Chapter 27
New Routine
Cecily
The days flip by after the incident with Teo and the police.
When I got back downstairs from making sure the kids were okay, Teo had gone. He responded to my text asking him if he was okay with a terse explanation that he had to go. I’m sorry, he said in a text he sent the next day to which I didn’t respond, because what am I going to do? Go back to being friends? Pretend his rejection doesn’t sting more than I’d like to admit? Besides, I don’t know what to say, so it’s easier to say nothing at all.
I settle into a routine at the restaurant. It’s good to have something to distract me, to pull my focus from myself. I skip my next interview with Teo and cancel coffee with Franny. I keep my therapy appointment, but I’m flirting with cutting that off, too. Linda can tell I’m distracted and asks me if I’d like to take a break. We’ve been over all the same ground, so maybe it would be good for me to see if I can make it through a few weeks on my own? I ask her if this is some kind of tough love, pushing me out so I can find my own bottom and admit the help I need, but no. She’s serious, and when I get out into the parking lot, I feel a weight lifting from my soul. I’m not saying I’ll never go back, but Linda was right. I needed to move on from her and the rut I’d created in her office, the deep depression in her couch that wouldn’t go away no matter how much fluffing we both did.
In the days that follow, I can feel myself cutting ties as if I’m taking an actual pair of scissors to them, snip, snip, snip. The only ones I keep are the children, and Sara, and my mom. These people used to be enough for me, and they ought to be enough for me now. And now it’s October twenty-ninth, a few days before Halloween, and it all seems flat. I hated the attention, but something about it made me feel alive in a way I don’t now. As if the attention was what made me real, and now that it’s gone, I’m like the photograph that made me famous in the first place. Artificial. A picture of someone I used to know.
“Cecily?”
“Yes?”
It’s one of the waiters, Carlos or Carlitos, I haven’t quite learned his name yet, much to my shame. I didn’t use to forget details like that.
“There’s someone on the phone for you. They say it’s an emergency.”
“The kids?”
My fear pushes him back on his heels.
“I don’t think so. It’s a man. I think his name is Joshua?”
I grab the phone from him. “Joshua? What is it? The girls? Franny?”
“No, not . . . I can’t do this on the phone. Can you come over?”
I know that most people have never understood my friendship with Franny. There’s the almost twenty-year age gap and our very different backgrounds, to start, and our very different personalities added to it. My mother thinks I’m trying to fill in for Kaitlyn, to be another mother to her, but that’s not it. My feelings toward Franny aren’t maternal.
My friend Sara’s theory is that I’m close to her because she’s wounded.
“You can’t pass a hurt person by. It was the same with Kaitlyn,” she said once when we’d gone for a drink last summer.
“Is that a bad thing?”
“Of course not. But you give too much of yourself. You need to leave room for you.”
But leaving room for me wasn’t working, it was giving me too much time to think, to regret, to ruminate. And I did feel bad for Franny. What a terrible position to be in, to have something you’ve wanted so badly ripped away from you. To know you were a secret that couldn’t be revealed even once the secret was out. If I felt lost in my manicured house surrounded by my healthy children and my mom and my friends, how must she be feeling? I wondered and wondered for weeks after Kaitlyn’s funeral, and then I started looking.
It wasn’t hard to find her. She was living in Chicago and had already connected with the survivor community, joining one of the support groups for people who’d lost parents on October tenth. The woman who ran the group told me where I could find her. She was working in a diner on the east side of Chicago. One of those leftover places from the fifties where the menus are caked with grease and the women look older than they should. All the customers were men.
I sat at a table in her section. Her uniform looked newer than the other waitresses’, as if she’d just cracked it out of the clear plastic wrap it surely came in. Her hair was pulled back tightly from her face, stretching it slightly. She looked tired and uncomfortable. I knew the feeling.
“What can I get you?”
“Hi, Franny.”
“Do I know you?”
I searched her face for some sign of Kaitlyn. “We met about a month ago at . . . Kaitlyn’s funeral.”
Her pencil remained poised above her pad of paper. “You’re one of her friends.”
“Yes.”
“What do you want?”
“Just to talk.”
“I’m on shift.”
