The Break(67)

My blood pumps faster. I try to play the scene in my mind, but I can’t get it right.

“What happened?” I ask. “That night? What did I see?”

“It was the oldest story, that’s the sad part,” my mom says, shaking her head, looking regretful for the first time. “Your father was who he was—I won’t blame him for what I did—but I fell in love with Ken. That’s what it was—love. Strange as it sounds. I’d never stepped out on your dad before, and it took me by surprise, swept me off my feet, all the things you hear about people feeling in a marriage that shake them awake and make them stray. And I did. Ken wasn’t married, didn’t even have a girlfriend, which made it easier to rationalize. Your dad came home one night and caught Ken in our house and he knew. I never slept with Ken in our home, but that night Ken had come to talk to me, he was desperate, it was late, I let him in. He was drunk, ranting on about wanting to run away with me, having it be just us, and you, of course: he knew I’d never leave you. Your father came in during his impassioned speech. He lost his mind and they fought. And that’s when you came downstairs into the kitchen to find out what was going on. I tried to pull your dad off Ken, which worked for a moment, but then your dad grabbed a knife and chased him upstairs. We all went up. There wasn’t enough time to keep you from seeing it—I knew your dad was capable of killing Ken with that knife, and I knew I had to try to stop him. But when we all piled into the bedroom, it was Ken who’d gotten control of the knife. You and I both saw him stab your dad. Once to the stomach and it was over.”

I pull Lila up and put my lips against her head. I can’t believe what I’m hearing, and yet, deep down I know it like a hard shiny kernel of something real; I understand this story like words I could write on a blank page and know them to be mine. But I can’t see it—yet. I can only reimagine the scene, but I’m not sure if part of what I’m seeing is true memory or if I’m coloring in the lines with what my mom’s telling me.

“What did I do?” I ask. “What did I do when I saw Dad stabbed?”



“Nothing,” she says. “Neither one of us did anything for the first few seconds, we were so deeply in shock. Ken and I tried putting pressure on Dad’s wound, but it was no use. You just stood there, and all I could think about was how I’d ruined your entire life. I couldn’t look at Ken again—not after what I’d done to you. That night was the last night I ever saw him alone. I’m so sorry, Rowan. You’ll never know how sorry I am.”

“The watch?” I ask, but even as I ask it a memory comes back: I swear I can see her handing it to Ken.

“I told Ken to take it and to lose it,” she says. “I was thinking so fast. I told him I’d tell the police there was an intruder and that they took the watch. You were practically catatonic at that point. I wrapped you in a blanket and called the police, and when they came, I told them you were sleeping in your bedroom and never saw a thing.” She leans forward and puts a hand on me. She doesn’t touch Lila. She is only my mother in this moment, nothing else.

“Will you ever be able to forgive me?” she asks.

My heart slows down. “I think I already have, a long time ago,” I say.

We sit there saying nothing, gazing at each other through a haze of what we’ve just said. There were always words between us, but there aren’t any more for this moment. Even Lila goes still, no more squirming against me. I hold my mom’s hand and it feels like an hour passes, and eventually her eyes get heavy. “Sleep, Mom,” I say. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”

When she starts to doze I take my laptop from my bag. I open it, my fingers hovering over the file marked November pages for Dave, thinking that if I’ve just survived a night like this one, then certainly I can handle reading old pages that seemed to scare my agent. I click. The work comes to life, glowing like a beacon in my mother’s dark room.



Chapter One

Josephine

Moth wings beat against my bedroom window, trying to get into the light. Two tiny babies sleep on ivory sheets beside me—a boy and a girl. They are mine.

Piano music filters from the apartment next door and I imagine a woman weeping as she plays a baby grand. When the music stops, I imagine her rising from the bench and clawing at the walls, shredding wallpaper into bits that gather beneath her fingernails.

“Where is he?” she screams. “Where did he go?”

This woman—who is she?

I close my eyes and try to forget her, but she is there, pressing against my skin, freeing it from the bone, trying to get out.





THIRTY-SIX


June. Three months ago. August 4th.


The morning after my audition I’m standing outside Louisa’s apartment with coffees and a slew of paperwork. I’m in shorts and a tank because it’s so hot. (New York City’s in the middle of a heat wave, and there are advisories for children and the elderly blasting on my phone’s notifications every hour or so.) I raise my hand to knock on Louisa’s door, nervous about what I’ll find inside her apartment. She sounded awful when she called me at my cubicle this morning at eight thirty, her voice wobbling and unfamiliar when she asked if I wouldn’t mind bringing her a few things from her office because she needed to work from home today. I don’t know whether she’s going to want me to stay or go, so I brought screenplays to read if she wants company. It’s her fortieth, like Sylvie told me, so I have a box of chocolates from this place she loves near work and a necklace I found for ten dollars at a street sale last night that I know she’ll love, a simple piece of white coral on a thin gold chain. I’m hoping she went out last night to celebrate and that she’s just really hungover. Though that doesn’t really sound like Louisa.