by Mia Ford
Though she needs to think again if she believes that the Ethan she’s meeting is the same Ethan from ten years ago. I watch as this realization seems to cross her face, and she visibly calms herself, closing her eyes briefly, before nodding and turning to look at me, ignoring Georgia entirely.
I’m okay with that. Georgia has said her piece, for better or worse. And I know my message to her was clear; Georgia needs to behave herself or I’ll ask her to leave too. Which, in all honesty, I feel is fair enough at this point. This is already difficult, so Georgia also needs to calm down, before she makes it worse.
Though, I understand that it’s hard. Seeing Polly again reminded me of just how angry I am at her, too.
“So…” Polly says awkwardly.
“We’re here to talk about Lily,” I say. Then my eyes flash and I lift my chin. “But there are a few questions I have for you, first. You owe me those answers.”
Polly sighs, resigned.
“I do,” she agrees. “Ask me anything, I’ll tell you the truth. I should have put this to rest a long time ago. I’m sorry.”
My lips tighten. I don’t say “it’s alright”, because it really isn’t. Dimly, it crosses my mind that I’m honestly surprised at how well I’m handling this, considering how nervous I was before. Maybe Georgia’s argument with Polly actually did some good.
Though, now that I’ve been given free rein over what to ask, I’m struggling with what to start with. I can easily ask “why?”, but that’s very broad.
“Why are you here?” I finally ask. “What made you decide to contact us after ten years?”
“As I said in my letter, I wanted to before now, but I was a coward,” Polly says. Her shoulders slump. “Then, two months ago, my father had a heart attack and passed away. It put some things in perspective, I guess. Life goes on, and you can lose something before you even know it. I’d been putting off contacting you and Lily for too long. What if something happened to either of you or to me? So…I sat down and wrote you a letter.”
“How did you find where I was?” I ask stiffly; that was the question playing on my mind.
“Actually, I’ve known for about a year and a half,” Polly admits. “One of your old work buddies moved to Newark with his wife and children. I made friends with his wife. He mentioned you in passing at dinner one night when he was talking about his old friends. I never told him I was your ex-wife, but, when I knew where you were, I was able to find you.”
Surprisingly simple, and not as invasive as I had feared, considering who her husband is.
However, Polly has known where I live for a whole year and a half, and has only now worked up the courage to contact me. I file that piece of information away to consider later.
“Right,” I say. I glance at Georgia as she brings the coffee carefully over and sits quietly. “Thanks, Georgia.”
“Thank you,” Polly says, inclining her head toward me.
“I am sorry to hear of your father’s passing, we always got along,” I say after a moment. I narrow the question. “Which begs the question of why your parents treated me so badly following your abandonment, and why they have never tried to be part of their granddaughter’s life.”
Polly winces. I’m not sure I need her to answer this one; I’ve long suspected the reason, despicable as it is, but I want to hear the words from her.
“I never told them I abandoned you and Lily,” she says, looking at the table. Georgia looks up sharply. I’ve never shared this suspicion with her, but now I wish I had, because I’m not sure she’ll stay quiet on this one. “I told them you were abusing me.”
Georgia shoots to her feet, outraged. I just sigh.
“I figured,” I say.
Polly’s shocked eyes shoot to me.
“You guessed?” she asked.
I snort.
“I’m not a complete fucking idiot,” I say, rolling my eyes. “Your parents are okay with me, then suddenly they’re hiding you, snapping at me when they bring the divorce papers and refusing to see their granddaughter? There were very few reasons for that. Though how did you convince them not to take custody from me? Weren’t they frightened for Lily?”
“It took some convincing that you adored Lily and that your parents were filing for custody, instead,” Polly grimaces, squirming under my gaze.
“Probably a good thing dear old Dad was gone by then, or they’d never believe Lily was going to a good home,” I say. “Though, in case you wanted to know, Mom passed away five years ago.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Polly says, her face creasing in sadness. She genuinely loved my mother. “I wish I’d known.”
I don’t say anything to that. I had had no way of contacting her, after all. I look at Georgia. She still looks furious, but she slowly sits when she sees me staring at her, biting her lip.
“So, you threw me under the bus because you didn’t want to tell anyone that you wanted to divorce me and didn’t want children.”
It’s odd how calm I feel right now. I feel like I should be raging at the world, which has thrown me under the bus more than once. Or yelling at Polly, who lied and manipulated everyone around her because…why?
Why did she go to these lengths? It’s the one thing I don’t understand. Why didn’t she say something before she reached the breaking point, when she had to run away? Why did she lie to me and her family?
“Why?” The word slips from me. I shake my head helplessly. “What happened, Polly?”
Polly frowns and looks down at her half-drunk coffee.
“We spoke about it, remember?” she asks quietly. “Having children. You weren’t sure because of the influence of your own father. I straight up said no. I didn’t want children.”
“I remember,” I say. “I was okay with that. I still asked you to marry me, knowing about that.”
“I know,” Polly replies with a nod. “Then…then I fell pregnant. We just weren’t careful enough. When we found out…I was so scared.”
“So was I,” I remind her.
