by Tawna Fenske
I swallow back the lump in my throat. “All right,” I say softly. “If there’s anything I can do to help—”
“You’ve done enough, Mari.” He steps back and shuts the door in my face.
I don’t know how much time has passed when there’s a knock at my cabin door. An hour? Six hours? It feels like I’ve been crying for days, and my stupid, battered heart struggles up from the mat and limps hopefully to the door.
But it’s not Griff, or even Soph knocking.
It’s Lana and Lauren, wearing matching expressions of grim determination. Lana holds a potato, while Lauren clutches a pair of spoons.
I look from one to the other, not sure what’s happening. “Whatever this is, I’m not in the mood.”
Lauren looks at Lana. “It’s worse than we thought. Start with the spud.”
They push past me into the kitchen, ignoring my feeble protests. Lauren shoves the spoons in my freezer, while Lauren sets to work slicing the potato. As usual, it’s like I’m not here at all.
“I’m really not hungr—”
“Lie down on the couch,” Lauren orders.
I frown. “What for?”
Lana turns around. “They’re not for eating, they’re for putting on your eyes.” She holds up two thick slices. “Potato has astringent properties to bring down swelling.”
“Oldest trick in an actress’s toolkit,” Lauren says. “We’ll do cold spoons next.”
Lana looks thoughtful, then shakes her head. “Teabags before spoons. Black tea, so the caffeine can penetrate the skin barrier.”
Leonard’s been quiet today, baffled by my crying jag. He chooses that moment to squawk as Lana moves toward me with the potato.
“Skin barrier,” he shouts. “Skin barrier.”
I turn and glare at him. “There’s a useful phrase for you to know.”
Lana ignores my muttering, dragging me to the couch as Lauren thrusts a bottle of pale liquid into my hands. “Drink this.”
I can’t think of any cause to object. Maybe it’s cyanide. At this point, I wouldn’t blame anyone for putting me out of my misery. Tilting the bottle to my lips, I try to recall the last time I drank something besides lukewarm tea that’s been forgotten for three cycles in the microwave.
“Gack!” I choke after the first swallow of salty-sweet liquid. “What is it?”
“Water for hydration, plus a special blend of electrolytes and antioxidants.” Lana frowns at my face. “You don’t need to go anywhere in the next couple hours, do you?”
I shake my head. “I don’t think I’ll be going anywhere for a while.”
“Good.” She pushes me to sit on the couch, then waits for me to finish drinking. As soon as I do, Lana whisks the bottle away while Lauren finishes arranging pillows at the end of the sofa.
“Lie down,” Lauren commands, not waiting for me to do it. Her shove isn’t gentle, but it’s infused with love.
“Your bedside manner needs work,” I mutter, but I have to admit it feels good to lie down.
Lana hands me the potato slices. “One on each eye for ten minutes. We’ll do the teabags and the spoons next, but we’ve got emergency concealer if you need to go out.”
“We’ve got you.” Lauren watches me until I slip the slices over my eyelids, which I do mostly to mask the tears pooling in my eyes.
The potato is cold and wet and strangely refreshing. I take a few deep breaths, not sure what to say. This is the most time I’ve spent alone with both sisters in….weeks? Months? Years? I’m honestly not sure.
I swallow back the lump in my throat and try for clinical coolness. “You know, I usually just urge patients to cry it out. Releasing emotions is cathartic.”
“You’ve got catharsis handled already.” Lauren’s voice is closer now, so she must have pulled over a chair. “We’re taking care of you with shallow beauty tips and booze.”
“She can’t have the booze yet,” Lana argues. “We need to get her rehydrated.”
“Obviously,” Lauren retorts. “We’re planning for the long haul here.”
I can’t see their faces, which makes me more attuned to the tone of their voices. Has the warmth always been there behind Lauren’s snark? Did I miss the edge to Lana’s Pollyanna PR schtick?
Perhaps. I touch the potato slices on my eyes. Coolness seeps through the tingle of tears. “Thank you.”
“No problem.” Lauren’s voice is cool and comforting like the potato, which is a phrase I never thought I’d use.
