Chương 6
Megan flinched.
Emily did not.
Ryan climbed inside and drove away too fast.
Neither sister spoke until the truck disappeared.
Then Megan walked to the oven, opened it, and stared inside.
“Well.”
She lifted the blackened pizza by one edge.
“We’ve also lost dinner.”
Megan dropped the ruined pizza into the trash and ordered Chinese food from the place downstairs because neither of them trusted themselves with another appliance.
Emily ate three bites of lo mein before her stomach closed.
Her phone stayed facedown beside the soy sauce packets.
Every few minutes the screen lit against the table anyway, casting a pale rectangle across the wood.
Ryan stopped calling shortly after seven.
Linda did not.
By eight thirty, there were four voice messages from her.
Emily listened to the first one while Megan was in the shower.
“Emily, I don’t know what you think you’re accomplishing, but you have humiliated my son enough.”
Linda’s voice was controlled, almost formal.
“You made a commitment yesterday, and grown women do not run away because their feelings get hurt.”
Emily deleted the message halfway through.
She did not listen to the others.
At nine, she took her wedding photographs off social media.
She did not announce anything.
She did not change her relationship status.
She simply removed the three pictures she had posted that morning before breakfast, back when the wedding still felt like an event that had ended instead of a decision that had begun.
Within twenty minutes, her cousin Rachel texted.
Everything okay?
Emily stared at the message.
She typed, Yes.
Then erased it.
Not really, she wrote.
She put the phone down before Rachel could answer.
Megan came out of the bathroom with wet hair and stood behind her.
“You don’t owe eighty-three people a press conference.”
“I know.”
“You’re looking at that phone like it’s going to testify against you.”
Emily locked the screen.
“Mom said people would ask.”
“People ask whether I’m pregnant every Christmas because I gain five pounds in winter.”
“You told Aunt Karen you were infertile.”
“I was trying to ruin dessert.”
Emily laughed despite herself.
Megan sat across from her and began peeling the label from a water bottle.
“So what happens tomorrow?”
Emily’s laugh disappeared.
“I have work.”
“You’re going?”
“I need money.”
“You have money.”
“I need normal.”
Megan nodded.
That answer she understood.
Emily worked at a rehabilitation clinic on the west side, mostly with patients recovering from knee replacements, shoulder surgeries, and strokes.
The clinic opened at seven.
Her first patient was scheduled for seven thirty.
For years she had liked the predictability of therapy.
Pain had measurements.
Progress could be slow without being imaginary.
People arrived unable to lift an arm above shoulder height and left six weeks later reaching into kitchen cabinets without thinking about it.
There were setbacks, but setbacks usually had reasons.
Swelling.
Scar tissue.
Fear.
Overuse.
Marriage had not come with resistance bands and numbered exercises.
“I’ll drive you if you want,” Megan said.
“Why?”
“In case Ryan shows up.”
Emily looked at her.
“You think he would?”
“I don’t know him as well as you do.”
The sentence sat between them.
Emily rubbed her thumb over a scratch in the table.
“I don’t know him as well as I thought.”
Megan stopped peeling the label.
“That’s different.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
Emily waited.
Megan shrugged.
“Being wrong about someone doesn’t mean you knew nothing.”
Emily looked toward the dark window.
Across the street, somebody was folding laundry under fluorescent lights.
A little boy sat inside a rolling basket while a woman pushed him between dryers.
He held both arms out like an airplane.
Emily watched until they disappeared behind a row of machines.
“I still love him,” she said.
Megan nodded.
“I know.”
“I wish I didn’t.”
“That would make tonight easier.”
“It would make everything easier.”
“Probably.”
Megan did not tell her love should have vanished.
Emily was grateful for that.
She slept badly on the couch.
At two seventeen she woke convinced someone was knocking, only to realize the sound was the radiator ticking.
At three forty, she checked her phone and found a message Ryan had sent at twelve fifty-eight.
I’m sorry about the rag.
A second message followed.
I shouldn’t have done that.
Then:
But you leaving like this is insane.
Emily stared at the word but.
She read the messages again.
The apology occupied two lines.
The accusation occupied the third and swallowed the first two whole.
She took a screenshot, though she could not have explained why.
Then she muted his notifications and turned the phone over.
At six ten, Megan drove her to work anyway.
“You didn’t need to.”
“I know.”
“I could have taken my car.”
“I know.”
“You hate driving before coffee.”
“I hate most things before coffee.”
Megan stopped at a red light.
“You planning to argue until we get there?”
“Maybe.”
“Great.”
Emily leaned her forehead against the cold window.
Morning traffic crawled along Broad Street.
People drank coffee, changed lanes badly, and stared at phones mounted near their dashboards.
It irritated her that the city looked exactly the same.
At the clinic, the receptionist, Diane, took one look at Emily and pushed a paper cup toward her.
“Drink.”
“What is it?”
“Coffee.”
“You made it?”
“Yes.”
Emily hesitated.
Diane narrowed her eyes.
“I’m sixty-one years old and offended.”
Emily drank.
It was terrible.
She drank more.
Diane nodded approvingly.
“See.”
Her first patient was Mr. Dalton, a retired mail carrier recovering from rotator cuff surgery.
He complained about the exercise bike, his orthopedic surgeon, the Browns, and the price of eggs in that order.
Emily found herself relaxing.
“You’re cheating,” she told him when he used his other arm to help with a pulley.
“I’m adapting.”
“You’re cheating.”
“Those are synonyms after seventy.”
May you like
For forty-five minutes, her own life reduced itself to angles, repetitions, and Mr. Dalton’s refusal to count honestly.
Then, while she was documenting his range of motion, Diane appeared in the doorway.
