I sank into the booth beside Mrs. Ellington, who had brought Thomas and me to celebrate our first-place win in the regional school science fair. She had watched us from across the gymnasium as we presented our findings to the judges, standing in front of the cardboard poster we’d made, our experiment written in Thomas’s careful cursive, with detailed pictures I’d drawn for each section. Something about ultraviolet light—I can’t remember now. But I remember Mrs. Ellington nodding along with the presentation we gave, like she could hear every word we said through the hum of one hundred students. I watched her in the distance and straightened my shoulders as I spoke, like she did. I wanted to make her proud.

I watched my mother and Richard for what felt like hours as they ate their meal and then folded their napkins like proper people did. She wore a black sheer blouse with big rose embroidery on the collar; I’d never seen her in something sexy like that. He put cash on the table before they’d even seen the bill. Mrs. Ellington glanced over at her, too, but she didn’t say anything to me then, nor I to her, and so we just had our milkshakes and Thomas talked about what we could do with our fifty dollars in prize money. I was numb with anxiety, wondering if my mother might turn her head around and catch a glimpse of me. A small part of me hoped she would. She never did, and I was mostly relieved when they left—I wasn’t sure if she would have come to say hello had she seen me. We left the restaurant and drove home in Mrs. Ellington’s car.

“You okay, Blythe?” Mrs. Ellington let Thomas run into the house while she walked me to the end of their driveway. I nodded and smiled and thanked her for the drive. I didn’t want Mrs. Ellington to know how much it hurt to see my mother. Happy. Beautiful. Better without me.

That night I got on my hands and knees before I went to bed and prayed that my mother would die. I would rather have seen her dead than as the new woman she had become, the changed woman who was no longer my mother.

64

I’d never been avoided before, at least not that I could remember or knew about. But it would have been easier to meet face-to-face with the queen than to have seen you in person the year after you left. You only ever wanted to hand Violet off at school drop-off and pickup, and your text messages were curt. I wanted to meet the woman you left me for, the woman who was living in the same apartment where my daughter would spend half of her time. I wanted to know how we compared. I wanted to be able to picture you two together. We were avoiding courts and legal counsel at your request, and so I had something of an upper hand in our stilted negotiations. But this one you were adamant about—you would introduce us when you were ready and there was no room for discussion otherwise.

“I’d love to meet Dad’s new girlfriend,” I said to Violet after she told me the woman had dropped her off at school that morning. It was Friday and I had her for the weekend.

“Maybe she doesn’t want to meet you.”

“Maybe.”

Violet buckled her seat belt and looked at the key in the ignition, desperate for me to start the car and get her one step closer to not being in the seat behind me. I glanced in the rearview mirror and her face changed—a look of pity. I didn’t know if it was genuine or not.

“There’s a reason Dad doesn’t want you to meet her.” Her voice lowered, like she was telling me a secret, giving me a clue to a mystery I hadn’t yet known I was solving. She looked out the window at the familiar row of brownstone walk-ups that we passed on the way home. She barely spoke to me for the rest of the evening.

And so I’m not sure you left me much choice but to do what I did.

* * *

? ? ?

Violet told me you were going to the ballet together, just you and her, the following week; the woman couldn’t go, she had standing Wednesday night plans at the same time. I’d looked up the show online and saw it began at 7:00 p.m. I knew you’d take Violet for pizza first.

Your low-rise apartment building was in a quaint part of the city that I knew well. I took a taxi over and got out a few blocks away. It was six thirty and traffic was still heavy. The driver stared at me in the rearview mirror like he could sense my nerves, see my fingers pulling over and over at the stray thread in the hem of my coat. I tipped him too much, not wanting to wait for the change, and pulled up the hood of my coat so the fur shielded most of my face. Walking was good for my nerves. I calmed down and watched my feet, one in front of the other, until I approached your building. I leaned casually against the redbrick wall and took my gloves off and pulled my phone from my pocket. I didn’t really have a plan, but it made sense to look busy, distracted by texts, like any other person on the street.

I watched the door to the lobby from the corner of my eye—it became easier to see inside as the sky darkened. A few women came and went but I knew they weren’t her—too old, too big, too many dogs. And then a woman in a puffy down jacket walked out of the building, phone in hand, and smiled at the doorman. She had long curly hair pulled to the side and a diamond earring that twinkled under the lights of the lobby overhang. She reached her arms up to put a cross-body purse over her head and then pulled on leopard-print gloves—it had quickly become a cold, blustery night. I was pretty sure it was her. So I took my chances and I followed her.

It was easy to keep up. Her suede ankle boots had a low, thick heel and she walked at a slow pace, like she hadn’t grown up in the city. She hit every crosswalk button even though most people knew they were useless. I thought I’d be nervous about being caught doing something like this, but following her felt so easy. She made a quick phone call as I stood several feet back from her at a set of streetlights, and then she hustled to catch the green she’d nearly missed, distracted. Half a block later she turned into a place I’d gone to many times when I was in the neighborhood—a small bookstore with ornately carved wall-to-wall shelving and huge milky-glass spheres that swayed ever so slightly from the soaring twenty-foot ceiling every time the door opened.