EIGHTEEN

CLAIRE

“All right, Nolan. You are ready to go.”

“Thank you so much, Dr. Abdic,” I say.

She smiles warmly and ruffles Nolan’s hair, and I wonder if she has a boy at home, too. She knows this feeling—the anxiety and the fear and the unease. “You are very welcome. I am just sorry we had to meet like this. I will send the nurse in with the discharge papers and information on how to keep the stitches clean. They will dissolve on their own, but we will see you back here in about two weeks to make sure everything is healing properly. We will address any lingering problems then as well, such as range of motion. A few weeks of physical therapy should get him right back to where he needs to be.”

The laceration wasn’t as deep as we thought—it didn’t cut through the muscle—but the gash was long, stretching the entire length of his palm. It was his right hand, of course, so he’ll have to work with his left hand in school, but it’s good that it didn’t cut the muscle. It’s good that there was only one serious cut. All of that glass? This could have been so much worse. I’m exhaling some relief, trying to focus on the bright side when the nurse pops into the room. She gives instructions as she cleans the site again and coats the stitches with Vaseline, wraps it with a bandage, and secures everything with blue gauze.

“You’ll need to keep this away from water for about forty-eight hours,” she says. “No scrubbing or soaking. After that, you can remove the bandage and rinse the wound with water twice a day. Don’t use alcohol or peroxide. After it’s washed, cover it with a small layer of Vaseline and re-bandage it. What colors do you like, Nolan?”

“Blue. Red. Yellow. Purple.”

“Great choices!” She grabs a handful of colored gauze from one of the cabinets. “The blue and red remind me of Superman.”

“And red and yellow for Flash,” I add. For the first time in more than an hour, Nolan smiles.

“You can use regular children’s pain reliever if he’s sore. Come back to see us immediately if the area starts to look infected. Otherwise, the receptionist will schedule your return appointment for two weeks from today.” She hands me a plastic bag full of papers and brochures on how to take care of the wound. There’s a tube of Vaseline. Rolls of gauze. Some non-stick bandages.

“Thank you.”

“No problem. We’ll see you in two weeks, Nolan.”

I help Nolan down from the table. “Be very careful, sweetie. Don’t bang your hand on anything. Don’t touch anything with it. Use your good hand for everything, okay? And if you need help with anything, ask.”

“I can’t hold my pencil for school. Or color.”

Another thing to be grateful for: it’s Friday. He’s home the next two days, and we can keep a close eye on him, monitoring his activities. If only I didn’t have the Porter dinner tonight and the wedding all day tomorrow. If only I could get out of this event. Stay home. Be where I need to be.

“You can, but you’re going to have to do it with your other hand for a couple of weeks. It will feel strange, but you can do it. I’ll talk to Mrs. Thomas. She’ll understand.”

We sign out of the department and schedule our follow-up. I keep an eye out for Jesse, knowing he’s likely anxious for an update, but when I find him in the waiting room, he isn’t alone. My spine stiffens and muscles tighten, dread settling into the pit of my stomach.

I thought I’d have some time before I had to deal with my mother—time to pull my thoughts together. No, Mom. I wasn’t watching my kid when he fell into a table full of glass. Yes, I know it could have been avoided.

Nolan sees her, too. “GiGi!”

I suck in a breath and wait for the onslaught.

“Nolan! Are you okay?” she asks, pulling him into a hug.

“Yeah.” He shows her his bandage, and she compliments the color.

Jesse stands, shoves his hands in his pockets as he approaches. “Hey. Are you okay?” he asks me, voice low.

I nod, but tears prick at the corners of my eyes at the kindness of the words and the worry in his tone. And for a second I want to admit that no, I’m not okay. But I can’t. Not with Nolan and my mom here. My breakdowns happen in private.

“Claire,” my mom begins.

“Look, I know what you’re going to say. I know. I should have been watching him. I took my eye off him for a second. There was so much going on. It’s no excuse—”

“I can take that to the dry cleaner for you,” she interrupts.

“What?”

“Your clothes. I can drop them off on my way home. If we’re lucky, the stains might not have set in. They’ll be good as new.”

I glance down at my white suit pants and pale blue blouse. The pants are polka-dotted with rust-colored blood stains.

“I brought you a change of clothes. I know you have to get back to work. And I have some for Nolan, too. I thought we could pick up some ice cream on the way home,” she tells him. “What do you think?”

I’m not sure what to think, to be honest. Where is my mother? The real one. The one who tosses out a billion questions all at once. Blames everyone in the vicinity when something goes wrong. Tells everyone how to do their jobs, and then how to do them better.

This mother is not angry or annoyed. She’s here. She brought spare clothes. She’s going to drop ours off at the cleaner and take Nolan for ice cream so I can get back to work.

This isn’t my mother.

But I acquiesce. “Okay. Sure. That would be great.”

She opens her bag and presents a pair of black dress pants and a white blouse, and Nolan and I change in the bathroom off to the side of the waiting room.

I help her strap him into the car seat and hand her the bag the nurse gave me.

“What do I need to know?” she asks.

“That I feel awful about what happened.”