“But then you started to think about it, remember?” Polly asks. “You started to linger when we passed children’s toys in the store. I overheard you asking some of your work friends who have children about baby food. While cleaning, I found a catalog for baby furniture. As the weeks passed, you were nervous…but you were excited. You really wanted this kid. You never said it, but we’d been together for a long time. I could tell. So, I was stuck. I couldn’t get rid of the baby; it would have devastated you. But I didn’t want it once it was born. For the entire pregnancy, I struggled to think of what to do.”
“But you carried Lily to term,” I say before frowning. “I wish you had spoken to me about all this.”
“It doesn’t matter now,” Polly says with a wry smile. “When I had Lily, I decided that it would be okay. The baby was born, and I just had to try my best. But nothing seemed to go right. Lily cried whenever I held her, but she would settle with you immediately. She was lactose intolerant as a baby, remember? So I had to restrict what I was eating. I couldn’t go out with my friends anymore. I was struggling to lose weight from the pregnancy. I felt ugly and trapped.” She catches the expression on my face. “Don’t look at me like that. I know how selfish it all was. I was only thinking of myself. I didn’t think about Lily at all.”
“You might have had post-partum depression,” Georgia says quietly. “It’s pretty common, actually. Did you ever speak to anyone about it?”
“A year or so later…I did,” Polly confesses. “I went to a psychologist and told her everything. She said the same thing. But it doesn’t really excuse anything.” She grimaces. “I got depressed and ran away, divorcing my husband out of nowhere, abandoning my child and then telling my family that I was being abused just so they wouldn’t question me. Months after it all happened, I honestly couldn’t figure out why I had done all that. It just felt so insane. But I didn’t know how to take it all back. Even now, I can’t tell Mom the truth. And, I should, because I ch
eated her and Dad out of a grand-daughter.”
She sighs heavily.
“And all because I didn’t want children,” she says quietly. “And went insane from the stress of having a child.”
“I assume you’re better now?” I ask, less because I care, more because I’m supposed to be sending my daughter out with this woman on the weekend.
“Yes,” Polly assures me. “I saw my psychologist for a long time to work through these things with her. She was wonderful. It’s because of her that I was able to have a meaningful relationship with Warrick and eventually marry him.”
I feel very tired. I don’t want to hear how wonderfully Polly’s life went after she got back on her feet. I had thought I would feel satisfied once I knew the story, but, instead, I feel empty and drained. Part of me is incredulous about it all. Her excuses don’t feel good enough to me.
It’s great that she came out of the depression. She saw a psychologist and was able to put it behind her. And something heavy sits in my stomach to know that Polly went through something like that. She was having all these terrible thoughts until she broke, and I just never knew. I just thought it was the stress of the new baby, which I was also feeling.
But…
I was Polly’s husband. Not once, not when she fell pregnant, not during the pregnancy, not even afterward, when she was feeling that bad, did she say anything to me. Never asked me for help, or even told me she wasn’t feeling too great. She allowed things within her mind to build and build and build until she exploded, when her only option was to get away from it all.
It upsets me that she never came to me.
And the end result of it all was her disappearance and my small family narrowing down to two. I look at Polly, sitting across from me, who is avoiding my eyes. She knows that her excuses sound petty and foolish, considering what I went through. She got to evaluate everything and feel better about her actions. And I got ten years of being terrified of allowing anyone that close to me again while struggling to raise a daughter alone on my small wage.
“It’s not fair.”
Polly looks up. It takes me a moment to realize that I’ve said those words aloud.
“I’m sorry,” she says quietly.
I close my eyes briefly. Then I open them again.
“That’s not good enough,” I say, and she sits back. “After ten years, you think an apology is going to solve anything?”
“No, of course not, but…” Polly tries.
“No. You don’t get to do this. You don’t get to give me that poor excuse for an explanation and then expect everything is all good. You say you were confused by your own actions several months after you left, which resulted in you going to the psychologist. You say you’ve spent the last few years dragging up the courage to speak to me. You say you’ve known approximately where I live for the last year and half, and that you’ve only now gotten around to contacting me. Bullshit, Polly.”
Polly gasps.
“What…?” she asks. “I told you the truth!”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t the truth. “I’m saying it’s all bullshit. You didn’t talk to me, before or after Lily’s birth. You should have said something! Maybe we still would have ended up divorced, with me having custody. But that would have been a hell of a lot fucking better than you leaving a note and walking out on me!”
“I know, I was young and stupid…” Polly says.
“We were fucking adults!” I roar, suddenly furious. After all this, she’s still trying to make excuses. I’m done hearing them. “We were married! We had been together for years! We weren’t two stupid teenagers who had no clue about how a relationship works! I was your husband!”
Polly cringes back. Guilt is on her face now.
“I’m sorry,” she says in a small voice.
Abruptly, the anger drains out of me, and I slump back in my chair. What’s even the point of getting angry right now? It’s ten years too late to say any of this. It’s not going to make me feel better.
“You abandoned us,” I say quietly. “You tell me how saying “I’m sorry” is going to make that better.”
“I was young and stupid… I didn’t realize what I had,” Polly says. Then she gives me a tremulous smile. “But that’s still just excuses, right?”
