“But it is,” Karen said. She sat up straighter. “I mean, there’s a lot of anxiety and stress, sure. And from what I can see, it never stops. But it’s worth it. Travis is a shithead. He really is. And he’s in so much trouble now, there’s probably no fixing him. But there were so many good days with him. So many hugs and ice cream kisses that got my face all sticky and times when we talked—just sat and talked about our lives—and he loves me. It sounds selfish to say it’s worth it to have kids because they love you, and I don’t really mean it that way. I just mean it like when one of your kids tells you he loves you . . . it makes up for all of the hard parts of parenting.” She gave an embarrassed laugh. “That probably sounds really hollow and stupid coming from me, huh?”
“Of course not,” Joanna said. She reached over and put her hand on Karen’s arm.
Karen lunged forward and gasped, grabbing Joanna’s hand. “Is that an engagement ring? Stephen proposed?”
Joanna pulled her hand away, suddenly shy. “Yeah,” she said, turning her hand over so that the diamond faced down into her lap.
“You’re engaged?” Melinda asked. “Congratulations. I’m so sorry—you don’t want to be listening to my depressing marriage problems right now when you’re planning a wedding.”
“When did this happen?” Karen asked.
“A while ago,” Joanna admitted.
“You haven’t said anything,” Karen said. “Have I just been missing the ring?”
Joanna could feel herself blush. “No, I haven’t been wearing it. It, um . . . makes my finger swell,” she lied.
“Oh, an allergic reaction?” Melinda asked. “I’ve heard of that. Some people are sensitive to metals.” She grabbed Joanna’s hand, turned it over, and inspected the area around the ring, frowning. “Huh, it looks fine.”
Joanna pulled her hand away again. “It comes and goes,” she said.
“So when’s the date?” Karen asked.
“We haven’t set one yet. We were supposed to go look at a couple of halls tonight, but . . .” She gestured around the hospital corridor and shrugged.
“Oh, you should go,” Melinda said. “We can handle this.”
“No, that’s okay. I want to be here,” Joanna said.
“It’s your wedding,” Karen said. “We’ve got this. You go, be with Stephen.”
“It’s fine. He’ll understand.”
“Joanna, don’t be silly. You can come back tomorrow,” Melinda said.
“She’ll be here until Wednesday, at the very least,” Karen added. “We can’t do anything until then anyway.”
Joanna felt sweat pop out on her forehead. She wanted them to just stop talking. Why did she wear her ring today? Oh, that was right—because Stephen would definitely have noticed if she hadn’t been wearing it. “No, really, I’m going to stay.”
“Go, go,” Karen said, and at the same time, Melinda said, “We’ll have coffee in the morning and catch you up on any news.” Each of them pushed and prodded at Joanna.
She began to feel her pulse in her temples, which were now so coated with sweat that her hair stuck to the sides of her face. She wasn’t ready to let people know about the wedding. She wasn’t ready for choosing a reception hall and she wasn’t ready for setting dates and she would never be ready. She couldn’t do this. All she wanted was to drive to the theater and watch Éponine sigh her last breath in Marius’s arms. All she wanted to do was feel the brush of Sutton’s fingers on her bare arm. All she wanted was to go back in time to that moment with Alyria in the makeup room, to go back and lean into Alyria and smell her perfume and kiss her and hold her hand at an ice cream shop and take her home for Thanksgiving.
She wanted to take back the disappearing acts.
She wanted to be done hiding.
“I’ll call you later,” Karen said. “When we’re done here.”
Melinda gave her another little push. “We’ll see you tomorrow morning. So, go. Go, go, go.”
“I’m gay,” Joanna blurted, her eyes squeezed closed. She gulped, and then opened her eyes and repeated, staring at Karen, “I’m gay.”
“Oh,” Karen said. “I had just assumed Stephen was the one who gave you the ring.”