“Not just for this.” I wave to my face, disoriented by the fact that I can’t see them. “With Griffin and his ex-wife. You did what you could to make it suck less, and I appreciate that.”
“God, what a mess.” Lauren huffs out a breath. “We should have kicked her ass off set the second we saw her coming.”
Lana rests a hand on my arm. Don’t ask how I know it’s her, but the touch soothes like a balm. “Please believe we wouldn’t have brought her to Griffin’s house if we’d known.”
“If we’d known for sure you were banging,” Lauren clarifies. “Or that it might be more than that.”
“Or that Elle used to be your patient,” Lana adds. “She said she had something to tell Griffin and that we ought to get it on camera, so—”
“It’s okay.” I take a shaky breath and try to clarify my feelings. “I’m not mad about that. I’m not mad about anything.”
Just sad. Really, really sad. And regretful. And hurt. And—
“Get out of your head, Mar.” Lauren squeezes the spot above my knee that’s been ticklish since we were little, and I flinch beneath the strangely gentle touch. “You want to talk about it?”
Do I? I’ve never shared with my sisters before. I’ve had therapists and colleagues, acquaintances and online message boards. But what would it be like to confide in my sisters?
“We’ve been seeing each other.” I start slowly, still scared to share. “I guess it got pretty serious. Like…maybe even love.” I take a deep breath, grateful I can’t see their faces. That I don’t have to see the incredulous looks or shocked smiles.
“Yeah.” Lauren’s voice is achingly kind. “I kinda got that. Love fucking sucks.”
“Lauren!” There’s a soft smack, and I picture Lana swatting Lauren’s arm. “Don’t listen to her, Mari. Love doesn’t suck, and neither do you. Neither does Griffin.”
Lauren sighs. “What Pollyanna means is that it’s no one’s fault things went sideways. I get that he’s pissed you didn’t tell him you knew his wife, but what the hell were you supposed to do?”
I appreciate her saying so, but I’m not off the hook here. “It’s not just that. He thinks I ruined his marriage. Hell, maybe I did. Maybe he’d still be married if it weren’t for me.”
Both sisters cough. “Mar, you weren’t out there when he first saw her.” It’s Lauren’s voice this time, and the snark is back. “He looked like he wanted to forcibly remove her from his porch. Like she’d crawled up his doorstep covered in feces and two-week-old hummus left in a hot car.”
“Beautifully put,” Lana says. “Also, not wrong. Trust us, Mari—that was not the face of a man who’s been missing his ex-wife.”
I sigh, not sure they’re getting the point. “He said it right to my face—‘If she’d never met you, I’d still be married.’”
There’s no response, and I picture them exchanging one of their looks. The looks I can never read, except…well…
Didn’t I read it back on Griffin’s porch? My life might be a mess, and I screwed up my relationship. But am I actually connecting with my sisters?
“Mari.” Lana’s using her PR voice, but now I hear true sweetness instead of saccharine. “There’s a difference between feeling frustrated he had no control over his own destiny and wishing he was still married.”
“And he was obviously lashing out.” Lauren snorts. “Trust me. Being blindsided doesn’t bring out anyone’s best self.”
There’s a bitterness in her voice that say
s she speaks from experience. I may not know all the details of how things went down with Nick, but anything that stings Lauren’s pride is grounds for a lifetime of animosity.
“Griff does have his pride,” I admit as I think about the hurt in his eyes. About the humiliation he must have felt when his wife asked for a divorce. Even if there’s nothing I could have done to prevent it, I was still part of the worst chapter in his life.
“Give him time, Mar.” This time I’m sure it’s Lauren’s hand on my arm. “We all say shitty things we regret when we’re angry. Maybe that’s what happened.”
“And maybe it’s not,” Lana puts in. “But the important thing is that you let yourself fall for someone. That’s huge.”
“And you got laid,” Lauren adds. “Presumably. Which is also huge.”
Lana snickers. “Presumably.”
My cheeks heat up, and I cross my fingers the cool spud slices are enough to keep it from being obvious. Or maybe that doesn’t matter. They’re seeing me at my lowest point. Does it really matter if they know how humiliated I am?