She smiles a sad smile. “What I meant was, what do I need to know about his hand? To take care of it,” she explains.

“Um, everything is in the bag, but you don’t have to do anything. It needs to stay like it is for forty-eight hours. He can’t get it wet. At all. If he complains about it hurting he can have some children’s pain reliever. I guess just do quiet activities this afternoon. Try to keep him from using it.”

I kiss Nolan on the head and tell him I love him, that I’ll try to get home before he goes to bed, but, if not, I’ll see him first thing in the morning.

I fight back a riot of emotions as I shut the car door, watch them back out of the parking space and drive away. I swallow back tears, chin shaking. But then my nose starts to run and I wipe it with the back of my hand and it’s too much because now Jesse knows I’m crying so when he takes the sleeve of my shirt and pulls me into him the torrent of tears held back most of the afternoon flows unrestrained. He wraps his arms around me and holds me tightly, letting me cry into his shirt.

“It wasn’t your fault,” he whispers in my ear.

“It would have been better if she’d yelled at me,” I admit, voice muffled, words choked. “Because at least then I could have fought back and might’ve believed it.”

“It was an accident, Claire. It was no one’s fault.”

I pull away from him. “It was my fault. He was there and I wasn’t watching him.”

“If we’re going to go that route, then it was my fault because I was on the phone. I wasn’t watching him and you were supposed to be working.”

“You told me you were stepping away. He was my responsibility. He is my responsibility. Always. He has a train track across his tiny baby hand because I wasn’t doing my job!”

“Claire,” Jesse begins.

“No. You’re not going to make me feel better about this, Jesse. You have no idea what this is like.”

“Because I don’t care for Nolan?” he asks.

“No, you know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t know what you mean. You’re the only one to blame? You’re the only one who’s allowed to feel guilty about this? Because I feel guilty. Your mom, she feels guilty. I bet some workers back at the house are feeling guilty and they don’t even know the kid. We all could have done something a little differently today.”

“You don’t understand. When I don’t do something different, bad things happen!” And I realize, at that moment, I should have told him. A long time ago. I shouldn’t have let what happened between us happen without him knowing the truth. I kept waiting and waiting for the right time and it never came.

“What are you talking about?”

“I don’t know. Let’s just go. I have to get back to work. I can’t go home with my son. I can’t take care of him this afternoon because I have this stupid wedding to make happen, which is probably going to end in divorce, anyway.”

“So why do it?” I ask.

“Because I need the money.”

“You’re not destitute, Claire. You could talk to Lynette and take a few weeks off. You could take some time off from school. You don’t have to sign up for a new class every session. Slow down. Your schedule is crazy. You’re wearing yourself out.”

“I have shit to get done. I can’t bail on school or Lynette. It’s the busiest season and I need my degree.”

“It’s not a race! You can take some time off to relax and regroup.”

“I wish you would stop pretending like you understand what I’m dealing with right now. You have no idea.”

“You’re right, I don’t,” he admits. “But it’s not like you’re going to clue me in or anything. I’m only trying to help.”

“That’s the thing! I don’t need anyone’s help!”

“You don’t need me, is what you’re saying.”

The words are like a sock to the gut. Is that what I’m saying?

“Things have been so . . . complicated since you came home.”

He laughs, but there is no humor in it. “Jesus Christ. I’m only allowed one good week with you? That’s all I get? Never mind I’ve been waiting nine fucking years for this to happen!”

“That’s not my fault!”

“That’s right, Claire. It’s not your fault. You know, I wasn’t good enough for Sean. Or my mom. And my dad barely had an opinion of his own. I guess I’m not good enough for you, either, am I?”

“No, it’s not like that,” I insist. It’s not about him. It’s about me.

“I actually thought I’d found something—someplace—special, with you and Nolan. I was actually starting to feel like I was part of something again. I thought I might be coming to some kind of understanding with your family. And I’ve been wracking my brain to figure out how to make this work because I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to sell the house. I want to be here with you and Nolan, but it turns out it doesn’t matter because you don’t want me here, anyway.”

“It’s not like that,” I repeat.

“Then what is it like, Claire? I’m trying to understand you. I really am.” An uncomfortable edge laces his voice as he tries to keep it level. And it all feels too soon. Like too much.

“I care about you. I do. But this is just . . . it’s too complicated.”

“Stop saying that!” he demands. “Tell me what about us is too complicated for you!”

“Every time I see you I think of him!” I say.

The words sting. They hurt to say, to see the pain reflected in his eyes.

“He is everywhere. In your eyebrows. They’re exactly the same as his! Did you know that? They furrow when you’re concentrating hard on something. You have that same little wrinkle in your forehead. You hold your fork the same way he did. All of these little quirks and mannerisms. Sometimes, when you say something, you sound just like him. I can barely walk through your front door without thinking of him. That house—he is everywhere. When I am with you, he’s everywhere.”

“So you can’t see me without thinking about him, but you’ll have sex with me in the room right next to his? How many nights in a row? Because that was you, Claire. You were calling the shots. You’ve always called the shots in my life.”

“That’s not my fault, either! I didn’t ask you to stop everything for me. Or pine for me. Or wait for me. Or anything like that.”

