sex to hold it together? I was pregnant when we got married. If not for that, we might not have gotten married. We’d have kept on living together, and when some other crisis came up, we’d have just gone our separate ways.”
I said it. But seriously? No. The crisis that had torn us apart was the most extreme a family could suffer, but a lesser crisis wouldn’t have ended things. We had been good together—great together—light-years better together than either of us had ever been with anyone else, including our birth families. And Edward had wanted marriage. He’d have insisted on it in time. My resistance had to do with my being younger, my friends being still single, and my parents being uber-conventional. They were sticklers for my doing things as they had, which meant legal and religious, which meant a high mass in church. But Edward was Protestant, not Catholic. They were concerned about that from the get-go, and grew more concerned the more committed he and I became. When we moved in together, they were crushed, and though they were relieved when we finally did marry, they weren’t pleased that it took place in a hotel, or that Edward’s pastor co-officiated with ours.
I told them it was that or a Justice of the Peace.
I did not tell them I was pregnant. When Lily was born six months later, they simply told their friends she had come early. She accommodated them by being small, but she was beautiful. They adored her from the start. They did not adore our house, which they thought was too big and showy—or our cars, which they thought were too expensive, or our friends, whom they thought too chic, or Edward’s work, which they thought was shady at best. When the accident happened, they blamed our lifestyle.
So did I, in a way.
“What we were,” Edward said, sounding wounded, “was far more than sex.”
I shrugged. Fair was fair. In that retaliatory instant, I wanted to hurt him for the way his letting me go had hurt me.
“Do you really think that’s all we had?” he asked and made a face, like I was an alien being. “Who are you?”
“Who are you?” I shot back.
He didn’t move for an instant—didn’t speak, didn’t breathe. Finally, he blinked and shoved a hand through his hair, leaving his forehead exposed in a way that reminded me of the old Edward again. “Fuck if I know,” he muttered.
And wasn’t there perverse satisfaction in that? Misery loved company. My life right now was as messy as the mud in the woods. No matter how often I told myself that I knew what to do, my future was as much an enigma right now as the forest. Little shoots of green were out there somewhere—I knew they were—but it would take a lot of digging to find them.
We sat side by side—Edward, me, the future, the past—facing his mud-spattered Jeep, those naked woods, and a watery yellow sky. Finally, feeling like I was hanging on by a thread and desperate for firm ground, I said, “I have to get to the Spa.”
He nodded but didn’t move. “Is she a good friend?”
“Grace? Yes. Do not fire her, Edward. She’s a decent person, and she did not ask for this. She has a son. She needs the money.”
“I’m not firing her.”
I wasn’t thanking him. He wasn’t doing me a favor, simply taking the advice from someone who understood the situation more than he did.
After a few beats, he asked, “Do you miss sculpting?”
“Edward,” I warned, but still he didn’t budge. So I said, “I sculpt. Just more now with makeup than clay. I have to leave, Edward.”
“Are you okay, y’know, with money and all?”
“I’m fine.”
“If you need anything—”
“I don’t want money,” I said more sharply than I planned but, that quickly, the past was back. “Money was what got us in trouble. If we hadn’t lived such a high life, if Lily had gone to public school, if I hadn’t had to drive to a godforsaken out-of-the-way place for a playdate—”
As abruptly as Edward had entered my car, now he opened the door and climbed out. When his feet were on the frigid drive, he leaned back in. “You think you’re the only one who can’t stop with the what-ifs? Think you have a monopoly on grief? Or regret? Or guilt? I was the one earning the money to put us in that place. I was the one who was supposed to be home