43. Forty-three
Forty-three
“I’ll drive,” I offer, locking the front door.
“I won’t argue.” Bo walks down the porch steps to the minivan, shoulders slumped, not looking at me.
After a couple hours with people in the house, once everyone left, once Veda was gone, we cleaned. Quietly. The only sounds were one of us randomly sniffling and our footsteps across the wood floor. By the time we finished, it looked like Veda’s house. Without her.
Walking across the yard, I’m so tired I want to curl up in a ball and sleep for a month.
I’m one step off the porch when everything starts to slip through my fingers like water in a fast-moving creek.
As if in slow motion, Bo opens the passenger door to the van and picks up the file on the seat. He lifts his eyes to mine—a split second—then lowers them back to the papers in his hands.
Opening .
Thumbing.
Dropping.
Papers about managing pain in terminal cancer float in the balmy November air and flitter across the yard.
A confetti of unspoken confessions. Grenades of guilt, silently detonating.
“You knew?” he asks, stunned.
My body reacts to his words first, weakening, muscles turning to heavy bags of concrete around my bones.
It’s hard to move. Hard to breathe.
“Bo,” I say, trembling, forcing myself forward. I reach for his arm; he pulls away.
“Did you know?” Anger and confusion overtake his usually unbothered face, and it twists my stomach.
“Yes,” I whisper hoarsely. “But she made me promise not to tell you.”
“Made you promise?” he shouts, shocked, bloodshot eyes wide. “Are you fucking kidding me right now, Birdie?”
“Bo, listen!” I plead, reaching again for him only to have him pull away. “She begged me! She didn’t want you to s—”
“Bullshit!” he shouts. “That’s bullshit and you know it!”
The cold way he looks at me burns like acid in my eyes.
“It’s not bullshit!” I spit at him, tears starting to fall again. “She was protecting you. We both were.”
Again, I reach for him, again, he pulls away, now walking—storming—toward his Jeep .
“Bo, please. Just let me explain,” I cry to his retreating back. “I could tell something was wrong. She was sleeping more. And I found the medication. Then the doctor’s appointment—I don’t know. She asked, and then my dad said—”
He spins around, eyes wide. “Your dad?!”
When I open my mouth to explain, it’s only to find I cannot breathe, much less speak.
He doesn’t yell. This time his voice is flat. Cold. “You told your dad Gran was dying, but not me.”
“Bo, it’s not just that I promised her, legally, I’m bound t—”
“Legally?” He holds his hands up in outrage, heat back in his voice. “Gran was dying and you’re clinging to goddamn rules?”
“I love you. Please…” My voice comes out strangled as I vibrate with too many emotions. Emotions that pour down my face, pinch at my throat, hollow out my insides, and make my hands tremble.
“You love me?” he scoffs. “Birdie, you lied to me. Lied . Not about your name, about the closest woman I had in this world to a mother dying.”
He looks at me, and with every second that passes, I see him hate me more. And worse than the hate that’s forming, it’s the unloving that’s simultaneously happening.
Bo is slipping away from me as he stands right in front of my face.
Never stop loving him, Birdie.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
I reach for him .
Again.
He pulls away.
Again.
“When?” he demands.
“Bo, I wanted—”
“Dammit, Birdie, when?”
I hesitate, make a futile attempt to take a deep breath, then say, “The first night I stayed with you.”
Fists clenched by his sides, color races up his neck. He drops his head back and lets out an angry, Ahhhh! as he smacks a hand against the side of his Jeep. There’s a bulging vein in his neck that looks like it’s on the brink of bursting through his skin.
Because of me. Because of Veda.
I can’t think of a single thing to say to help him understand. Anything I tell him is moot.
“Bo, we were going to tell you today. She told me we could,” I say, doing my damnedest to stay upright and not just lie down in the middle of the driveway like I want to.
“Birdie, let me make one thing perfectly clear—as you seem to have missed it in all of your research and color-coded lists. When you love someone, you don’t lie to them. You tell them everything, then deal with the fallout. Together. ”
It is a well-delivered blow that socks me right in the gut.
The sky, as if it’s a mood ring decoding my crippled heart, opens up and starts to rain. Rain that cuts like winter soaks through my clothes, freezing my bones .
Water drips down Bo’s face; he doesn’t bother trying to wipe it as he stares at me. His outrage palpable.
“Did you know she was going to do this?”
My stomach drops. “Are you kidding me? No, B—”
“I’m not an idiot, Birdie, this wasn’t an accident. You had an abortion—this isn’t that much different.”
A sharp knife in my weakest point.
“It’s like you want to be alone!” he shouts, twisting the knife, blade destroying me deeper.
“You have no idea how to let anyone in and be part of your life.”
Another twist.
“You think because your mom died of cancer you know what’s best for everyone else.”
He scoffs, glaring at me both with the heat of his rage and something colder than the rain.
Twist.
He opens the door to his Jeep, rain dripping down his face. “You did this, Birdie.” No. He can’t mean that. “She would be alive right now if you would have told me.”
“She was my friend, Bo. I—”
“Your friend?” His laugh is full of disdain, cutting me off before raising his voice. “She was paying you, Birdie; she wasn’t your goddamn friend.”
I know he’s angry, I know he doesn’t mean it, but still—it’s another slow, cruel twist of the blade that’s already buried deep in my chest .
As he slams the door of the Jeep, I drop to my knees, gravel of the driveway digging into my jeans. The start of the engine and crunch of his tires over the gravel become blurred red blobs of his taillights disappearing.
I sit, cold and wet, and fall apart with cries and screams that are drowned by the falling rain.
He doesn’t mean it; he can’t.
But then I remember, Bo never says things that he doesn’t mean.
Bo is gone.
Because Veda had cancer, killed herself before it could, and he blames me.
And a very real part of me thinks he’s right.