“Maybe you could ask for a few minutes off? Don’t you get a break?”
She glanced over her shoulder at the counter. I could see the half hulk of a man through the order window.
“Give me a minute?”
“Sure.”
She disappeared. I pulled out my phone to check it, half expecting, still, a text or e-mail from Tom. That gentle flow of daily contact we’d always had, now a constant itch. Cassie had forgotten her homework at school, but there wasn’t anything I could do about that.
Franny returned and sat down.
“You sure you don’t want anything?” she asked.
“I’m fine. I’m trying to cut back on coffee.”
“How come?”
“Can’t sleep.”
Her eyes traveled to my wedding ring. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you. How are you holding up?”
“Me?”
She laid her hands flat on the table. Her nails were painted a bright, festive red.
“I’m doing all right.”
“Are you okay for money?”
Her chin rose. “Why are you asking me that? You here to help me out?”
“No, I . . . This is hard for me, too, Franny.”
“Is it?”
“I was very close with your mother. I miss her.”
“But she didn’t tell you about me, right?”
“No. I’m sorry.”
Franny looked out the greasy window. Some version of “White Christmas” was playing on the sound system. I shuddered at the thought of Christmas morning with the kids without Tom.
“I don’t need your help,” Franny said. “I can take care of myself. I’ve been doing it my whole life, you know?”
“I don’t know. But I’d like to.”
“Really?”
“Why is that such a surprise?”
“I haven’t had much luck with people. Friends.”
I covered her hand with mine. It was surprisingly soft. “I’d like to help change that, if you’ll let me.”
“How can you change it?”
“What if we gave ourselves a fresh start? I’m sure we both could use it.”
A corner of her mouth lifted. “That sounds good.”
I reached out my hand. “I’m Cecily, and I’m so happy to meet you.”
Franny shook, firmer this time than she’d been at the funeral. “Nice to meet you, Cecily. I’m Franny Maycombe.”
When I arrive at Joshua’s house, Emily opens the door in tears.
“Daddy’s marrying Franny! I don’t want a new mommy!”
“What? I . . .”
I reach for her, but she turns on her heel and runs into the house. She’s up the stairs before I can even get a word out. Julia barrels into my legs. One of her braids is coming undone.
“Aunt Cecily, it’s horrible.”
I drop down so we’re at the same level. “What’s horrible? Where’s your father?”
“Upstairs. And Franny. Franny is horrible.”
I feel the same sense of shock I felt the day I got Tom’s texts, as if I’d stopped experiencing reality and stepped into some kind of altered state. Franny and Joshua? It can’t be true.
“What did Franny do, honey?”
Julia wipes at her nose. “She made Daddy love her. But Daddy’s only supposed to love Mommy. Even if she’s gone. That’s what he said. He said he would always love Mommy.”
“Of course he’ll always love Mommy. But sometimes, grown-ups love more than one person and . . .”
I stop myself. What am I saying? This isn’t my situation to explain. I don’t even know what’s going on.
“Where’s Franny?”
“She left.”
“Why?”
“She and Daddy had a fight.”
I feel light-headed. Where is Joshua?
I take Julia’s hand and lead her into the living room. I pull her onto my lap, missing, for a moment, those days when I could do that with Henry or Cassie.
“Can you tell me the story from the beginning? As much as you remember.”
Julia plops her thumb into her mouth but speaks anyway. “Last night, Daddy and Franny said that Daddy loved Franny and they were getting married.”
“Are you sure?”
She just looks at me, slow tears running down her cheeks.
“Okay,” I say. “And then what happened?”
“Em was mad. Real mad.”
“What about you?”
“I didn’t see that coming.”
I want to laugh. Julia’s always said the damnedest things, a sponge who absorbs all the language around her and spits it out at the oddest moments.
“Me, neither, honey. But when did Franny leave?”
“That happened today.”
“Why?”
She shrugs. “Daddy was saying maybe it was a mistake.”
“Getting married?”
“Because of Em. Because she was so sad.”
“And Franny was angry?”
“Yes, but also sad. I wouldn’t like it if someone said he was going to marry me and then said nuh-uh, not going to happen.”
