hear a mother say? My son is in a casket, and I’m relieved to know he’s in there. I mean, what the hell, Marin? How horrible is that? I’m burying him tomorrow. I’m putting my son in the ground. How can I be feeling anything but grief?”
Marin reaches for Frances’s hand. It’s as cold as her own, the skin paper-thin over the woman’s knobby knuckles.
“But it’s over,” Frances says. “I may not have all the questions answered, but at least I don’t have to wait for him to come home anymore. I’ve had these low back issues for the past decade—”
“I know, you’ve been seeing a chiropractor.”
“—and this morning, when I woke up, I didn’t need a pain pill. I needed food. My back feels better than it has in years. It’s like there’s nothing to be afraid of now. Ever since Thomas disappeared, I’ve been waiting for that phone call, that knock on the door, from someone who was going to tell me that my son is dead. I’ve dreamt about it and I’ve dreaded it and I’ve been terrified of it, as if the news was like a bogeyman that was going to jump out and get me at any moment. But in that fear, there’s hope.”
Marin nods. She understands completely.
“And that hope is why you can’t run from it. That hope is what keeps you stuck inside the emotional nothingness of waiting, where you can’t move forward and you can’t go back. All you can do is spin in place because there’s no sense of direction, because you don’t know…”
She stops, choking on her words, and Marin sees that her friend’s eyes are wet. The sight of Frances crying actual tears is jarring.
“And now it’s over,” Frances says. “It’s not the answer I wanted, but it was always the answer I was going to get.”
The words cut, and Marin winces.
“I’m sorry, Marin.” Frances’s voice is hoarse. She tosses the burnt-out stub of her joint onto the pavement and reaches for Marin’s other hand. “I know that’s incredibly insensitive of me to say. Especially to you. I’m not at all suggesting that this is what you can expect with Sebastian, it’s just … this is how it feels right now. To me.”
“Don’t you dare apologize,” Marin says, not wanting to add to her friend’s pain by admitting her own. “You feel how you feel, and you should be able to express it. God knows you’ve been through enough.”
Frances squeezes both her hands. “I don’t wish this on you, do you understand?” Her voice is urgent, compelling Marin to look her directly in the eyes. “I don’t wish this on you, or Simon, or Lila, or on anybody inside that room”—she jerks her head toward the back door—“whose child is still out there. This isn’t the outcome I prayed for.”
“I know that. I do.”
“But Marin, I’m grateful.” Frances takes a long, deep breath. “I’m so grateful that the nightmare of not knowing is over. And now I feel … I feel…”
Frances starts sobbing again, collapsing against her, and Marin takes her in her arms and starts sobbing, too, crying for her friend’s loss and her grief and her guilt, and for her own loss and her own grief and her own guilt, crying because she loves Frances, and she feels her, and she feels for her.
“What do you feel?” Marin whispers, holding the other woman tightly, stroking her hair. “Tell me.”
“Free.” Frances chokes the word out, and then she sobs again. “I feel free.”
Marin holds her for a while longer, until Simon comes looking for them and it’s time to go back inside. And all Marin can think, as she watches her grieving friend circulate around the small donut shop, making sure her guests have sandwiches and vegetables and donuts and coffee, is that she resents the other woman for saying it. Marin resents her for feeling it, for confessing it, and for it being true.
Frances is free.
Marin is jealous, and she hates herself for it.
Chapter 26
For about four or five seconds, first thing in the morning, Marin doesn’t remember. Everything feels normal, like it would for any other person rousing from sleep.
And then it hits her. And it’s like losing him all over again. The pain is intense, paralyzing, the pressure bearing down on her chest, threatening to snap bones and pulverize muscles, squishing the life out of her because she dared to do something as simple and natural as wake up.
Marin opens her eyes and fixes her