Chapter 12
Something was wrong.
At first, nothing could puncture the haze of Anne’s happiness.
At breakfast, she wolfed down eggs over easy with a piece of whole wheat toast and only felt a tiny bit self-conscious about it.
Their occasional conversation was punctuated by long, lovely silences, moments where Sadie gazed out the window while Anne skimmed a free copy of the Hi-Desert Star and every headline bounced right off her attention.
But throughout the long drive home, Sadie prattled on and on and on, winding sentences about work or freeway closures or opinions on art that were about as substantive as cotton candy. Over two hours of nearly nonstop chatter, egregious even for a woman who typically spoke in paragraphs.
The sharp, trembling edge in Sadie’s rambles made Anne press for an explanation.
“I’m fine,” Sadie insisted, too quickly. Then, “Have I ever told you about the time David Lynch dropped by one of my parties? He brought an electronic keyboard with him, played one chord for ten minutes, then left without saying a word.”
For the rest of the car ride, Anne let Sadie talk, and tried to ignore the slow, steady rise of panic that began to trickle into her veins.
Back at the house, she’d barely pulled into the driveway before Sadie was out of the car, grabbing her overnight bag out of the back seat.
Anne got out, too. “Sadie, what—?”
“I’ve got to get to campus.” Sadie waved her house keys. “Class soon.”
“You don’t teach on Mondays.”
“Oh,” Sadie said vaguely, and waved a hand in the air. “Of course. Tuesdays and Thursdays this semester. I forgot. Listen, dollface, I’ll be over later, all right? Just have to take care of a few things first. Obligation calls.” She smiled. It looked like effort.
“I don’t—”
But Sadie was gone, dashing toward her house.
For several minutes, Anne stood alone on her driveway, feet locked to the stone pavers. The sick lurch of worry roiled through her stomach. Every cell inside her was a siren.
Her mouth filled with the thought of a crisp pinot grigio.
Without thinking about it, she took a few steps toward the house, then stopped in her tracks. No. Not now. She could have a drink later, if she wanted. When she wanted.
First, answers.
This is a bad idea, a little voice said as Anne made her way toward Sadie’s cottage. You should give her some space; she said she’d be over later. But that small protest was no match for the anxiety that stamped it back into submission.
Sadie’s front door was unlocked.
Inside, the overnight bag had been discarded on Sadie’s oversized purple velvet couch.
Thanks to the open floor plan, Anne could see right into the kitchen where Sadie was, her back to Anne.
She was—Anne squinted, unable to believe her own eyes—she was cleaning.
Rubbing down the cabinets next to the double oven, a cleaning rag lifted as high as height permitted.
Scrubbing hard and fast, like the dark-green paint held dirt Anne couldn’t see but that Sadie seemed to believe was there.
Anne cleared her throat.
Sadie whirled around so quickly, her ponytail smacked her in the face, and true surprise widened her eyes. Her cleaning hand was suspended in mid air.
“What the hell is going on with you?”
“The cabinets need to be clean first if I’m going to wax them,” Sadie declared, as though that was a perfectly reasonable statement to make. “Last year, Esther at temple gave everyone on the Belonging Committee jojoba oil for Hanukkah, and it’s just been sitting in my cabinet for months.”
“The cabinets,” Anne said, trying to stay calm, “do not need to be cleaned or waxed right now.”
“No, I just need to—”
“Honey, please put down the rag and talk to me.”
She didn’t notice the term of endearment until Sadie dropped the rag, her hand and mouth opening at the same time. It had slipped out of Anne so easily and without thought. As if she’d been using pet names for her entire life.
“Honey,” Sadie repeated, with a quaver, and picked up the rag from the floor, depositing it on the counter. “I like hearing you call me that. You said it to me last night, too, you know.”
“I did?”
“You were a little occupied with something else at the time, so you might not remember, but I do.”
“Oh.” Anne felt her face flush, guessing at what she might have been preoccupied with. She took a few steps into the kitchen. “I see. Well, if you like it when I call you that, and if—if I like calling you that, then I could keep calling you that. If you wanted.”
The silence stretched long enough for Anne’s stomach to wrench with nausea.