Who had this child been listening to? “What happened next?”
She leans her head back. “They told us to go back to bed.”
“Wait, were you spying on them?”
She pulled her thumb out. “We snuck out of bed, but then they noticed us.”
“That was naughty.”
“That’s what Franny said.”
My stomach tightens. “Did she?”
“Yes, but then Em started crying again, and she said she was sorry, and we were all crying together, even Daddy. Em said she was sorry and that she would get used to it. She wants Daddy to be happy.”
“What happened next?”
“We went to bed, but this morning, Daddy was making breakfast, and then Franny showed him some papers, and he got so mad. I was scared.”
I hug her to me. “I’m sorry, darling. You don’t have to tell me any more if you don’t want to.”
“It’s okay.”
I kiss the top of her head. “Let me go find Daddy, all right? You stay here?”
“Can I play in the basement?”
“Of course you can.”
I watch her scuttle off. I take out my phone and make a call.
“This is Franny, leave a message.”
“Franny, I’m at Joshua’s house. Where are you; what’s going on?”
I end the call and text her.
Where are you?
I watch the screen, waiting for a bubble to form, to show me that she’s writing back. I see it after a moment. Then it disappears. Reappears. Appears again. Then, finally, a text.
Have you spoken to Joshua? Franny writes.
Not yet.
Tell him I’m sorry, okay?
Sorry for what? I’m going to call you.
I don’t want to talk right now. Just talk to Joshua. He’ll explain everything.
Why didn’t you tell me what was going on?
The bubble appears again, leaves, appears. But no text comes.
Franny?
I wait and wait, but there’s nothing.
I tuck my phone away and walk up the stairs. I can hear Emily crying in her room. I should go to her, but I need to find Joshua, I need to understand what’s going on. How could he be marrying Franny? She’s so different from Kaitlyn, and her daughter, and too young, and what could they possibly have in common?
I stop at the top of the stairs. I feel winded, panic gripping at my chest.
I lean against the wall. It’s been years since I’ve been upstairs in this house, but not much has changed. The same pictures, the same hamper full of children’s clothes at the end of the hall. One of the bedrooms was an office, but I assume it’s where Franny’s been staying since she moved in. Or is she sleeping with Joshua now? How did I let that slip by without notice? Not that it was my job to monitor this house, this family, but yet, it kind of is. It was.
“Joshua?”
“In here.”
I open the door to his bedroom. The blinds are drawn, the bed in disarray. I get a sudden image of Franny sleeping between these sheets, occupying the place Kaitlyn used to. I feel sick to my stomach.
Joshua’s sitting at his desk, his back to me, his face half illuminated by the glow of the computer screen.
“Joshua, what the hell? You scared me half to death, and then when I get here Emily and Julia are freaking out, and they told me you and Franny are getting married. Is that true?”
“Yes. At least it was. I don’t know anymore. I don’t know anything anymore.”
Joshua’s shoulders start to tremble. I step forward and put my hands on them. He’s still wearing the shirt he slept in, wrinkled and soft, and his hair’s matted down. The last time I saw Joshua like this was in the first days after October tenth.
“Joshua, I’m at a loss here; can you please tell me what’s happening?”
“Was Tom having an affair?”
My stomach knots again. “Why are you asking me that?”
“Is it true? Was he?”
“Yes, but I don’t . . .”
He turns his chair around. His skin is pale and mottled.
“I found some e-mails. Or, I should say, Franny did. She showed them to me.”
“Franny? How does Franny know about Tom? Why are we even talking about this?”
“Did he tell you about the affair?”
“No, I . . . I found out by accident.”
“And do you know who he was sleeping with?”
“He didn’t say. And then . . . Oh no, Joshua. Whatever it is you’re thinking, it’s not true. It’s not possible.”
“I’m afraid it is, Cecily. You can read it for yourself.”
He turns and pulls the screen toward us. It’s open to a Gmail account, Kaitlyn’s Gmail account. Joshua stands and guides me gently so I’m sitting in the chair.
I don’t want to look, I don’t want to look, at the end of everything, I don’t want to know this. But my eyes are not mine to command, and so I read.
And now I know.