Joanna nodded. She twisted the ring off her finger and stared at it in the palm of her hand. “He was. Is. Whatever.” And then suddenly she burst into laughter. “I’ve never said it out loud before.” She covered her mouth with her palm.
“I’m confused,” Melinda said.
Which only made Joanna laugh harder. “So was I. Oh, my God, forever I was confused. But it’s so stupid, all this worrying and hiding. I’m gay. I’m in love with a woman named Sutton. But she’s not the first. I’ve been in love with women for years and I’ve been running from it and oh, my God, I’m engaged to Stephen and I’m gay.”
“Oh,” Karen repeated. She paused. “What are you going to do?”
“She’s going to break it off. Right?” Melinda said. “You can’t stay with him if you’re in love with someone else.”
Joanna waited for the punch in the gut, the guilty heart slam, the emotion that would send her back into hiding. It had been so natural to her for so long to deny, deny, deny what she was feeling—to call it confusion or call it wrong or call it whatever, but it was what it was. She loved Stephen deeply, but she was in love with Sutton. And even if Sutton didn’t return her feelings, she wouldn’t suddenly feel the same way about Stephen as she had about Sutton. She wouldn’t feel that way about any man. She’d known it since she was twelve years old. She just never felt safe admitting it—not even to herself.
She gazed at Karen and Melinda, who were both looking at her expectantly. Why was it she finally felt safe, and it was with these two ladies? They weren’t the same ages; they had little to nothing in common, other than a shared morning on a beautiful, horrible September day.
But what they did have in common was huge. They’d watched a man die. They’d kept his wife alive. They’d come together in the single most defining moment of someone else’s life . . . and had ended up defining themselves. Or at least Joanna had. She knew it now. There was no going back.
“Yeah,” she said. “I’m going to have to break it off. Of course.”
And it wasn’t until she said it out loud that she realized what that really meant. Poor Stephen. She would break his heart. She would destroy him. She would destroy her mother, who wanted so badly for this moment to finally come. But she couldn’t spend her whole life being silently shattered to spare a few people a few bad days.
“He’s going to be so shocked,” she said. “How do I do it?”
Melinda shrugged. “Just say to him what you said to us.”
Joanna tried to imagine herself looking into Stephen’s hopeful eyes and saying those words: I’m gay, Stephen. I know we’ve made love countless times. And I liked it. I can’t explain it, but I liked it while even wishing I was with a girl I know.
It definitely wasn’t going to be as easy as Just say to him what you said to us. But for the first time ever, it seemed doable.
• • •
Joanna did eventually leave the hospital. So did Karen and Melinda, when they finally decided that maybe leaving Maddie Routh alone in the hospital would be okay.
“You think she’ll try again?” Joanna asked on the way to the parking lot.
“It’s definitely possible,” Melinda said.
“Especially after the baby is born and the postpartum hormones set in,” Karen answered. “I had a heck of a time, and I was nowhere near suicidal before Travis was born. I saved that for after he turned sixteen.” She chuckled. “Kidding. Bad joke. Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Melinda said. “We can’t be holding our breath all the time. Do you think she’ll keep the baby, or do you think she’s going to give it up?”
“No way,” Joanna said. “She
wouldn’t be able to give up Michael’s baby.”
“But she’s tried to kill it several times now,” Karen said. “And she went through that whole thing about the names, remember? I think she doesn’t know what she’s going to do once the baby is born. I think it scares her.”
“It would scare me,” Melinda said.
Joanna and Karen chuckled. “We know,” they said in unison.
“I’m so glad you find the dismantling of my life so funny,” Melinda said, but she was smiling when she said it.
“Of course it’s not funny,” Karen said. “But it definitely went without saying.”
Melinda let out a breath of laughter. “I suppose you’re right,” she said. She stopped walking, and they each stopped with her. “Do you guys think I would be a good mother?”
“Of course,” Joanna said.
“Yes,” Karen said, as if it was obvious. “But you’ll have to let go of some of your fears. Bad things happen to good kids. You can’t help it.”
