Rose was in the middle of making a new list, brainstorming ways to stop herself from continuing to kidnap Jac when her phone rang a familiar tune. She’d set the ring tone to a cute Disney song she and her friends loved when they’d been thirteen to indicate when they were calling. Truthfully, she thought of not answering and just throwing herself under the covers. But she picked up.
“Hey, there’s my friend,” Charli said, not at all sounding like herself. She was the quietest out of her friends, until she wanted to talk, then she could be a regular Chatty Cathy. But usually she was reserved to the point of awkwardness, even after more than twenty years of friendship. But today she was boisterous.
Rose nearly chuckled. “So you’ve been talking to Laney.”
“Well, yes, she is our other best friend.”
“I mean, you probably heard from her a hot second ago and are now calling me.”
Charli paused.
What felt like a million years ago, Rose had told her best friends when they were in college that they were going to therapy—all of them, no ifs, no buts, no coconuts. They found a handful of fabulous psych PhD candidates who were interning through the university that gave them group and individual therapy. One of the first things Natalie, the group therapist, had said that would strengthen their relationship was to stop triangulation. Rose wondered if Charli was thinking through how best to proceed without triangulating and betraying Laney’s confidence while gaining hers. It wasn’t easy having two best friends.
“Are you calling because she informed you of the trip or about the baby stuff?” Rose asked.
“Both. You were right, by the way. I worried she judged me for not wanting children.”
“Did you talk it out?”
“Maybe.” Charli sighed. “I…honestly, I don’t know. I don’t judge her. At all. I’m so happy for her.”
“Yeah. Me too.”
“But she sounds…weird when I talk about not wanting to have children.”
“Are you sure she sounds weird or are you—”
“I’m not projecting. God, we’ve had too much therapy.”
“Is there such a thing?”
Charli laughed. “Maybe not. And I’m not calling you to talk about her. I’m not at all trying to talk about her behind her back. I just…” She was quiet for so long that Rose wasn’t sure if she would continue. Finally she blurted, “Why do we have to have kids?”
“We don’t. We can do whatever we want.”
“I’m kind of mad at her.”
Rose didn’t know what to say. Even among her friends, she always felt a bit like an outsider—louder, crasser, more outwardly aggressive, and, of course, bossy. It felt like Laney and Charli always had each other’s backs and understood each other without even trying, like they’d had a psychic connection that Rose didn’t feel with…anyone. So it was bizarre for Charli to say that she was “kind of mad” at the other friend who she probably had more in common with.
“Oh.” Rose stumbled for words. “I’m sorry?”
“What am I doing?”
“It’s okay to feel angry about—”
“I always do this to you, Rose. I’m so sorry.” Charli’s voice rose. “I’m always talking about myself and my problems. Look at how I just took over the conversation. Jesus. I’m sorry. You’re grieving and I call you up to talk about you, but instead I talk about me.”
“I like when you talk about you.”
“But I want to talk about you.”
“I don’t want to talk about me.”
“Why not? You’re in Israel, am I right? Whatcha doing there? And with Jac too?”
“He wanted to go on a world tour of bread.”
“So, out of the goodness of your heart, you just took him?”
“Yes?”
Charli laughed. “Out of the three of us, you have the biggest heart, but maybe, just maybe this might have something to do with the fact that your two other best friends are selfish and talk about themselves and don’t allow you to talk about your mom?”
Rose couldn’t speak. Her heart crushed itself and was taking down her windpipe too. Tears sprang to her eyes. Again. “You and Laney aren’t selfish, and I can’t talk about my mom.” Her voice was small yet reedy.
“Why not, sweetie?” For Charli to call her an endearment meant that Rose must have sounded like she was in agony. She wasn’t. Not any longer. And maybe that was wrong.
“Because I’ve said it all before.” Rose spoke quickly, air hard to come by as well as it felt like her crushed heart was trying to usurp her mouth now too. “My mom and I had a complicated relationship, and she died, and it was still complicated. I never fixed anything. I didn’t make anything better for her.”
“That’s not true.” Charli contradicted, which was rare for her. “You hired Jac—”
“My mom hired him. I just paid for his employment until she could.”
“But thanks to that, he turned the farm around and your mom made a solid profit the last few years. What farmer can say that in these conditions nowadays?”
“I didn’t do that. My mom—”
“You and I both know that, yes, she hired him, but you did the background checks. You paid for his employment because you saw a future with him on your mom’s farm. You invested in him because, and I remember this well, you flew out there to meet him and talked to him—”
“I’m pretty sure I just yelled.”
“Talked to him about what it meant to be an Indigenous farmer. You said he listened to you. So you invested in him. I know it was you who kept giving money to her farm to stay afloat, then you didn’t need to after he was hired, so then you invested in his ideas.”
