Chapter Sixteen

Emma

“But I don’t want to be here!” Tommy Jr. shouted as he sent a stuffed animal flying toward the wall opposite his race car-shaped bed. “I want to stay with Grandma!”

I sighed and tried to gather the shreds of patience I had left. “Tommy, honey, we can’t stay at Grandma’s tonight. Okay?”

“Why not?” he demanded, throwing his arms around himself.

“Because it’s time we started staying here. Things have to—” I paused, weighing my words carefully. “We have to move forward, Tommy.”

He stared at me like I’d slapped him across the face. He was far too young to understand.

I squatted down to pick up the discarded plush and took it back to him. “Rascal wants you to stay here tonight. Okay?”

He reached out and swatted the toy from my hands. “No!”

“Everything okay in here?”

I cringed at the sound of my mom’s voice. I needed her desperately but hated that I couldn’t seem to manage on my own.

Tommy flew across the room and launched himself into her arms. “Grandma! Can I come stay with you tonight?”

My mom looked to me, and I shook my head.

“Tommy, dear, why don’t you go help Auntie Kate with the groceries, all right?”

She set him down, and he bolted from the room.

“Mom—”

“Honey, he needs more time. Let him do what makes him more comfortable.”

I raked my fingers through my tangled hair. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d washed it. Two—three days? The realization made my insides twist up into a tighter knot. I was falling apart. Rapidly. All efforts to get back on track were failing left and right, and I was beginning to feel like a rudderless boat just lost on the sea.

I gave my mom a pleading glance. Hoping for rescue. “We have to move on. He has to get back to his normal routine.”

She stepped further into the room and wrapped me into an embrace. As soon as her arms were around me, a floodgate burst and I was immediately sobbing against her.

She stroked my hair and let me cry. “Shh, shh, baby girl, it’s going to be all right.”

“I feel so… so unraveled,” I said with a hiccup.

“Of course, you do. Your husband just died. No one expects you to get everything rearranged in a week. Well, at least, no one except you expects that.” She released me and wiped the tears from my face. “Why are you being so hard on yourself, baby?”

I shook my head and held my breath. The truth was too awful to speak out loud.

She waited a moment but then let me off the hook. “Let Tommy stay with me a few more nights. I don’t mind. It won’t be forever, honey. You can stay here and have some quiet time. Take a bath or read a book. Watch some TV. You work too hard and too long to not take some time for yourself. Kate and I brought over some food for dinner. It’s not much but we’ll all have dinner, and then we’ll go and get Tommy settled for the night and you can rest. Okay?”

I knew as soon as they left I’d end up lying on the bed or the couch, staring up at the ceiling. But it didn’t matter if I was miserable. If it would make Tommy happy, I had no choice but to agree. What kind of monster would I be if I didn’t do everything in my power to help him? Especially when he was only asking to stay across the hall.

Suddenly the entire debate felt stupid and petty. I nodded. “All right. He can stay with you tonight. Or as long as he needs.”

My mom squeezed my arms and then left the room. I followed her to the kitchen and found Kate had the oven preheating and a frozen lasagna on a cookie tray, ready to go in. Tommy was sitting at the small table eating straight from a box of cherry tomatoes. He looked up at me, and I could see the remnants of tears on his cheeks. The sight broke my heart into a million pieces all over again. I wondered if the shards would ever find their way back together. Would I always feel like I was barely holding it together with a thread?

“You can stay at grandma’s tonight,” I said to him as I took the seat beside him. I reached for a tomato—even though my stomach had soured—and popped it into my mouth. “After dinner, I’ll pack you a bag. Okay?”

Tommy smiled. “Okay, Mom.”

***

When dinner was over, I helped get Tommy ready for bed and then went back to the empty apartment across the hall. I pulled a bottle of wine from the fridge and poured half the contents into the largest glass I owned. I turned on the TV and flicked through the channels mindlessly, waiting for something to catch my attention. When I’d cycled through a few times I gave up and left it on the last channel it landed on. The noise in the background was comforting. I couldn’t handle being left alone with myself. The nagging thoughts were too much. I was too tired to fight them back.

So, instead, I drank.

And drank.

The warmth filled my stomach and then spread over my arms and legs, and then eventually to my head, taking away all the voices of doubt and rage and despair. They melted away to nothing, and I could finally relax. At some point, I stripped off the cotton dress I wore to the diner and slipped into my robe and a pair of long socks that reached to mid-calf. I settled on the couch, letting the TV noises lull me into a hazy sleep.

