Things We Didn't Say - By Kristina Riggle Page 0,40
lip. Not my fault she’s clumsy.”
I take the chair opposite her. Most of the lights are off in the house but the one over the kitchen table, and this makes me feel like a TV cop interrogating a suspect.
“She’s not clumsy.”
“Michael, I did not try to hurt her. I wanted the phone, and she kept it from me.”
“Couldn’t you wait for your turn?”
“Jesus, what am I, six years old? That was my least favorite thing about being married to you, when you talked to me like one of the children. And anyway, she had no right. She should have given me that phone the very instant she knew it was him. I gave birth to him.” At this she hits the table hard with her index finger. “I nursed him, I sat by him in the oxygen tent when he was two, I took him to speech therapy.”
“When you could get out of bed.”
“I was going through a rough time then.”
“When are you not?”
She tosses her hair back over her shoulder. “Oh yes, the rich doctor’s son is going to lecture me again about how long I’m allowed to have a rough time.”
“At the expense of the kids.”
“Fuck off. You don’t know what it’s like to be me.”
I have no retort for this, never had. Though the story has changed often enough I’m not sure which parts are real, it’s clear she didn’t have an easy time of it. One doesn’t get to be like Mallory without some damage of some kind.
“I’m still their mother,” she says, her voice strained, as if trying to hold something in, an unusual effort for her.
I see her love for them in her face, and this breaks down my fortress. She loves them and they love her back despite it all, and this is why I can’t hate her.
“I should have spent more time with him.” Her hand traces circles on the table, over and over. She’s stroking it, almost lovingly. “I’ve been trying lately, Michael. I need to be better, I know. I’m going to be more involved, I am. That is”—she slides her eyes over to me, turning her head only slightly in my direction—“if you’ll let me.”
“Of course,” I tell her, grasping her hand, stopping it from its circling. The closeness startles me, and I let go. “That’s all I’ve wanted, I want you to see the kids, I want you to keep to the parenting time.”
“ ‘Parenting time.’ ‘Visitation,’ ” she says, her face puckered. “I don’t want to just pick them up at appointed hours when the court says so. I mean, I want to come over more often, take the kids out even if it’s not ‘my time’ on the schedule.”
It sounds like a reasonable request. But I feel that little ping in my gut, same as I get at the newspaper when a source tells me something that feels wrong. So I’ll have to check it out, dig deeper.
But now is not the time.
“We’ll talk later,” I say, pulling my hand back. “I can’t think about it right now.”
She nods, and her hand resumes the slow circles on the table.
Chapter 15
Casey
My eyes fail to focus on the glowing computer screen in front of me. I have not turned on the rest of the lights, preferring the shroud of darkness for the illusion of walls and privacy. I doubt Dylan put anything on Facebook. I just needed to get away from them.
Past my computer screen I can see the porch and the street outside. Under the streetlight, a couple stands close together. I think they’re arguing, based on their posture. The man gestures broadly, limbs flying fast in the air. The woman stands straight, her arms wrapped so tightly around her you almost can’t tell she has any. Her head is bent toward the ground like a shriveled flower in the frost.
It makes me want to rush out and defend her, though perhaps she’s the guilty party.
It’s not so easy to tell, looking from the outside in. I mean, one would think that my fiancé would rush to my side when he came in to find me bleeding on the floor and his ex-wife carrying on.
I shake my head a little, refocusing on the screen. I’m not important now. It’s Dylan, and that’s why Michael went to her, because she was crying about Dylan.
How much time will the police invest in a teenage kid who willingly left home? I heard on the radio on the way home from