“I guess not,” Melinda said, and started walking again.
When they got to the parking garage and had to part ways, Melinda jangled her keys and asked if they all wanted to stop by the Tea Rose for some pie.
“I’ve got to get home,” Karen said. “Marty is bringing over some dinner.”
Joanna shook her head. “Not this time. I’ve got someone I need to see.”
• • •
The show was sold out. It had grown increasingly popular and had been enjoying sold-out shows on a regular basis now. Not bad for a low-rent production filled with amateurs who would never get past community theater.
But it meant that Joanna had to pull around to the back entrance and wait. She parked next to Sutton’s car.
She made the mistake of turning on her phone. Stephen had called multiple times. She deleted all the voice mails without even listening to them. She could guess what they had to say, and she couldn’t blame him for being pissed or worried or both. She texted him:
Sorry something came up with Maddie Routh. I had to turn off my phone in hospital and now I’m
She paused, thought about how she might finish the sentence without outright lying. But the last thing she wanted was for him to show up here and make things even more difficult. She would talk to him, but she needed to sleep on it, to decide what to say.
—having an important meeting, she continued. Will explain tomorrow.
He texted back, right away, several texts firing into her phone at once, demanding to know where she was. Wondering if Maddie was okay, if she was okay. Telling her he’d been thinking the worst, and the least she could have done was text him earlier. Telling her that they’d missed the guy at their first choice for reception hall and probably wouldn’t be able to get another appointment before the wedding. Which was interesting, she thought, since they still didn’t have a date in mind.
She ignored those texts, placed her phone facedown on the passenger seat, slid back in her chair, and turned up the radio.
She didn’t realize she’d dozed until knocking woke her up. She jerked awake, swimming to consciousness only to find Sutton grinning outside her window, a black coat with fur collar buttoned all the way up to her chin. She waved when Joanna looked at her.
Joanna rolled down her window. “Hey,” she said sleepily. “You startled me.”
“You always sleep in back alleyways behind theaters, or were you waiting for someone in particular?” Sutton teased. She winked. She still had on her stage makeup, and Joanna wanted to feel the thick lashes up against her cheek.
“I was hoping to scalp some tickets to the hottest show in town,” she joked back.
Sutton poked one hip out to the side and tapped her chin. “I think I might know someone who can help you out,” she said. They both giggled. “Seriously, though, aren’t you sick of watching it? You’ve been here so many times.”
“Not a chance.” A slow grin spread across her face. “You’ve noticed me at the shows?”
“Of course.” A gust of wind blew, and Sutton tensed against it.
“Oh, here, you should come inside,” Joanna said, unlocking the doors. Sutton trotted around the front of the car and hopped in.
“Thanks. I am so ready for spring to actually get here for real.” She rubbed her hands together as Joanna turned up the heat. “So why are you here, really?”
Joanna’s mouth felt very dry, and her palms were clammy, but otherwise she was far less nervous than she expected to be. The engagement ring was in her pocket. She planned to tell Sutton all about it, but not there.
“I was hoping we could go get that drink tonight?” she asked.
Sutton grinned. “I thought you’d never ask. Should I get Theo? I’m not sure if he’s still in there, but I can look.”
“Nah, just the two of us,” Joanna said. “If that’s okay. I want to toast a brilliant Éponine.”
Sutton brushed her fingers against Joanna’s, biting her lip. “It’s definitely okay,” she said.
Joanna put the car in reverse and pressed on the gas. She knew she had a lot of battles ahead of her. A lot of unpleasant conversations. Tears. Pain. But for the first time in her life, she felt truly happy and free.
TWENTY-TWO
The biggest April Fools’ joke that had ever been pulled on Karen was the one where Kendall took her money and never showed up with the baby.
Emphasis on Fool, Karen thought. She just happened to be the biggest fool she knew, handing more cash over to that dishonest little liar. She could just hear her mother, who would undoubtedly be going on and on about a fool and her money soon parted. She could hear her lecturing—This is why Travis is the way he is, Karen, because you want to be a friend and not a parent.
