The next morning, I woke up to the alarm in a daze, replaying the night over and over again, wishing I could believe it was a dream. The tension radiating from John when he got up and headed into the bathroom to take a shower was intense and convinced me that it had all been real. I tried to keep my distance by getting breakfast for Landon—cereal. I hadn’t made him pancakes in over a month.
I worked at eight, and I thought John and I would maintain our dancing around one another until Landon ran out the front door for school. I turned to find John standing in the kitchen, putting his phone into his pocket. “I’m meeting a locksmith here at two o’clock. When do you get off? Six?”
“John, please don’t do this.”
“You need to talk to Ruby.”
My stomach sank. He stared at me, holding my eyes for several seconds. “I texted Keisha and told her not to come back. I’ll be cancelling her phone in a couple of days. She can call if she wants to talk about this, but she’s not living here again.”
Tears filled my eyes, and all the times Keisha had said how much she appreciated being here—how comfortable she’d been—flooded my brain. I thought about the conversation she and John had had just a few weeks ago, when she told him about how excited she was about school. Yet she’d already stolen the laptop by then; she’d been fired by then too.
I looked at the floor and heard him come closer to me. I thought maybe he was going to raise my chin and tell me he loved me and that we would get through this. I should apologize for bringing Dani into our fight last night—that was cruel of me. But he just stood there, then moved past me and out the front door without saying a word. I stayed where I was, a tornado of thoughts and feelings spinning around in my head. I texted Keisha again, stared at my phone for a full minute in hopes of a response, then took a breath and faced the day.
I feared the hours would drag by, but they moved at record speed, which was actually worse. I checked my phone every half hour, waiting for Keisha to contact me. I almost wished she’d been in an accident because that at least would be a valid excuse for her not coming home. On my lunch break I called hospitals. I got a text from John around four o’clock.
John: Locks changed. New key under front mat. We’re off to practice.
I let myself into an empty house a couple of hours later with a shiny new key and immediately checked the caller ID to see if Keisha had called the house. She hadn’t. I wondered what John had told Landon, and I wondered if Keisha would ever sleep in her room again. Would John ever let her return? Would John and I ever get back to who we’d been before I begged him to pick Keisha up in Compton?
When they got home, he asked if I’d talked to Ruby yet.
I clenched my jaw shut, which he took as an answer.
Landon was looking between the two of us, his expression cautious and confused. I continued to face off with John for a few more seconds, then turned away from both of them and headed to our room. I sat on the edge of the bed and gripped the edge of the mattress, rocking slightly back and forth while trying, and failing, to make sense of all of this. After a while, I changed into my pajamas and crawled into bed, wanting more than anything to just sleep and forget. I didn’t understand what was happening, and I didn’t know what to do about it. And I was so scared for Keisha.
I pretended to be asleep when John came in, but he called my bluff. “You’re really going to keep defending her?” he said. I stared at the wall while he got undressed. “This is sick, Shannon.”
“Your daughter’s sick,” I said without looking at him. “And she’s so desperate for help that she’ll use drugs to make her feel okay. She needs help.”
“What help have we not offered?” John asked, his voice rising. “What more could we possibly do?”
I still wouldn’t turn to face him. “You could have spent more time with her. You could have gone to a single NA meeting with her. You could have made her feel important.”
“So this is my fault? You’ll put the responsibility for what she’s done on me, but not on her? How can that possibly make sense to you?”
“You’re not even listening to me,” I said, finally sitting up and looking at him and letting my anger filter through. “She’s sick, John. She can’t think clearly. It’s like . . . it’s like a diabetic not having insulin, or a cancer patient not being able to get chemo. She can’t get better until her head is right and she—”
“She won’t get her head right,” John shouted, throwing out his arms. “You got her a therapist, you took her to meetings, you talked to her and coddled her and got her enrolled in school. She had every chance to get her head right, and she chose not to do it. She chose to put us and our son at risk instead. She chose not to get help, Shannon!”
“She doesn’t know how to help herself!” I shot back, my fingers clenching the bedspread. “Maybe it will take another try, maybe it will take six more tries, but she is not well, John. You judge her as though she is purposely trying to hurt us, and she isn’t.”
He clenched his hands at his sides and groaned so low and loud it was almost a scream. His face was red and his jaw tight. “I can’t talk about this anymore,” he said, suddenly pulling open a drawer and grabbing some pajama pants and a T-shirt. “I’ll sleep on the couch.”
“Fine by me,” I said, lying back down and pulling the covers up to my chin. He didn’t say anything but slammed the door on his way out. I heard muted voices in the hall and knew he was talking to Landon, who had to have heard the argument. I clenched my eyes shut and pulled the pillow up around my ears. I hadn’t had more than a passing conversation with Landon in who knew how long, and yet it felt like he and John were on one side, and Keisha and I were on the other. Except that I was fighting by myself.
I wanted to scream and yell and cry and beg and grovel. But to whom? And for what?