Right before I tipped over the edge a sharp knock yanked me back to reality. I sat up and watched the room tilt. The knocking sounding again.

“For fuck’s sake . . .” I pushed up from the couch and padded to the door, swaying slightly. I’d packed everything Tommy needed for the night. Had he decided to come home after all? Maybe he’d woken up to a nightmare.

I unlocked the two deadbolts and pulled the door open without checking the peephole. I stared down at a pair of tan boots as they stood planted wide on the faded welcome mat in front of my door. Slowly, I followed the lines of the strong legs up to the broad torso and eventually found a pair of familiar blue eyes watching me.

“Dylan? What are you doing here?”

He was wearing the same clothes he had when he came to the diner though it was well past midnight. “Can I come in?” he asked, his voice low.

I sagged against the doorframe, every ounce of energy drained away. “What do you want?”

“I was thinking about what you said.”

“Ugh!” I pushed away from the door and stumbled back to the kitchen.

“Are you drunk?”

The note of scandal in his clipped tone only infuriated me more. “No!” I said way too loudly to be convincing. “No, I’m not.”

He gave a pointed look at the two bottles by the sink and raised his eyebrows.

“Screw you, Dylan! I don’t need you to come up to my house and ask questions like that. In fact,” I paused and rounded a chair at the kitchen table. I braced my hands on the back of it as the room went spinning again. My stomach clenched and I squeezed my eyes closed for a moment, willing away the dizziness. “I don’t need you in my house at all. I didn’t ask for you to come back—here—to wander around like some fucking ghost!”

Dylan stepped inside and shut the front door.

“No! You’re not staying.” I flapped a hand. “Just go away! I don’t need you. Not anymore.”

“Em, what is going on?”

“Nothing.”

“Bullshit.” He crossed his arms. My eyes snapped to the way his jacket went tight around his biceps and hated myself at the rush of heat that pooled inside me. “What the hell has you so pissed off?”

I jerked the chair away from the table and sat down roughly. “Life, Dylan. Life.”

“Care to be more specific?”

I groaned into my hands. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Try me.”

“Everything is fucked up. I don’t even recognize myself anymore.” I swallowed a hard lump in my throat and willed myself to keep from crying. “My whole damn life stopped making sense a long time ago. I thought—” I glanced up at him. “I thought we’d be together. That we’d have this amazing life together. We’d travel the world and get far, far away from this place. You remember how we were going to leave this neighborhood and all the shit behind?”

He tensed.

I gave a hollow laugh. “I never thought you’d leave without me. Never in a million years did I see that coming. And I feel like I’ve been picking up the pieces ever since!”

“Em, you’ve got a great life here. You have a home, a business, your son. I’d say you’ve done pretty well for yourself.”

I laughed, the sound cold and foreign. “I’m not even sad that he’s gone.” I shook my head as my lips began to tremble. “Not one little bit. And that’s so fucked up that I’m beginning to think that I’m the real monster. It wasn’t him. It was me all along. My son hates me. He can’t stand to be in the same room as me. And why would he? I’ve been so goddamned miserable all these years. I’m not the happy, fun mom with papier-mâché volcanos or the one who bakes cookies just because. I’m always working and when I’m not working, I’m trying to keep a million balls in the air. I don’t laugh or smile or have fun.”

Dylan moved around the table and tried to pull me up. “Em, I’m sure that’s not true.”

I batted his hands away. “Just leave me alone, Dylan. You can’t fix me. You can’t fix any of this. I shouldn’t have even said those things to you.”

“Emma, let me help you.”

“You can’t!” I bellowed. I pushed up from the table too quickly, sending the room spinning yet again. I zeroed in on him as best as I could. “You left. And now, you’re leaving again. So, go on! This isn’t your mess to clean up. I’ll be fine. Just like I was the past eight fucking years!”

He reached for me again, and I jumped back as though his hands were made of hot coals. I braced myself against the counter. “Just go, Dylan. Please.” My voice was reduced to a desperate whisper.

Something changed in Dylan’s eyes. A dark spark. He moved slowly toward me, only stopping when his face was a breath from mine.

“I love you, Emma Flannigan or Gallagher. Whatever name you go by. That’s never changed.” He kissed me softly. “Try to remember that when I left, it was because I thought I was doing the best thing. For both of us.”

Before my mind could process his words, he was gone.