“The point,” Lauren continues, “is that these are all very big steps.”
“And we’re proud of you,” Lana adds.
Lauren grunts. “Hell, yes.”
I tip my face toward the sound of their voices, pausing to right a potato slice that’s slipping. “This is quite possibly the weirdest therapy session I’ve been part of,” I tell them. “And that’s saying something.”
Leonard seizes the moment to step in. “Love you!” he shouts. “Griffin Walsh! Love you!”
My sisters snort. “Even the bird knew before we did,” Lauren grumbles.
“Which could be on us a little bit.” Lana leans closer, which I know from the hair tickling my arm. “We should have tried harder to include you. To connect with you.”
“You’re not taking the blame for that one.” I peel off the potato slices and sit up, blinking wet lashes as I look from one sister to the other. “I walled myself off. That’s on me.”
Lana sighs. “I looked up to you so much. You and Lauren both, I mean. But you—you’ve got this perfect blend of beauty and brains and creative talent.”
“Creative talent?” She’s surely confused me with…well, pretty much any other Judson sibling. “That’s not me.”
Lauren looks incredulous. “You’re joking, right? The whole crocheting thing—not one of us could do that if we wanted to. You’ve got this perfect mix of patience and imagination I’d give my left tit to have.”
Lana grabs my arm again. “If I confess to my therapist sister that I still sleep with a crocheted slug, she can’t tell anyone, right?”
“I—wait, what?” I blink at her. “You still have the slug I made you?”
“Duh.” Lana looks at Lauren. “Don’t tell me you don’t still have your bumblebee.”
Lauren crosses her arms. “I will neither confirm nor deny spending weeks cuddling that stupid crocheted insect after Nick and I split.”
My head is spinning and not from dehydration. This connection with my sisters, it’s so new. But I’m realizing it’s been there all along. If I’d bothered to look, if I’d stopped hiding, I might have seen it.
“I’m so sorry, you two.” Jesus, where do I start? “For keeping you at arm’s length. For not being there for you like I should have been. For—”
“Christ, are we almost done with all the sorry?” Lauren rolls her eyes, but there’s softness in her voice. “None of us are perfect. Can we drink now?”
Lana looks at me. “Are you feeling hydrated?”
I’m feeling lots of things, and hydration’s nowhere near the top of the list. Grateful. Loved. Sad, but also grounded. I never realized what I was missing by walling myself off from my sisters.
“There’s white wine in the fridge,” I tell them. “Red in the pantry. Or beer—”
“No beer.” Lauren stands up. I expect her to head for the fridge, but she pulls me to my feet instead. “First, a group hug.”
“Awww.” Lana jumps up and throws her arms around me so hard I nearly topple. But Lauren’s got me, anchoring us both against her as she delivers a hug so fierce it steals my breath.
“I love you guys,” I murmur into Lana’s hair. “So much.”
“We love you, bitch.” Lauren lets go and heads for the kitchen. “And Griff can go to hell.”
Hearing his name makes my heart ball up tight, but Lana squeezes tighter. “We’ll get you through this, okay?”
“Okay.” For the first time, I believe it.
Maybe things are irreparably broken with Griff. Maybe I’ll never get over that.
But this, the unexpected bond with my sisters?
It’s more than I could have hoped for.
And maybe that’s enough.
Chapter 14
CONFESSIONAL 734.5
Walsh, Griffin (Brewmaster: Juniper Ridge)
When you’re a parent, you fake like you’re a hundred percent confident in all your decisions. Like, ‘absolutely this is your bedtime, and also you should eat vegetables.’ But what the fuck do I know? I’m doing my best, making the best calls I can. Really, I’m just winging it. It’s like making beer with experimental fermentation like decoction mashing or wild yeast strains. Sometimes, it turns out amazing.
Sometimes, you get bitter sludge.
“Hey, Dad. Come check this out.”
Soph’s voice bounces off the walls between the display called “Treatment” and the one titled “Why Am I Here?”