“Anne.” All of Sadie’s manic energy had vanished. Her shoulders were slumped. “I told you I’d be over later. Let me be alone for a bit, all right? A whole lot’s happened in a very short span of time.”
The fear Anne had been forcing down burned hot in her throat like acid. “Sadie, you’re scaring the hell out of me.”
“That isn’t—I’m not trying to scare you, I just—”
“Then tell me what’s going on!”
A small, dry laugh. “You have to admit, it’s just a teensy bit ironic that you’re the one demanding I share.”
She’d never heard that cynical note in Sadie’s voice before. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Only that it’s been the other way around for four years. I’m the shovel, but you, sunshine—you’re the earth and the diamond. Hard to get to you, and harder to get through.”
Anne backed up into the counter, hands behind her. She wouldn’t catastrophize, not until she got more information. She’d breathe normally, the kind of breathing you did when you hadn’t spent the morning confidently imagining a future that now seemed like it could be pulled away.
Wife, she’d thought just a handful of hours ago. Hello. I’m Sadie’s wife.
“You’re having second thoughts about me,” she croaked.
“Absolutely nothing having to do with you is second,” Sadie said quietly.
“I’m still having first thoughts, Anne. It’s been twenty-four hours since you proposed to me.
” She touched the side of her neck lightly, slowly, her fingertips brushing over a small purple spot Anne had first noticed in the diner with hot delight.
A hickey. Anne’s handiwork, the souvenir she’d given Sadie.
“Twenty-four hours since our first kiss. Are you done thinking about this?”
Sadie’s hands and mouth and eyes—the yes in their heat—they hadn’t been an answer to Anne’s proposal after all.
She’d been wrong. Cataclysmically, horribly wrong.
“Everything you thought you knew about yourself just changed overnight, and you think you’re ready, right this second, to throw yourself into a permanent romantic relationship with me?”
Anne’s stomach wrenched again. “Yes. I know what I want. I’m completely certain.”
“You say you’re completely certain, but yesterday morning, if I’d asked you if you had any interest in women whatsoever, you’d have denied it up and down. Correct?”
Reluctantly, Anne nodded.
“Two days ago, if I’d asked you what you wanted from our relationship, you wouldn’t have been able to tell me. Would you?”
“No,” Anne conceded, “but—”
“You couldn’t even get out the word ‘lesbian’ in the car yesterday. It terrifies you, doesn’t it? And knowing you, I’m sure you haven’t begun to think about why.”
For fuck’s sake, Anne wasn’t terrified! Hadn’t she just spent last night and the early morning wrapped in joy and need, marveling at how she wasn’t one bit distressed? “I’m not scared,” she snapped. “Or I wouldn’t be, if you weren’t scaring me right now.”
“You still can’t say it, can you?”
“This is ridiculous!” She wouldn’t indulge Sadie’s train of thought. It wouldn’t get them anywhere. “We can’t live without each other. We want each other. That’s all that matters. Not—words. Or anything else.”
Sadie looked at her for a moment, eyes searching, then smiled, soft and sad. “I don’t know that that’s true, beloved. It isn’t for me, at any rate.”
Anne clenched her hands behind her back.
For decades, she’d locked herself in a room she’d decorated so beautifully that she’d never seen the barred windows, the sealed doors.
Was there such a thing as moving too fast when every instinct inside you was shrieking run?
“It’s not the same for you as it is for me,” she said haltingly.
“You had twenty-five years with someone you loved. Someone you found attractive. I’ve never had—” Her voice splintered.
“The way you kissed me, touched me, I never knew—”
She bit her lip savagely to stop herself from saying You can’t take this away from me; I will starve without it.
“You didn’t know,” Sadie said gently. “That’s exactly right.
And you want to marry me, a person who, one day ago, also had no idea you carried any of this.
” Her placid expression cracked, anguish breaking through.
“What else don’t I know about you? If I throw myself into this, only to realize later that we built our relationship on a facade, it will break me permanently.
I mean that. It will break me in places I didn’t even know existed four years ago. ”
Had Anne’s fear somehow damaged her ears?
She couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
“Sadie, how can you think for even a second that you don’t know me?
You know me better than anyone ever has.
You know that my mother cheated on my father when I was a child.
You know that I did the exact same thing to James at the beginning of our marriage. ”
“That’s not—”