I love, I write, your nightmare brain.
And here I thought you were using me for my nightmare body.
And then, a minute later, I love your brain too. And your body. All of it.
I’ve spent ten years guiding my life away from this feeling, this terrible want. All it took was three weeks and a fictional woman named Nadine Winters to pull me right back.
“Don’t make any plans for tomorrow afternoon,” Libby says, kicking my sandal under the table. “I’ve got a surprise for you.”
Brendan’s looking at the table, almost guiltily. Either he’s not convinced I’ll like my “surprise,” or Libby’s threatened him with murder if he gives it away.
“Brendan,” I say, fishing, “tell your wife she can’t go skydiving while pregnant.”
He laughs and lifts his hands, but still avoids my gaze. “Never tell a Stephens what she can and cannot do.”
The editing job at Loggia flutters across my mind, and Charlie’s voice saying, If I had to pick one person to be in my corner, it’d be you. Every time.
Once again, Libby has me tie a silk scarf over my eyes for the length of our cab ride — driven, unfortunately, by Hardy, but luckily it only lasts five minutes, and then Libby’s wrenching me from the car, singing, “We’re heeeere!”
“Once Unofficial Town Tour?” I guess.
“Nope!” Hardy says, chuckling. “Though y’all really gotta do one! You’re missing out.”
“Funeral for Old Man Whittaker’s fictional dog,” I guess next.
Libby shuts the car door behind me. “Colder.”
“Funeral for the iguana that played Old Man Whittaker’s fictional dog in the community theater play?” I listen for clues as to our location, but the only sound is the breeze through some trees, which could put us approximately . . . anywhere.
“There are two stairs, okay?” She prods me forward. “Now straight ahead, there’s a small ledge.”
I stretch my foot out, feeling through space until I find it. A blast of cold air hits me, and my shoes click onto hardwood floors as we take a few more steps.
“Now.” Libby stops. “Give me a drumroll.”
I slap my palms against my thighs while she unties the scarf and yanks it away.
We’re standing in an empty room. One with dark wooden floors and white shiplap walls. A large window overlooks a thicket of blue-green pine trees, and Libby steps in front of it, vibrating with anxious energy despite her grin.
“Imagine a huge wooden table right here,” she says. “And some wicker plant stands under this window. And a Scandinavian chandelier. Something sleek and modern, you know?”
“Okayyyy,” I say, following her into the next room.
“A dark blue velvet couch,” she says, “and, like, a small canvas tent in one corner for the girls. Something we can leave up, string some lights inside.” She leads me down a narrow hall and then I follow her through another doorway as she flicks on the lights to reveal a butter-yellow bathroom: yellow fifties tile, yellow wallpaper, yellow tub, yellow sink.
“This . . . needs some work,” she says. “But look how huge it is! I mean, there’s a tub, and there’s a whole other bathroom with a walk-in shower. That one’s already been redone.”
She looks to me for some sort of confirmation that I’m hearing her.
And I am, but there’s a dull buzzing rising in my skull, like a horde of bees growing more and more agitated by the uncanny sense of wrongness creeping up my spine.
“There’s an en suite. Three whole baths — can you imagine?” She gestures toward a smear of lipstick on the carpet, beside a full-pot-of-coffee-sized stain. “Ignore that. I already checked and there’s hardwood under it. There will be some damage from the spills, probably, but I’ve always loved a good rug.”
She stops in the middle of the room and holds her arms aloft at her sides. “What do you think?”
“About you loving rugs?”
Her smile wavers. “About the house.”
The blood rushing through my eardrums dims my voice. “This house? In the middle of Sunshine Falls?”
Her smile shrinks.
The buzzing swells. It sounds like No, like a million miniature Noras humming, This isn’t happening. This can’t be happening. You’re misunderstanding.
Libby’s hands cradle her stomach, her frown lines firming up between her brows. “You wouldn’t believe how cheap it is.”
I’m sure I wouldn’t. I’d probably fall down dead, and then my ghost would haunt this place, and every night when I rose out of the floorboards, I’d scare the shit out of the owners by asking, Now, how many closets did you say it has?
But I don’t see how that’s important.
I shake my head. “Lib, you couldn’t live somewhere like this.”
Her face goes slack. “I couldn’t?”
“Your life’s in New York,” I say. “Brendan’s job is in New York. The girls’ school — our favorite restaurants, our favorite parks.”
Me.
Mom.
Every last bit of her. Every memory. Every spot where she stood, in some other life, a decade ago. Every window we looked into, our mittened hands folded together, the three of us in a row as we watched Santa’s animatronic sleigh arc over a miniature Manhattan skyline.
Every step across the Brooklyn Bridge on the first day of spring, or the last of summer.
Freeman Books, the Strand, Books Are Magic, McNally Jackson, the Fifth Avenue Barnes & Noble.
“You’ve loved it here,” Libby sounds uncertain, young.
All those veins of ice holding my cracked heart together thaw too fast, broken pieces sliding off like melting glaciers, leaving raw spots exposed. “It’s been a great break, but Libby — in a week, I want to go home.”
She turns away. Right before she speaks, I feel this throb in my gut, a warning, a change in barometric pressure. The buzzing drops out.
Her voice is clear. “Brendan got a new job. In Asheville.”
I felt something coming, but it didn’t prepare me for this missed-step weightlessness, the sensation of falling from a great height, hitting every stair on the way down.
Libby’s looking at me again, waiting.
I don’t know what for. I don’t know what to say.
What is the correct course of action when the planet’s been punted off its axis?
I have no plan, no fix-it checklist. I’m standing in an empty house, watching the world unravel.
“This is what Brendan kept checking in about,” I whisper, the roar of blood in my ears starting anew. “He was waiting for you to tell me.”
The muscles in Libby’s jaw flex, an admission of guilt.
“The list,” I choke out. “This trip. That’s what this was all about? You’re leaving and this whole elaborate game of Simon Says was some fucked-up goodbye?”
“It’s not like that,” she murmurs.
“What about the lawyer?” I say. “How does she fit into this?”
“The what?”
The world sways. “The divorce attorney, the one Sally gave you the number for.”
Understanding dawns across her face. “A friend of hers,” she says feebly, “who knew about a good preschool here.”
I press my hands to the sides of my head.
They’re looking at schools.
They’re looking at houses.
“How long have you known?” I ask.
“It happened fast,” she says.
“How long, Libby?”
Breath rushes out between her lips. “Since a few days before we made the plans to come here.”