Rose was frustrated and knew she wasn’t quite listening to her friend, so she said, “What does this have to do with my mom? We were talking about my mom. Not Jac.”
“Because talking about your mom is messy and includes Jac and how he worked for her and became her friend. And how you might be a little lonely right now and trying to hold onto him instead of talking about missing your mom.”
Rose’s heart flared and turned to ashes then her whole body flaked into ash. Was that what she was doing? Oh god. What Charli just described was somehow even worse than what she’d been thinking. Both her friends thought that Jac wasn’t here of his own free will. Hell, she was pretty sure she’d bossed him into this herself. Her worst fear confirmed: she was a monster who forced people to be around her, to put up with her.
“I gotta go,” Rose said, trying to make her voice sound stronger than she felt.
“Rose, that came out weird. I’m sorry. I—”
“It’s fine. But I have to go.”
“I didn’t mean it that way.”
“Didn’t mean to imply that I kidnapped Jac to be here with me?”
“I really didn’t mean it that way.”
“Sure about that? You and Laney might not agree about having kids, and who cares if you don’t want kids and she does? I’m just happy for the both of you that you’re happy and that’s all that fucking matters.”
“It is all that matters. You’re right.”
“But you and Laney agree that I somehow forced Jac to be here.”
“No, that’s not—”
“Yes, it fucking is.” Charli was going to argue more, but Rose couldn’t stop herself. “What am I supposed to do, Charli, hmm? How am I supposed to act right now? I lost my mom, and you and Laney don’t seem to understand that I don’t know what to do. That I can’t fix anything between us. It’s too late. So I’m doing a bizarre freak out by Eat, Pray, and Loving the shit out of this. What’s wrong with that? Don’t I get to eat as many carbs as I want when my life as I know it is over?”
“Your life isn’t over.”
“Don’t tell me something I know as a truth isn’t a truth.”
“I’m sorry. But you didn’t die.”
Rose nearly choked. “Didn’t I, though? Everything I was doing was for my mother, and now that she’s gone, I have nothing. Nothing. So what if I basically kidnapped her friend, a big Danish man who tries to make me smile and laugh? When the rest of the world wants me to be…” She couldn’t finish, not sure what she was going to say and afraid of what she’d already said. Everything was the truth, which she’d been trying to deny for weeks. She not only lost her mom and the opportunity to make Lily’s life big and bright and beautiful, and the chance for Lily to be proud of her, she lost her purpose—all she had been living for was to make Lily proud.
Now…she had nothing.
She choked with that thought but hid it from her friend.
“I’m curious: what do you think the rest of the world—well, me—wants you to be?” Charli asked.
“Someone I’m not.” Rose was surprised the words came out, despite not having the air to breathe.
“I want you to be you,” Charli said, her voice taking a steely tone. “I’m getting a little angry at being told what I’m thinking.”
Maybe it wasn’t fair of Rose to say all of that to Charli. But also, maybe Charli could be more gentle with this confrontation? It seemed both Laney and Charli thought she was made of tougher stuff and were telling her off when she was at her weakest. Couldn’t they see that? Didn’t they know? Wasn’t it made apparent when Lily died?
Tears sprang free from Rose’s eyes and streamed down. “I’m sorry.”
Charli inhaled. “No. I’m sorry. Jesus. I did it again. Rose, I’m so sorry. I want you to talk about you, and instead I…God, what is wrong with me?”
“I love you, Charli. But I really have to go.” Rose did her best to cover her tears, not wanting her friend to feel guilty for them.
“Rose,” Charli said a little breathlessly. “I’m sorry. I’m not saying what I want. Listen, Laney and I know you feel you need to earn our friendship, and we’ve tried hard not to let you keep thinking that.”
“You and Laney talk about me like that? Like I have to earn your friendship?” Rose was even more hurt, though she was surprised there could be a deeper level of pain.
“It’s not like we were excluding you. We want to help you.”
“Of course. And talking behind my back really helps with that.”
“Rose.” Charli sounded exasperated. “I’m trying to say that we love you as is. You don’t need to be someone else.”
“So it’s fine that I’ve kidnapped Jac to be with me on this trip?”
Charli was quiet for a few beats too long.
“I need some space, Charli,” Rose said, drawing a line in the figurative sand. “I’m going to ask that you and Laney give me a few days, maybe four, to just…breathe. Since I’ve apparently forced Jac to be here, I’ll just force him to go away. So you don’t have to worry about him. You know I love the both of you, but I need some time and space. Love you. Bye.”
With that, Rose hung up. She gagged, a little surprised she even had anything inside her that was working. Running to the bathroom, she spit up bile and the bit of coffee she’d had earlier. Then she bawled.