“Then what is your fault, Claire? I mean, we talked about this. Just last week. We were going to try to make this work.”

“I don’t see how it can.”

“Because of Sean,” he says.

“Because of everything.”

He steps back, and I watch the subtle change in his expression—from angry to sad to frustrated and back to angry again as his eyes harden. “Let me tell you something, Claire. Sean? He wasn’t that great of a guy. All these stories you tell. These things you remember. Yeah, some moments might have been okay, but he was mostly an asshole. He was a jock who got his rocks off by making people feel like shit about themselves so he could get a laugh or two. Yeah, he was hilarious. He was a fun guy to be around, but it was always at someone else’s expense. He could be the most important guy in the room as long as there was someone beneath him to pick on or point at. Then he would laugh or punch you in the shoulder and tell you he was just kidding or that you were taking things too seriously. It would make you doubt yourself in the worst possible way. He was a nightmare to be around sometimes. And God, Claire, he was cheating on you!”

Tears prick at the corners of my eyes.

You weren’t the only person who mattered to him.

The words ring between my ears.

Jesse knew. The whole time, he knew.

“I’m sorry,” he says, not seeming apologetic at all. “I probably shouldn’t have told you that. But to be honest, I’m tired of hearing how great Sean was all the time, and I let you do it because he was your boyfriend and he’s Nolan’s father, and I can absolutely respect that, but, for me, that’s what is complicated about this—that the only thing I can remember is how much of a douchebag my brother was for cheating on the only girl I’ve ever loved. I mean, I confronted him about it,” he says, and now his eyes are filling, the tip of his nose turning red, the dark circles under his eyes becoming more pronounced. “The day he died? We were fighting. Do you know what we were fighting about? You. That morning, I told him to come clean with you or I would do it for him. His last words to me were that I was a prick, and it was only because I had the guts to call him out. An hour later he was dead. And I never got to see how we could be. I will never know our future selves. I mean, hell. We could’ve been best friends right now, and I will never fucking know. And that’s what’s complicated, Claire. You and I? We are not complicated. We are the only thing that makes sense in my life right now.”

And I can’t take it anymore. The stories and the lies and the things I’ve kept bottled inside for the last four years. “I was breaking up with him, Jesse!”

“What?”

“I knew about the other girl.”

“What?” he repeats, not understanding.

“It was Alexandra.”

“But why didn’t you . . . how did you—”

“Someone sent me a photo of them together and I called him out. You weren’t the only one with the guts to call him on his shit, because I did. That morning. I was texting him. All morning. Back and forth. One ping after another after another. And then . . .” I stop, the words that should come next trapped in my throat. Tears burn my eyes. Stain my vision. Jesse blurs until I blink and they tumble down my cheeks. But my eyes refill just as quickly as I wrestle with the words that are about to change everything. “And then the texts just stopped coming! And I kept trying! All through first period. I thought he was ignoring me. But he’d stopped texting because he’d died, Jesse. And that’s what makes this complicated. Yes, Sean could be an asshole. Yes, he cheated on me. Yes, I had his baby anyway. Yes, you are his brother. But I’m the reason he’s gone!”

The words are like a weight finally abandoned, but I don’t feel any better for having let them go. I am grateful they are known, but instantly sorry I can’t take them back. And Jesse, he takes another step backward, and I can’t read the expression on his face or the look in his eyes.

His voice comes out a whisper. “You can’t know that, Claire.”

I inhale a shaky breath. “Driving while distracted? He plowed head-fucking-first into a guardrail, Jesse! There were barely any brake marks. They said he was on his phone at the time. The reports. The timeline. It all points back to me. I was texting him that morning. He was responding to me. I am the reason he got into that accident. I am the reason he died. I’m the reason Nolan will never know his father. I’m the reason you lost your brother. I’m the reason your mom left. I’m the reason your dad had a heart attack. I’m the reason why your family fell apart. I’m the reason why your house sits empty. I’ve tried to move past this, believe me, but then sometimes I look at you and all I can think about is how horribly I have screwed everything up—how everything in your life went to shit because of me. Every bad thing that’s happened in your life? It all points back to me. And I honestly don’t know how you can look at me the same way anymore. I would hate me if I were you, because I sure as hell hate myself.”

I wait for him to say something. Anything. But even as he trains his eyes on mine I can’t be sure what he’s thinking or feeling. But then it doesn’t matter, because he removes my car keys from his pocket and heads to my car. A few steps, and I follow him.

“Jesse!” I call.

But he lifts his hand to stop me and I know then it’s too much. He finally knows what I know—the truth—and I was right. It isn’t something we can come back from.

So we get in the car. He pays the parking ticket and drives us back to his house in silence. Workers still wander the property, but a thick stretch of clouds has moved in, blotting out the sun and bruising the sky. The sheer curtains on the porch ripple with the breeze.

He’s halfway across the lawn before I find the nerve to speak again.

“Jesse. Please say something,” I beg.

He stops, waits a moment—seeming to gather his thoughts—then turns to face me. “It must suck for you, Claire, to be so powerful.”

Then he disappears inside the house.