she thought would be worse than either coldness or indifference. But she had never pictured Shelley showing up looking like this, frail and sad and wounded.
“What’s going on?” Jo asked.
“I left my husband,” Shelley said without preamble. The fingers of her right hand went to the fourth finger of her left hand, massaging the space where her rings must have been. Jo saw hollows under her cheekbones, new circles under her eyes.
Jo tried to keep her face expressionless. “Oh?”
Shelley shook her head. “I thought that I could make it work. Be the wife he wanted.” She looked down at her lap, then up, straight into Jo’s eyes. “I couldn’t, though. I couldn’t stop thinking about . . .”
Jo pushed herself upright, standing so fast she felt dizzy. She couldn’t hear it; couldn’t stand it if the next word out of her beloved Shelley’s mouth was you. She wasn’t sure where Sarah had gone, but she suspected her mother was somewhere nearby, lurking and listening. And what if Shelley said she still loved her? Would Jo throw herself into her arms? Would she gather Shelley close to her heart, would she say, Take me now? Of course not. It was ridiculous to even think it. She was a mother.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said. “Would you like some coffee?”
There was a pause. “Coffee,” Shelley finally said. “Sure.” Jo went to the kitchen, where Sarah raised her eyebrows. Jo mumbled that Shelley had come to visit, feeling like an awkward teenager again as she poured water into the coffee machine, spooned grinds into a filter, collected two mugs, napkins, milk from the refrigerator, the sugar bowl from its spot on the counter, next to the stove. She’d braided Missy’s hair that morning, and the musty-sweet smell of her younger daughter’s skin was still in her nose, and she could picture solemn, brown-eyed Kim, who liked to climb into bed with Jo first thing in the morning to tell her mother about her dreams. “Light and sweet?” she called. Once, that had been a joke between them. Jo was dark and strong; Shelley was light and sweet.
“Just black is fine.” Shelley’s voice was toneless. By the time Jo carried the mugs back to the living room, the tentative, hopeful expression Shelley had worn when she’d come to the door was gone, replaced with a look of resignation.
“I made a mistake,” Shelley said.
Jo sipped her coffee and said nothing, wondering if Shelley meant that she’d made a mistake marrying Denny or if her mistake had been coming to Jo’s house. Shelley gave her a thin twitch of a smile.
“I told you I wasn’t brave. Remember?” She started rubbing her bare ring finger again. “And I’m not. It took every bit of courage I could scrape together to come here. I had to see you. I had to at least try.” Her voice was ragged as she raised her face again and looked at Jo. “But I’m too late, aren’t I?”
Jo was glad that her own voice was steady. “I’m married now, Shelley. I have two little girls. I have a life. I’m happy.” A splinter of ice had lodged itself inside of her heart. Part of her wanted to be cruel, to parade her satisfaction, her happy, normal life, in front of the woman who’d broken her heart so completely that for months it had hurt to even breathe. “Maybe I should be grateful to you. If you hadn’t gotten married, I never would have met Dave.”
“You’re lucky, then.” Shelley gave that thin, trembling smile, so unlike the go-to-hell grin that Jo remembered, and raised her mug in a toast. “Lucky you.”
“I hope you figure it out,” Jo said, trying to sound kind, knowing that she just sounded condescending. “I hope you find the right . . .” The right man? The right woman? “. . . answers,” she finally said.
“Yeah.” Shelley looked down at the typewriter. “I want you to have this.” She gave Jo a crooked smile. “I’m going to be moving, and I’m trying to travel light. Are you still writing?”
“Not so much these days.” Jo thought that she understood the gesture. Shelley had taken away Jo’s dreams of love. Surely this gift was meant to remind Jo of her other dream, to suggest that she could still be a writer, that at least a piece of the life she’d wanted was still possible. “The kids keep me pretty busy.”
“Maybe someday, then,” said Shelley. “You can keep it for someday.”