When Bess called to tell Mare she was getting a divorce, the first thing Bess said was: “Where am I even supposed to go?”
“Here.” Mare answered her immediately, without even thinking it through first, without contemplating how strange it was that Bess had seen her marriage to Gaitlin as a place to live more than a man to love.
Mare had finally finished the renovations on the new house. It had taken her nearly two years, but now, all the gold wallpaper was gone, replaced with more subtle brown and blue paint tones. And somehow, scraping a thousand golden pineapples off a kitchen wall, one by one, had been a strange kind of therapy. She had made the gaudy ugly house beautiful, hers. And then she had told herself: new house, new life. Will went to school now during the day, and she was back to writing again. Max was gone, but, in her novel, he was still very much alive.
“I couldn’t impose like that,” Bess said, finally responding to her offer.
“There’s plenty of extra room, B,” Mare said quickly. “You can stay as long as you’d like.”
Bess laughed, like she was certain Mare was joking.
“I’m serious!” Mare said. “You and Annie should come and stay with us until you get back on your feet.”
“Live together again,” Bess murmured. “Like college?”
But nothing was like college anymore, was it? That thought sank like a stone.
“Annie might like a change,” Bess contemplated out loud on the other end of the line.
Annie was almost four, and Mare had yet to meet her in person. And in the latest photographs Bess had sent, Mare could see that Annie had the bluest blue eyes. Just like Max. “It’ll be fun,” Mare added, her voice a little stretched because maybe she was already regretting the offer.
“All right, M,” Bess finally agreed. “Just for a little while.”
“What do you mean stay with us?” George frowned later that night and loosened his tie, before removing it altogether and sitting down at the table for dinner.
“You love Bess,” Mare said.
George frowned. “I do?”
“You used to, back in college.”
“I used to love a lot of things back in college.” George said it with such a pointed stare that it felt clear he was somehow denigrating her. She glanced at Will across the table to see if he’d noticed, but he seemed to be concentrating hard on dipping a chicken nugget into barbecue sauce.
“Well, I used to love a lot of things too,” Mare said, throwing it back at him. That wasn’t true, though. She had loved Max, and she had loved Bess, but she had merely tolerated George, even in college.
George sighed. “A few days, Mare. No more.”
She nodded, but she was inwardly fuming. Who was he to tell her how long her best friend could stay in the house she had meticulously redecorated herself from top to bottom? Maybe George had signed the papers, but the house was hers now. And she would do whatever she liked.
“Be nice,” Mare finally added. “Bess is getting a divorce.”
George glared at her, dropped his fork on his plate, and the clatter was loud enough that Will looked up. Then George stood and stomped out of the room.
Mare wasn’t quite sure what had set him off to that degree, but maybe it was that she had said the word divorce out loud. And he had heard it something like a promise, or a threat.
It was one thing to see Annie in the photographs, but another altogether to see her in person. Those eyes. It was as if Max had suddenly reappeared and was staring at her again in the form of a tiny blue-eyed girl.
Annie stood there silently in the foyer when they first arrived, and gazed up at Mare with those eyes. Mare looked away first. And then Bess grabbed Mare in a hug.
“Thank you so much for having us.” Bess held on so tightly that her words were almost swallowed up in Mare’s hair.
For the smallest moment, Mare felt responsible for everything that had happened to Bess. To Max. To her. If only she hadn’t run into Max that night in Seattle, years ago, Bess and Annie and Max would all be across the country now. Max would still be breathing. Bess wouldn’t be so sad and alone. That little girl would have a father. And Mare would have two perfectly working legs. All the what-ifs hit her and she swallowed hard, fighting back tears.
“How about a glass of wine?” Mare said when they finally let go of each other. “You look like you could use a glass of wine, B.”
But the truth was, Mare could really use a glass of wine herself.