All her life, she’d felt so bitterly alone in the midst of people. Because of Ted, she’d felt ashamed of herself and her family but had always been in awe of Lily and her easy, yet sad, smile, of how she hummed almost all day long. But the abuse, telling people what her own father did, it brought with it so much ugliness that other people didn’t understand, and that lack of understanding made her feel alone.
When she met Charli and Laney when they’d moved to Hardin, she’d told herself she wasn’t so alone. There were people like her because, sadly, Laney’s own father had been abusive. Charli hadn’t known her father, but Rose thought she empathized. But maybe Rose had basically kidnapped both Laney and Charli to be her friends, like what they thought she was doing to Jac.
After cleaning up and brushing her teeth, Rose sat in the middle of the luxury hotel room, on the ultra-plush carpet and let one tear roll down then another, never feeling quite so lonely in her life. No, that wasn’t quite right. She wasn’t exactly lonely. She was just alone.
There was a soft knock on the adjourning door, the one between her room and Jac’s. Rose had heard him leave not that long ago. He couldn’t be back already. She’d asked Tamar to make sure he had a blast while in town.
She wondered if it was a maid, and got up, trying to wipe her tears away and get her voice under control. “Yes?”
“I made you some fruit salad, Rose.” Jac’s voice was sunshine through a January blizzard. “You won’t believe what they have in season right now! Starfruit, persimmons—oh my god, you have to try this custard apple thing. I’ve never had it before. You might have but—”
She unlocked and opened the door before he finished. Jac’s blue eyes widened at the sight of her, but she didn’t care how horrible she must have looked. She just wanted to hear one person be kind to her.
He was holding bunches of fruits in his big hands but set them down on a nearby side table. Then he did the damnedest thing and rushed to her, picking her up and holding her so tight while her feet swung in the air.
Being in his warm arms felt so good, she couldn’t help but smile through her tears. “You didn’t really make fruit salad.” She wrapped her arms around his neck, comforted by his beard tickling her temple.
He chuckled which she felt through her chest. “Okay, you got me.”
Something warm and delicious bubbled through her. Something like a chuckle itself.
“But I can make you a fruit salad,” he offered. He deeply inhaled. “You want to talk about why you’re crying?”
She shook her head against him. “I’m so tired.” She bent her neck, her head on his shoulder, her forehead now being tickled by his bright beard. “Did you have fun?”
“Not as much if you’d come with me.” He was walking farther in her room, closer to her bed.
“I doubt that,” she whispered.
“You have to meet Boaz, our driver from the hotel. He hooked me up with all the fruits.”
She laughed. “You have a fruit dealer?”
He set her down on the bed. “He’ll hook you up too.”
She smiled and wouldn’t let go of his neck, though she knew she should. “I don’t want to be alone.”
“I’m here.” But he pried free from her. “You lie down and I’ll get the fruit and feed you.”
“That’s too—”
“It’s what I’m going to do, and there’s no fighting me on this.”
She smiled, too weak to fight him anyway.
He came back with the fruit and a paring knife, though she had no clue where he’d gotten that. He tsked when she wasn’t laying down as ordered, and propped a million pillows behind her, then forced her to lay back, covering her with the blankets too. Grabbing some bowls and hand towels, he returned to the bed.
“So Boaz is in college, going for a computer engineering degree. We had a lot to talk about.”
“Do you miss being a computer engineer?”
“Hell no.” He laughed. It was such a perfect, deep, and rich noise and made her shoulders relax. “But I do like to sometimes talk about, um, things. That kid is going to go far, I can tell you that much. He’s hilarious too. You’ll love him. You’ll meet him tomorrow.”
“Why not today?”
“Because I’m going to take care of you for the rest of the day and make sure you get plenty of sleep for our big day tomorrow.”
“You need sleep too. Aren’t you jet lagged?”
“I’ll take a nap soon.” He smiled as he sliced over a bowl and into a small greenish gold fruit that somewhat resembled a giant raspberry in shape. “But first, you have to eat this.” He offered the bite of gold with white flesh that he’d carefully extracted giant black seeds from and gently dipped it through her lips.
She chewed the odd textured but sweet fruit. “Mmm.”
“I know, right?” Jac kept smiling and cutting. “I also bought a book about the way wheat was cultivated thousands of years ago. I figured I’d read it to you until you fell asleep.”
“You think it’s so boring I’ll just go to sleep?”
He smiled. “You know me so well already.”
She caught a small chuckle that erupted from her, completely flabbergasted she could do as much. Again.
Soon, she promised herself, she’d ask him to leave, to go back to Montana. She’d do the right thing. Soon. But she was so tired and hurting so badly that she didn’t have the strength to do it right now. Maybe after some fruit and a nap she’d feel strong enough.