Little Secrets(81)

“Sorry,” she says to Frances, and the word comes out a gasp. She works to center herself from the escape she just made from the claustrophobic shop, feeling bad for busting in on a grieving mother’s quiet time. “I didn’t realize you were out here. I can go back inside.”

“Don’t be sorry.” Frances’s voice sounds a little rougher than usual. She moves over a few inches. “Want to sit?”

“Really, I don’t want to interrupt—”

“Marin, you’re not interrupting.” Frances pats the bench for emphasis. She takes another drag from her joint. “Come sit by me. I could use the warmth. It’s getting cold out here.”

Marin steps up onto the table and takes a seat beside her friend. The wood is cold beneath her ass, and she shivers a little until her butt starts to warm up. She contemplates going back inside for her coat, but the energy in the donut shop is too stifling.

“How are you doing?” she asks Frances gently.

The other woman doesn’t respond, and Marin is reminded of the brief conversation she had in the church with Jamie. How are you? is a hard enough question for them to answer on any normal day, but on the day of her son’s funeral, what does she expect Frances to say? When they saw each other at group a week ago, they were in the same place. They both had missing children.

Today, everything is different. Thomas is no longer missing.

“Believe it or not, I actually slept last night,” Frances says. “As in, really slept. I passed out around eleven, and woke up this morning in the exact same position I fell asleep in.”

“I think that’s good,” Marin says. “It’s been a stressful time for you. You needed the rest.”

“I didn’t have any dreams.” The other woman blows another long stream of smoke out the side of her mouth, where it curls in the chilly air before disappearing. She offers Marin a drag, but Marin shakes her head and smiles. She hasn’t smoked pot since college. “Or if I did dream, I don’t remember. All’s I know is, I opened my eyes, and it was seven a.m., and I was starving. So I went downstairs, dug out my cast-iron pan, and made myself a four-egg omelet stuffed with mushrooms, ham, and cheese. Finished the whole damn thing.”

“Four eggs? I thought you didn’t eat breakfast.”

“I normally don’t,” Frances says. “But I was so hungry. And afterward, I went back upstairs, took a long shower, and sobbed like a baby. Did the whole ugly cry, and you guys know I’m not a crier. I stayed in the shower so long, the water started coming out cold.”

“Oh, Frances…” Marin says, but her friend isn’t looking at her. She’s staring down at the hand-rolled joint, which she’s smoked nearly down to the end. “You lost your son. What else are you supposed to do? How else are you supposed to feel?”

Frances looks up. “The thing is, Marin, I wasn’t crying because I felt sad. Not that I’m not sad,” she adds, searching Marin’s face for any sign of judgment. She won’t find any. “Of course I’m sad. I’m devastated. But I cried because I felt … guilty.”

“About what?”

“For feeling so goddamned relieved.” She looks down again. “Because it’s over. I finally know where my son is. Isn’t that awful? Isn’t that the worst thing you could ever hear a mother say? My son is in a casket, and I’m relieved to know he’s in there. I mean, what the hell, Marin? How horrible is that? I’m burying him tomorrow. I’m putting my son in the ground. How can I be feeling anything but grief?”

Marin reaches for Frances’s hand. It’s as cold as her own, the skin paper-thin over the woman’s knobby knuckles.

“But it’s over,” Frances says. “I may not have all the questions answered, but at least I don’t have to wait for him to come home anymore. I’ve had these low back issues for the past decade—”

“I know, you’ve been seeing a chiropractor.”

“—and this morning, when I woke up, I didn’t need a pain pill. I needed food. My back feels better than it has in years. It’s like there’s nothing to be afraid of now. Ever since Thomas disappeared, I’ve been waiting for that phone call, that knock on the door, from someone who was going to tell me that my son is dead. I’ve dreamt about it and I’ve dreaded it and I’ve been terrified of it, as if the news was like a bogeyman that was going to jump out and get me at any moment. But in that fear, there’s hope.”

Marin nods. She understands completely.

“And that hope is why you can’t run from it. That hope is what keeps you stuck inside the emotional nothingness of waiting, where you can’t move forward and you can’t go back. All you can do is spin in place because there’s no sense of direction, because you don’t know…”

She stops, choking on her words, and Marin sees that her friend’s eyes are wet. The sight of Frances crying actual tears is jarring.

“And now it’s over,” Frances says. “It’s not the answer I wanted, but it was always the answer I was going to get.”

The words cut, and Marin winces.

“I’m sorry, Marin.” Frances’s voice is hoarse. She tosses the burnt-out stub of her joint onto the pavement and reaches for Marin’s other hand. “I know that’s incredibly insensitive of me to say. Especially to you. I’m not at all suggesting that this is what you can expect with Sebastian, it’s just … this is how it feels right now. To me.”