Chapter 15 #3
Sadie sat up. “I wouldn’t say that labels are the best—”
“I’m a lesbian,” Anne blurted out.
A beat of silence.
Sadie closed her mouth. Opened it again. Her face struggled with something Anne wanted to understand and couldn’t, except that it was naked. “Anne,” she said. “Anne, oh my God.”
Anne turned to her, suddenly desperate for Sadie to know everything.
“I came out to James earlier. On his doorstep, if you can believe it. After you left, I drove over there, and he opened the door, and I just, I just said it without knowing I was going to. Arthur knows, too. I wanted—oh, I thought about you, the whole time, I thought about you. I wanted you there when I did it, but you were—you were gone. And I couldn’t hold it back anymore.
I couldn’t stop myself. Even if it scares me, Sadie, I have to have this. ”
Sadie’s smile was shaky, gentle. “I know you do.”
Looking down at her lap, Anne said slowly, “I could’ve died first,” and realized the awful accuracy of it as she spoke. “I could’ve lived the rest of my life and never known. I almost did.”
The realization stunned her. She could’ve kept living the same way she’d always lived, maybe two or three more decades of self-denial, and then the grave.
No longings she couldn’t fully control. No chance to look back on a lifetime with new understanding and grief.
Never this blazing confession of hers, her old self ripped open by an exit wound.
“But now,” she continued, her voice cracking, “I know. And I’m not going to waste one more second.”
“Good God.” Sadie grabbed her own elbows, hard, as though she needed to tether herself to her body. “You came out. I can’t believe—you came out.”
Tears brimmed in Anne’s eyes again. “Yeah, I sure did. And I’ll keep coming out. As many times as I need to. Brooke and Claire are next, then”—she inhaled—“I guess I’ll have to sit down with a glass of—sit down and make a few calls.”
“Wow.” Hal stood up, still cradling Kaisley, who had slept right through one of the most consequential moments of her grandmother’s life.
“Hey, uh, Anne? I’d be lying if I said I had a handle on anything that’s happening right now, but it seems like you’ve been figuring out some big stuff for yourself, and that’s great. Way to go.”
“It is great, right?” She gave him a smile, a real one. “Thank you, Hal. Very much.”
Sadie sniffed once, and then again, wiping quickly at her cheek.
“On that note”—Hal rubbed Kaisley’s back gently—“I’m going to give this kid back to her mom. You two probably need to talk some more anyway, I’m guessing.”
“Baby boy,” Sadie said quietly, “are you all right? I’m sorry you’re finding out this way. I know we usually share everything.”
“I’m okay with it, I promise. I just need to process a lot of stuff.” A shadow darkened his face, and Anne wondered if Hal was thinking about his parents’ marriage.
“I understand.” Sadie’s hands, squeezed into loose fists, lightly hammered her knees, a burst of energy that didn’t seem to have anywhere else to go.
“Please don’t say anything about this yet to anyone else, all right?
Talisha excepted—are you on board with that, Anne? I don’t want to ventriloquize.”
Anne nodded. One less conversation she’d have to have.
“But no one else for the moment. We still need to”—the loose fists disintegrated into a flurry of fingers—“figure out some things first before we’re ready to discuss this with anyone else.”
“That’s fine. I can keep my mouth shut. I’m a big kid.” Hal leaned down into Sadie’s chair, cupping Kaisley’s head as he dipped, and kissed the top of his mother’s head. “Love you, Mom. I really do. A whole lot. Nothing could ever, ever change that. You know that’s true, right?”
Sadie grabbed at his head and kept him pressed a little longer against her scalp before letting go. Obvious pain flashed across her features. “Tell me one more time, will you?”
Like it was the easiest thing in the world for him, Hal did, and while he talked to her, Sadie touched his cheek briefly with the flat of her palm.
For once, the ache that briefly took over Anne’s body had nothing to do with sex, but still everything to do with wanting.
“I love you too, peanut.” Sadie patted Hal’s cheek. “More than you could ever understand. Although you’ll have a better idea in a few months.”
Once Hal was gone, Sadie rose from her chair. Slowly, she knelt in front of Anne, wincing a little as she did. The living room rug wasn’t very thick.
“Don’t kneel,” Anne protested. “You strained something, didn’t you? At the motel?”
“I need to be face-to-face with you,” Sadie said softly, “when I tell you this.”
This close, Anne could see a stubborn teardrop still clinging to one of Sadie’s lashes. Warmth radiated from Sadie’s frame, and so did the good, clean scent of lavender. She always liked to crush sprigs in her hands when stressed and kept some in her bags to calm herself down in emergencies.
