“He’s done good,” Dad said once he’d finally let me go and wiped the tears from my eyes.
He was nodding at Jay who was leaning against the car, watching us. Jay, who had been here, non-stop. Who hadn’t said a word during the service, had barely said a word the entire week, but that hadn’t mattered. He had been there.
Her name hadn’t been mentioned, though my rage simmered just below my grief.
“He’ll take care of you,” Dad continued, looking back to me. He cupped my cheek again. “And I get the modern woman thing where you can take care of yourself,” he added before I could interrupt. “You can take care of yourself, very well I should add. But it’s nice to know you’ve got somewhere there, for when you don’t feel like it. For when you’ve exhausted yourself trying to take care of your father, whose job it also is to take care of you.”
There was a lump in my throat, one that was only partly due to seeing the man shoveling dirt on top of my mother’s coffin, slightly more of it due to the sadness in my father’s eyes, and unfortunately, most of it due to Jay.
Yes, here at my mother’s grave—her fresh grave for that matter—the thing hurting my heart and soul the most was the man whose diamond I was wearing.
I was so fucked up.
But I couldn’t help it. It didn’t matter that he was always here, that I longed for him, that he’d made me come with his hand over my mouth at three in the morning, something rotted between us. Ate away at us.
And whatever was eating away at us was eating away at me because I’d fucked up. I’d intertwined myself in him so tightly that I didn’t know where I ended and where we began. Which is something that every self-help book—and Zoe—would caution me against, but it was too fucking late.
So I was at my mother’s funeral, in front of my grieving father, thinking about the way my fiancé had betrayed me by employing a woman he used to fuck.
“Yeah,” I said to my dad. “He’ll take care of me.”
My dad hugged me, leaving me to wonder if I was lying or not.
Because that was another thing... I didn’t know where the lies ended and the truth began.
There was only one day left in Vern before we went back to L.A.
To Jay’s house. The house that was meant to be ours. I knew that I could not get on the plane without having the conversation. The one I’d been putting off all week because dealing with my mother’s death was easier.
My father had gone back to work because a week off was about his maximum, even with me home. He’d busied himself with fixing things, mowing the grass, gardening and cooking, but my father needed to work, needed to keep busy, feel useful.
There was no excuse not to have this conversation. We couldn’t have it at my dad’s house, it was too small, stifling. I didn’t know where else to go, so I’d made Jay drive us here, a place I hadn’t been in decades.
We didn’t speak during the ride. Jay’s hand was on my thigh and my eyes were focused out the window. I’d sat in the car once we arrived, taking five minutes to find the strength to get out of the car. Jay waited next to me silently. Once I actually scrambled up the courage and got out of the car, Jay followed me.
“We used to come here and feed the ducks,” I broke the silence, looking out to the pond that had existed clearly in my memories. The magical place with the lily pads, the animals and the trees that had fallen in to disarray. The water a murky green color now, trees yellowing and dying and not a duck or a lily pad to be seen. If that wasn’t a metaphor for something, I didn’t know what was.
“I’m glad,” I said on a whisper, looking out at the water. “That’s the terrible, horrible truth of it. I’m glad my mother is dead. I’m relieved. I’m relieved that she doesn’t have to battle with herself daily. Relieved that my father isn’t riddled by guilt, isn’t putting himself in to debt, stealing away his retirement. Most of all, I’m glad I have no obligation to her anymore. I don’t have to visit her. Don’t have to pretend it doesn’t chill my bones every time I see her, wondering if I have her fate. I’m relieved I don’t have to look in the familiar eyes at the worst possible future.”
That was when I finally found the strength to look at Jay. There was no judgement in his eyes, no revulsion. Of course there wasn’t.
That was another thing I loved about Jay. I could tell him truths. The real ones. The dark ones, the ones most people lied to cover up. I could tell him anything, and he had thought worse, he’d done worse and he hadn’t blinked.