It’s a question I’ve pondered from the moment we got in the car at sunrise this morning. The plan was to pass through Portland so Soph could spend time with her mother at the Oregon Zoo while I stocked up on brewery stuff. From there, the three of us would drive an hour to Salem to see the Oregon State Hospital’s Museum of Mental Health.
But like most plans do, ours took a nosedive.
I peer over Soph’s shoulder at the words on the museum’s display, trying to gauge my kid’s mood. “Uh, that’s a straitjacket. It’s to keep people from moving around.”
Soph looks up at me. “Like when you and Mom used to strap me in my stroller and I’d unbuckle it and climb out?”
The memory knocks me back a step. “You remember that?”
“Nah, Mom told me. She made a joke about getting a stroller at the zoo.” She shrugs and moves on to the next display. “It’s too bad she got a migraine.”
“It sure is.”
I hold my tongue so I don’t say something shitty. Part of me wishes I could tell her there’s no damn migraine. When I got to the zoo at the scheduled pickup time, I saw Soph alone at the gate.
Panic was my first response, followed by anger. “Where’s your mom?”
Soph shrugged as she climbed into the truck. “She ran back to the gift shop.”
I found Elle leaning against the wall outside the restroom, deep in an intense phone call with her manager. “They’re casting out of the Portland office? No, that’s wonderful, Barney—absolute serendipity. I’ll be there at one.”
She didn’t see me standing there. Didn’t say a word when she climbed into the truck holding a gift shop bag. Ten minutes later, she clutched her head, moaning about migraines. “I’ll just check into my room at the hotel while you two see the museum.”
I’m still holding my tongue as Soph moves on to the next display. “Ouch.” She points to some scary-looking probes. “Electric shock therapy?”
“That looks painful.” I survey the next set of displays. “And lobotomies. And ice baths. And forced sterilizations. And—you know what? This is kinda depressing.”
Soph grabs my hand and tugs me to the next display. “You think Mari ever wished she could use shackles on a patient?”
Hearing that name in Soph’s sweet voice makes my chest tighten. “Odds are good.”
She looks up at me, blue eyes curious. “Mom said she’s a really good therapist. Mari, I mean.”
I nod because what the hell else a
m I supposed to do? “I’m sure she is.”
“But she’s not your girlfriend anymore.”
That didn’t sound like a question, so I settle for shrugging. “We were just seeing each other. Trying it out to see if we fit.”
Soph eyes me warily. “You seemed like you fit to me.”
“It’s…complicated.”
Complicated, as in I’ve spent the past few days vacillating between butt-hurt anger, stinging pride, and deep regret. Complicated, as in I miss Mari so much my chest aches. Complicated, as in I’ve spent the past few nights wondering if I made an epic blunder.
My kid studies me but doesn’t say anything. Just tugs my hand so I follow her back through the “Why am I here?” room. I’m sensing a theme, but at least Soph’s not talking about Mari anymore. We move into the next exhibit filled with photos of the tunnels running under the hospital grounds like ant trails.
Soph scans the pictures with a frown. “They just put people in here without telling them why or even where they were going. And tortured them and did all kinds of horrible things. But they had a swimming pool and beauty parlor and…” She peers at the caption on a photo. “A weaving room and a woodshop?”
“All of it underground.” This place is freaking me out for real now. “Ideas for how to treat mental illness must have evolved a lot over the years.”
Soph sighs. “I wish Mari was here.”
There’s that junk punch again. I take a few deep breaths to get my bearings. “You’re not having fun with just your dad?”
“It’s not that.” She bites her lip. “Mari made things make sense, you know? Like—she knows things.”
“Yeah.” Like the fact that my wife wanted to leave me, way before I knew. Small bubbles of rage simmer inside me, but they don’t boil like they have been the past couple days. Maybe that should tell me something.
“Like—this stuff is kinda depressing, right?” Soph bites her lip. “But Mari would know all about how things changed and how therapists do better now and how they don’t lock people up or shock them anymore.”
It’s an interesting take on Mari as Little Miss Sunshine, or maybe I’m misunderstanding. “You think she’d spin things in a positive light?”