Wrong. She didn’t want to be Kendall’s friend. She didn’t want to be Kendall’s parent. She didn’t want to be Kendall’s anything. She wanted to have her grandson in her life. She wanted to see him grow up.
Of course, Kendall had disappeared again. Only this time, her phone was also disconnected. She didn’t know why this made the baby feel even further out of her reach, but somehow it did. Even when Kendall wasn’t answering, at least there was a sense that she was out there somewhere, that she was real and pinpointable, if someone was wanting to pinpoint her.
Karen called and listened to the recorded operator voice at least twenty times, each and every time hoping it would say something different—maybe give her a new number to call, maybe add the word “temporarily” to “out of service.” Anything. But, no, it was always the same—number disconnected, please hang up, blah blah blah.
Finally, she gave up, and just set about wondering where Marcus might be on any given day. Every newscast she saw, every viral video she clicked on, every crowd behind the Good Morning America set, she scanned the faces, hoping to see a familiar button nose or flyaway blond hair on a little boy. But that never happened. It was as if Marcus had simply ceased to exist.
Next thing she knew, it was mid-April, and it had been weeks since she’d sent the money to Kendall. It had been weeks since the number went dead. It had been weeks of waiting for Kendall to make the short trip from Iowa to Missouri. It didn’t take weeks to get from Iowa to Missouri. It didn’t take weeks to get from anywhere to Missouri.
She’d stopped spending her mornings at the Tea Rose Diner. They all had. Instead, they’d spent rotating shifts at Maddie Routh’s house, relieving Helen when they could, working alongside her when she refused to leave.
“She’s my daughter,” she would say, stoically clutching a glass of red wine at the end of the day. “This is where I have to be.”
Cleve would come around periodically as well, floating through the house with a hammer or a tape measure or a can of WD-40, a maintenance ghost. He never seemed to have much to say—definitely the quiet one in the relationship—and seemed to toil through his fate with
grim acceptance. Karen liked him. He reminded her somewhat of her grandpa, back when she was growing up. Tough, quiet, smart, bowled over by the women in his life. She missed her grandpa, God rest his soul.
When Maddie had come home from the hospital, she’d spent most of her time in bed, sleeping round the clock, as if she hadn’t closed her eyes since the accident. And maybe, Karen thought, she really hadn’t.
With a lack of anything else to do, Melinda, Joanna, and Karen decided to do something practical. Helen had shown them a back bedroom, which housed a plain white crib and a small dresser, a few Target bags filled with clothes tossed on top.
“She’s been trying, but this is all she has so far,” Helen had said. “Cleve and I have been here with her, so it’s been hard to get out and buy things. Plus, well, it’s just been hard . . .”
She’d trailed off, but Karen could guess what she’d been getting at. It had been hard to be excited about the baby, given everything that Maddie had been going through.
Karen could imagine Maddie, blindly pulling things off racks at Target, the stitches still in her head from the accident. Buying onesies in a Windbreaker soaked with tears. Picking out a crib online and leaving the box on the front porch until frost collected on the top of it and Cleve finally dragged it in and put it together.
“Let’s finish it,” Melinda had said, standing in the doorway.
“What if she doesn’t want it?” Joanna asked.
“The baby? Why would you think that?” Helen asked, startled. “Of course she wants it. We all want it.”
“No,” Karen had said. “I think Joanna meant, what if she doesn’t want the room finished?”
Joanna had nodded, though Karen wasn’t sure this was exactly what Joanna had meant. They’d all wondered, of course, about what the fate of the baby would be after it was born. But the room, even partially finished, spoke of Maddie’s hope to make a life together.
“She wants it,” Melinda said. “I don’t know what makes me say that, but I just know she does. The baby needs a room. She just needs some assistance. We won’t do anything major. Just maybe paint the walls and buy a few more things.”
Second Chance Friends Page 21