“Yeah,” I say. I’m tired. I want this to be over with already. I want Polly out of my home. “None of it even matters anymore. I only wanted answers so I could stop trying to imagine what happened.” I raise my eyes to meet hers. “Ten years have gone by for both of us. I’ve spent those ten years raising my daughter on my own and locking all memories of you away. But, lately, Lily has been asking about you. Part of me wants to stop the two of you from ever meeting; I’ll never forgive myself for allowing this if she gets hurt.”
“She won’t,” Polly says instantly. “I promise, Ethan. Please, give me one last chance to prove that I can do the right thing. Please.”
“I should send you away and tell you I’ll think about it,” I say. I sigh. “But the decision has already been made, by Lily. You’re lucky we have such a beautiful daughter, inside and out. She’s willing to forgive your ten-year absence so she can meet you.”
“Thank you,” Polly says. She hesitates. “For what it’s worth…I did love you, Ethan, with all my heart. What I did to you was terrible. I’m trying to make up for it, now, even if it is far too late. I hope we can make this work.”
I think of Lily’s beaming smile and sigh.
“So do I,” I say.
Chapter Twelve
Georgia
“I’d tell her not to come back,” I say the instant Polly is gone, the front door clicking closed behind her.
“Not an option, Georgia,” Ethan says. He sounds regretful. “Sorry.”
“Maybe we can tell Lily that Polly unexpectedly got the news that she’s moving to Alaska?” Georgia suggests.
I can’t help but laugh.
“I think Lily would just demand that we go and visit her,” I point out. “Then she’ll get disappointed because I can’t afford it.”
I huff. I’m really irritated, and I don’t know where to direct all that energy. It’s not often that I allow my anger to cloud my emotions like this; I’ve usually got a very mellow personality.
But from the moment Polly stepped into the kitchen, my hackles raised. I’m not sorry about what I said to her, even if it almost caused an argument between the two of us to break out, but I am sorry for the stress it put on Ethan, and I know I should have held my tongue.
But seeing her in Ethan’s kitchen, in her expensive clothes, her eyes taking in every corner of the tiny, cramped room and the shelves overflowing with books, knick-knacks and toys… It just got to me. She looked out of place and it was clear, from the way her nose was ever so slightly raised, that she didn’t approve of the little that Ethan and Lily had.
Well, fuck her. She doesn’t get the right to approve or disapprove. She doesn’t have the right to sneer at the struggles Ethan has gone through to provide himself and his daughter with a home.
So, I ran my mouth and it was delightful to watch how angry Polly got. She might have fancier clothes and a rich husband, but she was still the same stubborn, temperamental woman that Ethan married so long ago.
Yet it was hearing Polly’s story that really angered me. And seeing Ethan’s resignation to it all just made it all worse. I knew he was angry, but, apparently, he’d already worked some of it out and come to terms with it.
But, me, I’m hearing it all for the first time. I’m only now hearing about how Polly was too much of a coward to tell her parents that she was completely abandoning her husband and child, and so chose to accuse Ethan, sweet, kind, gentle Ethan, of fucking abuse.
I thought I didn’t like Polly. But now I despise her, and I’d be happy to never see her again. Ethan might not be as mad about it, but that doesn’t matter. I’ll be angry enough for the both of us, because it just isn’t fucking right. Ethan lost his wife, his
family and everything he knew because Polly was just that much of a bitch.
“Georgia.”
I look up at hearing Ethan’s calm voice. It occurs to me that emotions must be chasing each other across my face as I remember Polly’s words, and he’s reading my thoughts with the ease of someone who has known me for most of my life.
“She had post-partum depression,” he says. He holds up a hand before I can say anything. “It doesn’t make any of this right or fair. And I’m still angry at her. But…it does explain a lot. I’m surprised that none of us picked up on it at the time.”
“I don’t give a damn,” I mutter. “What she did was absolutely inexcusable.”
“To be honest…I’m less angry about what she did, and more angry that it’s taken her so long to try and correct it,” Ethan says slowly. “Her actions while depressed were insane, but slightly understandable when you take her condition into account. Her actions after she had started to get better are harder to understand.”
“Yeah,” I grimace. “She said she started to question her own actions only months after she left. Why didn’t she reach out to you and explain then?”
“Exactly,” Ethan agrees. He looks away, staring unseeingly at the wall. “And…something’s off.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, startled.
Ethan frowns, and I can almost see him trying to collect his scattered thoughts. I hadn’t noticed anything strange about Polly; despite her story and the way she kept trying to make excuses, she had seemed genuinely apologetic about everything.
“Look, I can’t put my finger on it,” Ethan sighs. “But why now? It’s been ten years. If she was being honest about getting better years ago, enough to have another relationship with someone, then why has it taken so long? And why has she chosen now to show up? I know Polly. She’s not the type to air her dirty laundry so long afterwards. If anything, she would just keep sweeping all this under the rug for the rest of her life, if she had the choice.”
I want to follow Ethan’s thoughts. It makes Polly’s actions seem so much more suspicious. But I lean back.
