Chapter 13
Once she’d closed her own front door, Anne’s fury left her, too. Her emptiness was the only thing left.
As a child, she’d broken her arm and had it reset by a doctor. Right after he’d wrenched it back into place, there’d been a swollen second of numb shock before the shriek of pain that followed.
Anne was back in that second again. Only now for much, much, longer.
She sat down heavily on one of her living room chairs. Don’t leave, she’d pleaded, as naked as Anne had ever let herself be in front of another person. But Sadie hadn’t listened. Sadie had left her.
Where had Anne’s anger gone? It would feel so good to be furious at Sadie for abandoning her.
Simple. But Anne couldn’t do it. The woman Anne had been just this morning, that shameless romantic with stars in her eyes and silly fantasies—that woman could shoulder the bulk of the blame instead.
Wasn’t it her own fault, after all? She’d gotten her hopes up.
If she’d just gotten her brain out from between her legs and fully realized that Sadie had been communicating her doubts that whole day, maybe then—
Fresh pain ripped up her chest without warning. Anne inhaled, trying to ride through it, and curved forward, arms folded over her belly.
A soft keening sound escaped her throat. Oh no. Too much. Oh God. Too much.
No. I can’t do this.
Rocking, back and forth, so carefully, cradling herself—
I need a drink.
With that thought came a fierce rush of relief that dulled the agony. Not a lot to drink. Just a couple of glasses. Enough to dull her pain.
Her short walk to the kitchen was mostly steady, and she felt somewhat calmer with her clear goal in mind. Anne could drink by herself at one in the afternoon, because no one was around to wonder aloud if she should have a little nosh first to settle her empty stomach.
The half-empty bottle in the fridge uncorked easily. She didn’t bother to shut the fridge door, partly because the chill felt good and mostly because Sadie would tell her to shut it.
Anne chose her second-favorite glass from the open cabinet—not her favorite, not the one from the winery in Temecula she’d gone to with Sadie—and poured until the straw-yellow wine was a fingertip’s depth below the rim.
No one was here to comment on the amount. No one would know.
Slowly, so she wouldn’t spill a drop, Anne took a generous swallow. She waited for the smooth slide of cold wine in her throat to comfort her, as it always did.
She kept waiting.
Lifting her glass for a second swallow, she paused just before the tilt.
A clear itinerary spread before Anne, just as real as the quartz countertop in front of her.
She could get good and toasted, then fall asleep on the couch and wake up bleary-eyed sometime around sunset.
Maybe tomorrow she’d open her laptop again and email Genevieve about the investment income line on Conserve Malibu’s April budget report.
Reassure her daughters, plaster a polite smile on her face for errands, and try to walk around the safe perimeter of her life like she hadn’t exploded the whole thing yesterday.
Press it all down, at least until Sadie decided what she wanted.
Say no, I don’t, I’m not, I can’t, like she always had.
Anne could try to go back.
But then something inside her would break, and maybe for good.
Heart stuttering, she put down the full glass of wine on the counter and closed the fridge door. Then she stared unseeing at the black-tiled backsplash, and unprompted, the vista of her memory rose into view.
In sixth grade, on each Monday, she’d always brought an apple for pretty Miss Fields and warmed under the bloom of her teacher’s appreciation. Anne had chosen each apple herself at the market, selecting only the ones that were wax perfect—no dents, shining just like Miss Fields’s smile.
Nearly two decades later, she’d sat alone in the back of a movie theater showing Bound, telling herself she was there for the neo-noir elements, the arthouse edge.
She’d left, nauseous and trembling, after one woman had touched the other woman’s breast, fully convinced her revulsion was for something other than herself.
And Missy Campbell, Missy with her pink toenails and those full, soft lips she’d pressed against Anne’s cheek one evening senior year, both of them a little drunk on Missy’s mother’s vodka.
She’d left a bold lipstick print Anne had stared at in the bathroom mirror—a coral mark—then touched it with careful fingers.
Wondered what the lipstick was, where to find it, how she could have it for herself.
Now she understood. The color hadn’t been what she’d ached for.
For sixty years, Anne had breathed through a straw, and she was only now just realizing it.
The wineglass sat on the counter, waiting for Anne, and she realized, with a clarity that rushed air into her lungs, that habit wasn’t the same thing as comfort. Not anymore. That starry-eyed dreamer she’d been this morning, yes, that woman had been silly, but right, too.
I can’t go back.
Sadie wasn’t here. But Anne was.
Anne rubbed her hands on the front of her jeans, drying her sweaty palms, and looked around the bright, empty kitchen. With Sadie gone, what did forward look like? She didn’t know where to start, or how.
But someone else might.
* * *
A familiar face emerged on the other side of the opening door. “Anne?”
“Hi, James.” She’d rehearsed a casual tone the entire drive over, but from the way her ex-husband’s forehead was crinkling, it hadn’t worked. “I’m so sorry to drop in on you unannounced like this, but I really need to talk to someone. To you.”
