturday painting, the stack of dirty dishes in the sink I haven’t found the willpower to wash, the pungent aroma of rotting garbage wafting from the overflowing trash can that Liam used to be the one to take out.
Everything’s become a reminder of him. Of the life we once had.
Like some kind of perverted, unhygienic shrine to our failed marriage, with me as its patron saint.
Of course I’m frustrated by the family vacation situation. But frustration is just the tip of the iceberg. Under the jagged tip is a mammoth, frozen hunk of hurt that hasn’t begun to thaw since he left.
Hurt that this clearly isn’t causing Liam the same pain it is me. Hurt that our once happy home is now an emotional minefield of bad memories and broken promises. Hurt that I still wake up in the middle of the night searching for his warm body next to mine, only to find cold, empty sheets.
Mostly, it hurts to know that whatever we once had wasn’t enough to save us.