“Sadie.” Anne was a little breathless.
“Listen.” Sadie leaned in and pressed the palms of both hands against Anne’s temples, fingers tracking loosely, slowly, through her hair.
At her touch, a shock snapped between them.
Sadie’s eyes widened.
And just like that, Anne went immediately hollow, then needy. Her body wasn’t her own anymore, and it was somehow more her own than it had ever been.
“Can I kiss you first?” Sadie murmured. “I understand if you don’t want—”
“I need to,” Anne got out at the same time. “I need it, please, just one—”
They kissed, slack and urgent. Sadie sighed a little into Anne’s softening mouth and pressed forward.
Anne couldn’t let herself reach up to grab her, wouldn’t push this into something Sadie wasn’t ready for it to be.
She forced her hands to stay at her side, tilted her head up, drank in Sadie like someone dehydrated—like a woman in the desert.
Dizzying need spiraled through her. Sadie’s hands could shape anything, even Anne, into poetry.
Loud footsteps right above them.
Somehow, they jerked apart, both breathing hard.
“One week,” Sadie said thickly.
Anne was so preoccupied with trying to remember how to be a person who wasn’t kissing Sadie, a person with a functioning brain, that, at first, the words didn’t make sense. “What?”
“Six days, really. Next Sunday.”
“What?” Sadie’s breasts were right there. “I’m sorry, I’m having trouble—”
“I know,” Sadie said quietly. “You’re not the only one. But we don’t have much time before the kids come down, and I have to say this to you. Try and focus, sweetheart. You can do it.”
With great effort, Anne focused. The tide of need receded just enough.
“I’m flying out first thing tomorrow morning for the Barnard visit.
And I still think it’s a good idea for me to stay in the city for a few days more, at Sam’s.
The time away should help me start to sort out some things.
Decide what I’m ready for. And you’ll be able to think, too.
But I promise—I’ll be home for Brooke’s Mother’s Day party.
Sunday. We can talk then. Is that all right? Six days?”
Quite honestly, the timetable Anne would prefer was along the lines of however long it took to speed walk between this living room and the tiny house, where they could close the front door and fuck in the eighteen-inch space between the oven and the bathroom.
But even through her overwhelm, she heard Sadie, who was clearly trying her best to communicate.
To be brave.
For Sadie, Anne Lowell could do half measures.
She reached out and touched Sadie’s cheek, stroking lightly with the tips of her fingers. The inside of Sadie’s thighs—were they smooth like this?
Sadie’s eyes fluttered.
“Sunday.” Anne pulled back her hand. “I can handle that.”
“Wonderful.” The smile Sadie gave her was small and so relieved. “All right. One more thing before I—” She shoved one hand into her skirt pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper.
Anne’s note. The one she’d left for Sadie just ten minutes earlier.
As Sadie struggled up to her feet, Anne sat back, not sure what was happening.
“Just a moment,” Sadie said, holding up her pointer finger. “Back in a flash.” She dashed off in the direction of the kitchen.
Anne had just enough time by herself to start wondering if she’d ever fully understand what went on in Sadie’s head. She hoped not.
“Apologies. I needed a pen.” Sadie was at the living room archway, folding the note back up.
“You know, I think I’ll go back to the tiny house for a little while and rest. There’s a knot in the ceiling over the bed that resembles a tiny Truman Capote, and staring at it is surprisingly centering.
” She held out the stationery. “This is for you.”
“You’re not returning my note, are you? I wanted you to have it. It’s yours.”
“I’m regifting. Think of it as a repurposed objet d’art.” She shook the note in Anne’s direction, and after a moment of hesitation, Anne took it. “Beloved?” Sadie added.
“What?”
“I’m so fucking proud of you.”
For a second, Sadie looked as though she might burst into tears. Then it was gone, and Sadie was gone, too, rushing quickly behind the couch and through the back door.
Anne unfolded the note with awkward and heavy fingers, wishing for the second time today that she kept a pair of reading glasses in her purse. She squinted at her stationery, then inhaled sharply.
For the bravest woman I know.
SAdie
Around the capital letter A that Anne had originally written, Sadie had signed the swerves and strokes of her own name. She hadn’t erased Anne’s initial, just swaddled it instead, making the A part of something new.
Pulse beating hard, Anne couldn’t stop staring at that letter, at the A.
It wasn’t alone.
The world around her was temporarily quiet, a small and still interlude just for Anne before the inevitable sound of feet coming down the stairs, the conversations she’d have, the next steps she’d take.
For the moment, though, she sat in a chair in her best friend’s son’s home, looking at a wrinkled piece of paper, and she began, just a little bit, to heal.