James swung the door wide and stood on the threshold. Thankfully, Arthur was nowhere to be seen behind him. “What happened? What’s wrong? Are the girls—”
“The girls are fine. The grandkids, everyone, they’re all fine, as far as I know. Everyone else is just fine.” Anne’s voice wavered on the last word, and she stopped.
“Did someone do something to you?” James’s eyes were wide, his face reddening. “Are you hurt?”
“No, I’m not hurt, not physically—oh, just be quiet and give me a second to get this out, please, I, I can’t do it if you keep asking me—”
“Okay,” he said softly. “Floor’s all yours.”
For a stunned second, Anne thought James might actually reach out and touch her arm. He didn’t. Instead, his hand moved to cup the side of his own neck, the gesture she knew so well completely at odds with the rest of this stranger’s demeanor.
Who the hell was this man standing there looking at Anne with so much concern?
Not her husband, that was for certain. Throughout their marriage, Anne couldn’t remember one single time James had ever looked at her like he could see beyond his own discomfort.
Not even when the girls were born. The second time, with Brooke, he’d asked Anne if she’d prefer a little privacy during her labor.
The question had stunned her so much she’d agreed.
Since the divorce, she’d attributed the changes in James to Arthur’s influence. Some emotional thawing was probably inevitable when you lived with a man who was too softhearted to attend a preschool graduation without tearing up.
But that wasn’t the only reason. Anne saw that now.
James wasn’t living to survive anymore. He’d learned how to give himself what he needed. He had compassion now, for himself and for others, growing in the green of his honesty.
What could Anne tell him? What could she possibly say that might explain to James why she’d shown up uninvited to her ex-husband’s house on a Monday afternoon? Which one of her many revelations would be good enough shorthand?
I’ve spent my entire life thinking the validation I got from men’s interest was the same thing as attraction.
I’ve wanted women for decades and called it by every other name except what it was.
Just the thought of losing Sadie frightened me so badly, I proposed to her.
I’m attracted to Sadie in ways I never could’ve let myself imagine before yesterday.
And then realization arrived with her next breath, and somehow it was perfectly formed and wholly complete—like it had been waiting for so long to arrive.
I’m in love with Sadie.
I’m in love with her. I’m in love with her.
Because somehow she slipped inside me, filled every miserable corner, and now I’ve got her ink stains all over my heart; I’ve got the curve of her smile behind my own, and the light she’s poured into me is bright enough to live by.
I will love her until my eyes close forever and then I will search for her in the dark.
I love Sadie Rosenthal so much that it feels like praying.
The first time I touched her body, I knew why I had hands.
In another lifetime, at her birthday party, Anne had found it in herself to ask James, How did you know? Now she knew: she hadn’t been asking, but imploring. Tell me I’m not starting to wake up inside the same thing.
It was the same thing. It was.
“What is it?” Finally, James broke the silence. “You’re starting to frighten me. That look on your face—”
She opened her trembling mouth, unsure what would come out of it, and felt the cliff’s edge crumbling beneath her feet. I’m in love with Sadie.
“Anne, please—just say it, whatever it is, tell me—”
“I’m a lesbian!” Anne gasped.
Then her legs trembled, and she nearly lost her balance as the weight of what she’d just done landed.
Dear God.
She hadn’t known she was going to say it. Hadn’t known she was ready. Hadn’t known what it would feel like: a life suddenly locking into place for the first time.
“I’m a lesbian,” she said again, more slowly, and this time she was speaking to herself.
James stared at her. He couldn’t have looked more shocked if he’d seen her levitate. The door swayed a little in his hand.
Anne placed a shaking palm over her chest and pressed it against the fabric of her shirt. She wondered wildly what he was thinking. Had he convinced himself he couldn’t have heard her correctly? Did he think she was playing some sort of prank on him? Was he too stunned to even respond?
“James?” The question was very small.
“Well,” James said very slowly, “I don’t really know how to put this, but—would you be angry if I—?”
“Just say it!”
“Oh, kid. This explains so much.”
Anne began to cry.
It was loud, sudden, the weight of today and yesterday and every other day she’d ever had abruptly collapsing in on her, and then she was in James’s arms.
She sobbed into the cotton of his polo shirt, soaking his shoulder, unable to stop herself. Somewhere above her head, she could hear his voice, this new James.
“It’s all right, you’re all right, you’ll be all right,” he whispered, and his hand gently stroked the back of her head.
He didn’t know what was making her cry uncontrollably. For thirty years, Anne had worked side by side with this man to create a performance they’d agreed to call living. This seismic awakening she’d just had—it made sense to James, too. No questions. No challenges. Just immediate understanding.
For the very first time, he’d seen her.
They held each other for a while, together in a way their marriage hadn’t accomplished. Eventually, reluctantly, Anne pulled back, sniffling, and wiped at her wet cheeks with both hands.
“Thank you,” she got out.
From the way he smiled at her, he might’ve even understood why she was grateful. “Now that you’ve come out,” James said gently, and gestured behind him, “would you like to come in?”
It was a terrible joke. One of the worst ones she’d ever heard him make. Anne laughed a little anyway, still sniffling through her tears. “I would.”
He stood back and let her push the door open a little wider, so she could walk through first.