Chapter 14 #3
Inevitably, once they were seated in the living room and eating from James’s spread, Arthur drove them right into uneasy territory. “So, how’s Sadie handling the news? Probably a whole lot better than you did when James came out, since you’re not married to her.”
Anne, her throat full and tight, needed a distraction. “Oh, Sadie’s fine. Busy getting ready for a trip to New York to see her brother. Hey, don’t you volunteer for that LGBTQ community center in Santa Monica? Tell me about that.”
Arthur all but levitated at the chance to talk about his work—a retired endocrinologist, he helped run free clinics for transgender people with low incomes—and, to her surprise, Anne found herself intrigued by one particular detail.
The free medical care was apparently funded in large part by the center’s fundraising campaigns, which usually fell far short of their objectives.
Decidedly unlike Anne’s own fundraisers.
The idea of lending her considerable expertise was—strangely appealing. Maybe she could look into it, when she felt ready.
While they talked and ate, James watched Anne from his chair on the other side of the coffee table. His eyes were slightly narrowed, as if he knew the outline of something unsaid was there in the room with them and wasn’t sure how to trace it. Not yet.
Anne answered their gentle questions as honestly as she could, walking them through a story she cut carefully around the loud absence of Sadie. All the while, her mind strayed back to the chapbook and the note on the kitchen island. The only bit of Sadie she had at the moment.
And fear’s a sea that pulls away.
Time crawled and crawled, until Anne eventually sensed she’d been there long enough to make a getaway.
After one final round of tearful congratulations from Arthur and a long squeeze to her shoulder from James’s warm, firm hand, she took her leave, promising as she did it to come with them to a lecture on queer art at the community center.
The note she’d found in Sadie’s chapbook was now folded safely in her pocket.
Back in her car, Anne placed her purse on the other seat, then winced. She’d been too upset on the way over to notice, but Sadie had left her gold-and-onyx earrings in the cupholder. The uneven dark ovals looked like stretched, mocking mouths, reminding Anne who wasn’t sitting there.
She looked at her watch. Over three hours since she’d left Hedge Nettle, and nearly as long since she’d glanced at her phone, unable to focus on anything but her own raw self.
Had Sadie called? Had she texted? Was she calmer now, like Anne, or was she still furious? And if she was, what did that mean?
If Sadie hadn’t tried to reach out—
Panic threatened, and Anne had to work hard not to breathe it in. She fumbled with the flap of her purse and dug until her hand closed around the hard rectangle of her phone.
Hal Rosenthal-Clark 8 minutes ago
iMessage (34)
Claire Lowell 1 hour ago
Voicemail
Brooke Mulrenin 2 hours ago
Voicemail
Hal Rosenthal-Clark 3 hours ago
Voicemail
Nothing from Sadie. Not even one text.
Unlocking the screen, Anne pressed the series of buttons that took her to her voicemail, trying to quell the sick fright that pressed on her lungs.
Sadie hadn’t reached out to her. Which meant that Sadie was still angry.
In fact, Sadie was perfectly fine with letting the seconds they’d gone without speaking stretch into hours, or even days.
She preferred it. And maybe Sadie had realized she didn’t need more time to think about things after all.
As a matter of fact, she’d already reached a final decision about—
The first voicemail.
“Anne? It’s Hal.” He sounded agitated, far outside his typical emotional range of calm to extremely calm.
“So, uh, I’m working from home today, and good thing I am because Mom showed up at my place ten minutes ago.
She’s acting like she did when Dad left, like the light’s gone out of the world, and I don’t—I keep trying to get her to tell me what happened, but all she’ll say is ‘This story has two writers,’ which makes no sense.
And when I asked her where you were, her face got all—it was weird.
I’m really worried. Please call me back as soon as you get this, okay?
Or come over? We need to talk. It’s Hal. ”
Oh no.
The second voicemail.
“Mom, what the hell is going—Colton, stop hitting your brother right now. We don’t hit in this family, you know that.
Because we don’t. Mom, Hal just told me he called you an hour ago and you haven’t called back.
Where are you? Why is Sadie at Hal’s telling him that she’s ‘a lily-livered wreck of a human’?
What is she talking about?” In a much softer voice, nearly a whisper.
“Does this—okay, I’m just going to say it outright.
Does this, by any chance, have anything to do with what you and Claire and I talked about at—” Louder again.
“Maverick? Don’t you dare pick that up. Don’t you—Mom, I can’t do this right now, but you need to call me back. I swear to God, Mav—”
Oh no.
The third voicemail.
