Chapter 15
Sure, Anne could’ve just called Hal back. But a visit was better, wasn’t it? They could talk.
And maybe Sadie would want to talk, too. Or listen. Or both.
At any rate, she’d want her phone back.
She knew she’d made the right decision when Talisha opened the front door, revealing a strained expression that broke into obvious relief.
“Don’t you have work?” Anne asked after the kind of quick, perfunctory hug you gave someone who was sort of family and sort of not. “It’s Monday. I didn’t expect to see you.”
“I came home after Hal called me. He’s pretty worried.” Talisha beckoned Anne into the house, a perfectly renovated two-story Craftsman Anne had only been inside once before. “Anne’s here!”
In no time at all, Hal thundered down the stairs, and if Anne had thought Talisha’s face reflected concern, it was nothing compared to her husband’s demeanor.
“You got my message,” he said anxiously with a quick look at Talisha. “I’m so glad you came. Mom won’t tell me anything, and normally I can’t stop her from talking to me. Even when we did that silent retreat together, we had a blinking code.”
Anne clutched Sadie’s phone tightly in one hot hand. “Is she—?”
“Still in the guest house out back, yeah.” He bit his lower lip. “I should check on her. She’s probably hitting her head on that ceiling. We never should’ve gotten the option with the elevated bed.”
“Baby,” Talisha said, her tone low. “Remember, your mom’s a fully capable adult. She can take of herself.”
Hal didn’t seem convinced. “I know, but—”
“And you’re a grown man with a job and your own life. You can support her and not drop everything else at the same time. You’re not responsible for managing her feelings.”
The reminders were clearly little tendrils of a larger conflict between Hal and Talisha, but Anne had other priorities at the moment. “I’d like to go talk to Sadie. If—” If she’ll talk to me. “If that’s all right.”
“Of course it is.” Talisha sounded almost grateful. “Just head through the hallway, into the dining room, and through the back door. We’ll leave you be.”
“Unless you need something,” Hal offered. “I’ve got that Poetry of Hope and Resilience book Mom gave me. Do you think that would help?”
“No poetry,” Anne and Talisha said at the same time, and the empathetic smile Talisha gave Anne made her feel warm.
The backyard was decently large, encased by three rows of tall, clumping bamboo.
In the far corner stood a tiny prefabricated house, less than a quarter the size of Hedge Nettle.
Hal had said once that it was a nice option for guests, one that afforded some extra privacy—and if Sadie ever wanted to come live with them, she had a place waiting for her.
Anne had a sneaking suspicion Talisha wouldn’t be enthusiastic about the prospect.
Faintly nauseous with anticipation, she made her way to the tiny house’s front porch—about the size of a postage stamp—and shifted her shoulders back, standing a little taller. Somehow, she found the courage to knock.
“Sadie?” she called out. “It’s me.”
Silence.
She knocked again, harder and for longer.
Still nothing.
“Sadie?”
No answer. But the silence felt thick and fertile. Somehow, Anne knew—deduction, intuition, both—that Sadie was right on the other side of the door.
“You can hear me, can’t you?”
A very long nothing.
“I think so,” Sadie said finally, her voice muted. “I’ll do my best. What about you? Can you hear me?”
Anne immediately picked up on the underlying layer in Sadie’s questions. “I’ll try, too. Will you open the door?”
“If you—if you don’t mind, I think I’d like to keep the door closed. We don’t just need to talk, we need to hear each other. And if I’m only using that one sense, then it’s a lot harder for me to jump off an emotional precipice.”
That actually made sense to Anne, who began to nod in agreement before she realized that Sadie couldn’t see her reaction. It was already easier to talk without the added complication of Sadie’s physical presence. “Believe it or not, I understand.”
“It’ll help us concentrate. There’s a lot to concentrate on.”
“Like you turning tail.” Another thing Anne hadn’t meant to say.
Well, she couldn’t take it back, and the longer it sat between them, the less she wanted to.
Sadie had pulled away from Anne: not just in deciding to leave, but in her unsubstantiated panic over the possibility that history would repeat itself.
Finally, Sadie said, “I won’t apologize for telling you what I need, even if it’s not what you want from me. But I am sorry for letting my fear sit in the driver’s seat.”
Anne pressed her fingers against the cool door and wondered if Sadie was doing the same on the other side. It was her turn now. She took a deep breath. “I shouldn’t have compared you to Fred, or said you weren’t as strong as I am. It was unkind. Cruel. I’m sorry, too.”
