Grace walks through the door. She drops her bag and sees the boys playing a game with Noah in the dining room. Mason hoards his tray of tile letters, arranging and rearranging with an obsessive discipline, while Luca rests his chin in his hand, bored. Noah sits across from them, nursing a beer, and winds the timer.
“Look who’s home,” Noah says.
She smiles and offers a small wave. They have been talking and working through the baggage, and Noah is regaining her trust. He takes what he can get, always on his very best behavior.
Grace shrugs out of her blazer and hangs it on the coatrack by the door. She loves this coatrack; she installed it with Luca. It is a giant slab of wood with skinny arms that fold down like levers. She chooses one at random, hangs her jacket, then removes her shoes. She massages the knots from her instep with her thumb and places her keys in the dish by the door.
She absorbs the idyllic scene with her three boys playing Scrabble. The harmony that exists between them, despite all the adjustments. The tragedies. The changes, both big and small. The months collect on themselves like dust. She tags them by event: moving to Nashville, befriending Noah, the girls, Lee, the trip, the mountain, the aftermath, now. There’s just been so much.
And so much left to do.
She will have to fake losing her pregnancy soon, make Noah experience that loss in the most excruciating way possible. She’ll do it right before her next “doctor’s” appointment. She flashes another smile—one that she’s perfected by now—and motions to the bathroom.
“I’m just going to go wash my hands.” Grace eases into the guest bath, flicks on the water, and studies herself in the mirror as she pumps organic foam into her damp palms.
No one will ever understand the patience it took to pull off something like this. The painstaking planning, the years of organizing, plotting, lying, and pretending. The absolute masterful performance she’s given, in spite of everything.
She soaps and wrings her hands, pumps again. It is an obsessive tendency, this hand washing. Sometimes she worries she’s turning Luca into a germaphobe, but better safe than sick.
As she scrubs, she thinks back to the catalyst. That dreaded phone call. She was acclimating to pumping milk at work and balancing her newly single life as a divorced mom. The phone had registered a Nashville number, and she’d just assumed it was her sister.
It wasn’t.
She’d dropped her iPhone. She’d made arrangements. Once the grief had lessened, she demanded to know exactly what happened, and she couldn’t do that long-distance.
She knew Shirley had been having troubles. Their weekly calls had all but disappeared once Shirley had Harry. Shirley made her promise not to tell their parents she was pregnant or about what had happened at the party.
Though Grace had tried repeatedly to encourage Shirley to get out of that house with that disgusting old man and her horrible best friend, Lee, she’d never listened. Shirley was stubborn and wanted to do things her own way. She insisted she was fine, that her life was turning around, and that she wanted to live on her own terms. Lee had literally ruined Shirley’s life, and now she would never get to do anything except rot in a grave.
It was because of her that Shirley was in that house. Because of her that she’d gotten so drunk and been used and left by Noah at that party. Because of her that she’d gotten pregnant with that drunk’s child. Because of her that she’d given up on her dreams. Because of her that Shirley had relapsed, overdosed, died.
Once Grace moved to Nashville, she immediately wanted to take Lee to court. But Lee had guardianship papers. She legally owned Mason, not her.
So she set a new plan in motion. She found Noah. The Noah. He’d been stupid enough to tell her sister his name at the party. Though Shirley never saw his face, they’d both done obsessive Google searches for Noah Banks. There were twelve. Without seeing his face, Shirley felt she couldn’t identify him. She just wanted to move on. She just wanted to forget.
But Grace didn’t want to forget.
After she found the right Noah, she befriended Lee. It was easy to get all her targets under one roof. People were so clueless at the power of suggestion.
It took years to build a meaningful friendship with Lee. To earn her trust, to suggest guardianship. She’d endured seven years to get back what belonged to her sister.
Grace thinks back to the night Lee died. She hadn’t entirely decided to do it on the trip, but then Lee had told the story about the man at the party. That was Shirley’s story—not Lee’s. Everything happened quickly after that.
The unopened bottle of wine Grace left out on purpose. The confession of her “pregnancy” and relationship with Noah. Going upstairs to bed to let Lee brood alone.
When Lee stalked off to the woods, Grace followed. She’d trailed her all the way to the top, Lee much too drunk to check behind her. After Lee stumbled, Grace capitalized on the moment, bumped her shoulder, and watched her topple over the edge.
Left, right, gone. Bye-bye, Lee.
Grace finishes rinsing her hands. She cranks off the tap and then dries them on a freshly laundered towel. She flips off the bathroom light and walks back to the front to retrieve her phone. Noah rises to collect his belongings and says good-bye to the boys. He approaches Grace and touches her arm.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?” His eyes are kind, pleading.
She nods and waits for him to leave. The door clicks, and she exhales. Phase one is complete. Lee is gone. The papers are hers. Mason is hers. Now, it’s Noah’s turn. It’s time for him to lose his unborn baby. It’s time for him to lose Mason, the boy he really loves. It’s time for him to lose her.
She’s already planted the seed in all of the mommy forums about the handsome occupational therapist who is baseless and untrustworthy. She doesn’t have physical proof of what he did to her sister—she knows that—but gossip will ruin him. In her mind, he doesn’t deserve to be around children. She almost relishes the anticipation, what it will physically feel like to destroy the man who treated her sister like an animal in the dark.
She enters the dining room, grazes the cap of Mason’s shoulder, and caresses the crown of Luca’s head. Her spirits swell as she plots the next steps.
She crouches between them. Her knees pop as she lifts slightly and resettles. They both stop what they’re doing to cast a fleeting look her way. She grins, makes eye contact with each of them, and then carefully leans in to whisper:
“Mama’s home.”