“Hello, Mommy dearest—sorry, I know you hate it when I call you that. Cherished Mother. Care to enlighten me as to why your BFF is currently giving her neurotic son enough material for several therapy sessions? Is that related to why you’re not answering your phone?
Look, Hal and Bee both called me. They want me to drive up to Topanga to see if you’re home, but Xiomara’s got me on a hard deadline, and if I don’t get the fall collection fabric swatches to her before six o’clock, I’ll be designing aprons for Home Depot next season.
” A pause. “Did Sadie get bad news or something? Is she okay? Hal said she’s shut herself up in his backyard tiny house for the last hour. What’s going on? Call me back.”
Oh fuck.
Anxiety crawled up Anne’s arms, wound around her ribs, sped up her heart rate.
Brooke sounded like she was about ten minutes and half a Xanax away from figuring it all out.
And, knowing Claire, she wouldn’t be too far behind.
Coming out was one thing, but the thought of their entire family knowing about her unresolved situation with Sadie was something else entirely.
She wasn’t ready for them to find out. Not until she’d had a chance to speak with Sadie again and figure out exactly where they stood.
If Sadie even wanted to talk to her. If Sadie would actually listen.
Thirty-four unread texts. She’d never received that many at once, not even on the day Sadie had learned how to send GIFs.
Her finger paused over the screen as Anne went suddenly cold with pure terror. Something horrible had to have happened for Hal to text her that many times. Was Sadie all right? Had she had some kind of medical event from all the stress?
Before she let herself corkscrew any further down that spiral, Anne pressed the green badge icon and clicked again to bring up the series of texts from Hal. Scrolled up to the top.
When she read the first message, the fear left her fast enough to make Anne slump with relief.
Today 1:32 PM
I’m so angry at you
I’m so angry at myself
Today 1:48 PM
Are you all right?
Please let me know if you are
Currently defining “all right” as fewer than three glasses deep, if you need a metric
Today 2:01 PM
For your information my weighted blanket is on the bottom shelf in the hall closet
There’s nothing like it for crushing panic right out of your bones
Or maybe I’m the only one panicking currently
Today 2:08 PM
Trying very hard to remember how much wine is in your house
Today 2:14 PM
Weighted blankets don’t give you hangovers
Today 2:31 PM
Anne you had no right to compare me to Fred like that
No right at all
Being angry is not an excuse for you to hurt me
There’s nothing wrong with me taking some time to think
Can’t you see that?
Today 2:48 PM
I just imagined a text from you
Would you like to know what it said
Today 2:53 PM
Fine, fine, I’ll tell you
“It’s one thing to take some time, and another thing to run away.”
I hate that you’re right even when you’re imaginary
But I’m right too
I truly hope you can see that
Today 3:04 PM
Maybe you can’t see that
Today 3:29 PM
Still feeling very frightened
Today 3:36 PM
I want to ask you what you’re thinking
What you’re feeling
But I don’t know if I want to hear your answers
Today 3:48 PM
I’m in Hal’s tiny house right now
There’s a strange, perverse pleasure in being able to open the oven door while still lying in bed
Did I tell you I borrowed Hal’s phone because I forgot mine at home?
Oh shit I should’ve told you that earlier shouldn’t I
This is Sadie
Today 3:54 PM
Your best friend
Today 4:07 PM
Anne just let me know you’re ok
Anne wasn’t anywhere. No car around her. She wasn’t sitting in a driveway. James and Arthur’s house wasn’t there either. Just Anne and her phone and Sadie.
She scrolled back through the messages, reading them again, this time more slowly. Her index finger lingered on the bubbles, touching what Sadie had sent out into the vacuum of Anne’s silence.
None of the possible replies she came up with were right.
I’m okay, Sadie.
I’m as okay as I can be under the circumstances.
I’m not drunk.
I hate weighted blankets.
I told James and Arthur.
I told James and Arthur you know what.
I told them I was a lesbian. Can you believe it?
I wish you’d been there.
I wish I’d said it to you first.
I’m so sorry that I hurt you.
You hurt me.
You knew exactly how to hurt me.
No one’s ever known how to hurt me like you do.
Please come back.
She typed and erased, typed and erased. Finally, Anne ended up with:
I’m here.
She sent the text. After a long second, it went through.
Almost instantly, the screen scrolled up again on its own as the typing indicator appeared. Then the bubble vanished, and before Anne could start to worry, it resurfaced. Disappeared. Again and again, because—Anne held her breath—Sadie was also trying to find the right thing to say.
Eventually, a large red heart appeared. Just that. Nothing else.
Inside Anne, small sprouts of possibility were twitching back to life. Hope—that shitty little nemesis of common sense.