“The Fred comparison was below the belt. And wrong. But I don’t know that you were wrong about my strength.
Strong people don’t choose their fear. Sweetheart, I’m just—” Sadie stopped.
“I probably shouldn’t call you that at the moment, should I?
Or anything else other than your name. Not after I told you I needed time. Mixed signals.”
The sensible thing would be to agree with that statement. Maybe in a different world, where any endearment from Sadie didn’t feed a lifelong emptiness, Anne would. Instead, she said quietly, “You are strong. And you can call me whatever you want. Anything.”
“I know what you want me to call you,” Sadie said softly. “Wife.”
Startled, Anne pulled her hand back from the door, not sure she was ready for whatever Sadie was about to tell her next.
“I’ve imagined it before, you know. On and off over the last year, when I knew there was no way it could ever come true. I daydreamed about holding your hand. Feeling a little gold band on your finger press into my skin. A ring I put there. I told myself how silly I was. So many times.”
Anne couldn’t speak.
“I thought about that ring on your finger, and I wanted it there so badly, it made my back teeth ache.”
Wanted. Past tense.
“Then you kissed me,” Sadie continued. “And for the first time, what I’d fantasized about actually seemed possible.
” She sounded so distressed—maybe with herself.
“What do you do when your heart’s desire is right in front of you and you realize you’re too goddamn cowardly to grab it with both hands?
What do you do when you know you can’t live without someone but you’re still terrified to move forward with them? ”
You just get over it, Anne thought wildly, even though she knew it was unfair. Out loud, she managed, “I don’t know.”
“I don’t either. And that’s why I need some time to think.
Not just about next steps. Look, until yesterday, I don’t think I realized I was still so traumatized by what happened with Fred.
I guess I’ve got a lot of unfinished business with myself I need to start addressing.
” A pause. “Maybe you do, too. I don’t think I’m the only one who’s frightened. ”
Her chest was constricting. “Yes. I’m scared.”
“Because you think I won’t come back to you?”
“I’m terrified you’ll take this away from me.
Forever.” It was hard for Anne to get out her confession.
What if speaking it aloud made it come true?
“It’s like I’ve never eaten anything before in my life, and yesterday you set a decadent meal in front of me and told me to take a big bite.
Now you’re pulling away the plate and telling me I might never eat again. ”
“Ah,” Sadie said quietly. “That’s an interesting analogy. What’s the meal? A cheeseburger?”
Like the one she’d devoured at Burger Bliss. “I hadn’t thought about it.”
When Sadie spoke again, her tone was very gentle. “You’ve deprived yourself of so much for so long, haven’t you?”
Food. Intimacy. Desire. Anne swallowed. For years and years, she’d kept herself away from all of it as best she could.
Tried so hard to make her body not need.
Lived her life in the smallest possible way while telling herself she had everything.
Anne had prided herself on staying contained within narrow perimeters. I don’t. I’m not. I can’t.
It hadn’t been all misery. Abstaining held its own sour joy, small and hard, and she’d fed on that instead.
But she hadn’t deprived herself of everything.
The rotating crates of wine in her pantry—the ones she didn’t let Sadie see—those told another story.
For years, drinking had been Anne’s sole physical indulgence, the one pleasure she didn’t restrict.
Wine’s warm fuzz was as close as Anne could get to leaving herself behind.
After a few glasses, her brain always drifted pleasantly elsewhere. Away from her inconvenient body. Away from any want or feeling or need.
Anne let a slow, shaky exhale drain from her lungs. Shit. This was what Sadie meant by unfinished business, wasn’t it?
“All right,” she said slowly. “Slowing down does have its merits. I can see that now.”
“Really?” Sadie’s immense relief was unmistakable.
“Look, I’ve always thought it was a waste of time to be self-involved—”
“Self-reflective.”
“Self-reflective, then. But you have a point. I could stand to examine a few things in my life, too. Old habits.” Anne suddenly felt very, very tired. “You ran away from me, but I think—maybe I’ve been running away from myself, too. For a long time.”
“Come home, then,” Sadie said softly. “You’re a wonderful place to be.”
“Maybe I don’t like that I’m”—sudden embarrassment, nausea—“someone who needs a glass of wine to feel better about herself. Someone who’s afraid of a sad little fast-food meal.”
“Oh, my sweetheart.”
No. Anne wouldn’t start crying again. She’d spent too much time doing that lately. “At the house, you said I was becoming another Anne. If that’s true, then I want the Anne I’m becoming to be the—the person you deserve.”