Mothered (18)

In two eager strides, Miguel joined her on the sofa, pressing in close to receive her secrets. “Weird how?”

Grace recalled the dream, Hope’s cruelty and her own insistence that her sister had never been cruel to her. But Hope, like many children, had gory fascinations. Unlike many children, Hope had taken it beyond the theoretical.

“In that picture, Mom had just announced that she’d gotten Hope a new hamster. And while what’s-his-name, the boyfriend, stood by with the camera, Mom pulled the new hamster from behind her back. That’s what Hope was looking at, why she looks so surprised and happy. She was really sad when Goober died.”

“Goober was the hamster, I presume, not the boyfriend?”

She glared at him until he accepted that the question wasn’t worthy of an answer.

He shrugged, glancing at the photo. “That sounds normal enough. Being sad over a pet.”

A faint shudder made her shoulder blades twitch. Talking about her sister made Grace feel like she had earlier in the day, unsure how to handle the residue of something that seemed both too real and not real enough. Nope, she didn’t like to think about Hope. But she’d come this far—

“She ran Goober over with her wheelchair.”

Miguel grimaced and recoiled a little. “Oh gross. That sucks. She must’ve been so traumati—”

Before he could finish the word, Grace shook her head. “That’s what my mom said too. Probably why she got a replacement hamster. But Hope was good with her chair. She only ran into things—or people—on purpose, for revenge at being teased or something.”

“You think she did it on purpose?”

“Probably, yes.”

“Did you see it happen?”

Grace nodded. “She told Mom her finger had slipped, but I never believed her.”

“Why would she do that?” The grimace lingered as Miguel stole another look at the photograph, perhaps reevaluating his impression of Hope.

“I think she just wanted to see . . . what would happen. What insides looked like. We used to talk about that, what our insides looked like.”

Miguel turned his attention back to Grace. “You never told your mom?”

“She wouldn’t have believed me. And I wasn’t a thousand percent sure—I couldn’t prove it. So to answer your question, I was running away in this picture because my first thought was that Hope would do it again, run over Goober Two. And I thought that’s why she was so happy.”

“Did she? Run over Goober Two?”

“I don’t think so . . . I don’t remember how he died, so it must not have been very dramatic. But I hate that picture.”

Miguel rose, determined and proud, and lifted the photograph off the wall. He laid it facedown on the coffee table and used one germophobic finger to shove it to the farthest edge.

“Don’t let her push you around,” he said. “You’ll feel better about everything else—all the nice things she does—if you don’t let your mom push you around. This is your house.”

She flung her arms around his neck. “This is why I love you!”





12


Even as it was happening, the chaperoning part of Grace’s subconscious registered the wrongness of it. She should not be kissing Miguel. Should not be letting Miguel grope her that way. Why was he even going along with it? Perhaps this was what happened when love needed an outlet, when two people ran out of other or better ways to express how much they valued each other. Or maybe they were both lonely. Too much time cooped up alone. Or maybe it was the wine.

Neither of them seemed inclined to stop, though Grace’s brain couldn’t resist offering unhelpful commentary.

Are you sure your mother can’t hear? What if she comes downstairs for a midnight snack!

Which of you is planning to bring up the birth control–slash-condom situation? Or is that counter to the plan? Are we trying to make a baby here? Did we tacitly agree to something?

Miguel’s body felt good. How long had it been since she’d been skin to skin with anyone? He knew everything she liked—had she told him? It wasn’t impossible, but she couldn’t recall doing so in such detail.

She orgasmed. And lay there with her eyes closed, catching her breath.

A minute or three later, she opened her eyes.

No one was on top of her, and she wasn’t downstairs on the sofa. Grace was alone, in her bed, with the door closed and her nightshirt crumpled around her ribs. She tried to remember the migration from the couch to her room, saying goodbye to Miguel, changing into her sleep clothes. But she couldn’t. There was just the jump cut, from the orgasm to the next morning.

They hadn’t had that much to drink, not enough to make her black out.

Had it happened? Had she and Miguel had sex? Even if it was a dream, that couldn’t explain the missing chunk of time. Grace pushed herself onto an elbow and grabbed her phone. Nine forty-five. Okay, that was a normal enough time to wake up on a nonworkday, after a night of drinking. We didn’t drink that much. Wait, what day is it?

She stumbled to the bathroom. Her face in the mirror was wrinkled with misery. While peeing she tried to gauge if it felt like she’d had sex, but nothing signaled. If this episode had involved any other person, she would’ve called Miguel to moan and regret and half-teasingly blame him for not stopping her. But she couldn’t call him, not if she wasn’t positive if they . . . She slipped a panty liner into her underwear, anticipating the start of her period. Assuming she had her days straight, her period, accurate as a Swiss watch, was due in the next few hours.