Trespassing(74)

I twist my wedding band, but it’s still too tight, although I’ve lost about five of the pounds I packed on since we began IVF. A yank and a tug later, all I have to show for my efforts is a sore finger. I let out a growl.

“Mommy!” Bella giggles. “Silly Mommy.”

What a terrible few weeks.

I can’t take it anymore.

“Bella? It’s time to take a bath.”

“No. We’re coloring, Mommy.”

“You’ve been coloring and getting dirty all day. It’s time to take a bath.”

“I know, Nini,” Bella says. “Mommy’s always mad.” Her tongue appears at the corner of her mouth as she scribbles a black mass over her drawing. “Me too, Nini. I wish Mommy left and Daddy stayed.”

“What did you just say?”

“Daddy loves us,” my daughter sasses. “Not like you.”

“Elizabella, Mommy loves you more than anything. You know that.”

“Daddy’s better at hugs, better at games, better at coloring, and better than you! I wish he stayed and you left!”

“You don’t mean that.” It comes out more as a wheeze than a sentence.

“Yes! I! Do! I hate you!”

I lunge at her, rage bubbling inside me so wildly that I feel it vibrating in my joints.

Bella flinches, a look of disbelief and fear in her eyes.

I tear her from the table, kicking and screaming.

“Want Daddy! Want Daddy! Want Daddy!”

I charge up the stairs and all the way down the hallway, through her room, and to the shared bathroom. I plant her on the closed lid of the toilet and turn to fill the tub.

She’s shrieking now, as if in great pain.

“Ellie-Belle, calm down!”

“No! No calming down! Want! My! Daddy!”

“You know what?” I’m screaming now, too. “I want your daddy, too. Just once, I want him to handle you at your worst. I want him to spend more than three hours alone with you to see how he might measure up in your head when he starts to lose his patience. If I left him to deal with even half the shit he’s piled up around me, he’d be long gone! He couldn’t handle this! He couldn’t handle you!”

I bite my lip and wipe tears from my eyes as I turn to look at my daughter, who is shaking and white.

And I’m responsible.

Instantly, I try to pull myself together, but the sight of her little body huddled atop the toilet only drives me to unravel even further. Tears sprout from my eyes like April showers, and I’m sobbing, a rumpled mass of bad mother on the cold mosaic tile floor.

“Bella, I’m sorry.”

She flinches when I reach for her.

I sniffle over tears. She’s just being a little girl. I’m supposed to be the adult. I’m supposed to take a deep breath. I’m supposed to count to ten before I erupt. I’m supposed to place blame where it belongs. I’m supposed to remember she’s a sweet and precious gift, even when she’s sassy and unmanageable, and I’m supposed to rise above it and teach her with a better example.

I remember when Mama was always a sniveling, screaming mess, when I was her verbal punching bag.

I’m losing my mind.

The water from the faucet is thundering in the tub, bringing me back to the here and now.

“Bella, I’m sorry.” I lay down on my back in the middle of the bathroom floor, hands covering my eyes. Deep breaths.

“Bad Mommy.”

“Yes, you’re right,” I tell her. “Lately, I haven’t been very good. But you have to listen, too, and lately, you haven’t been very good at that, either.”

She’s cuddled at my side now. “Sorry I didn’t listen.”

My arms curl around her tiny frame. “I love you, baby girl.”

“I love you, too, Mommy.”

Christian was right.

I’m not doing myself—or my child—any favors by staying cooped up in this house all day and night. I have to get a job. Elizabella has to start back at school. We have to move on.

“I’ll get in the tub now,” Elizabella says.

“Thank you. And when you’re squeaky clean, let’s go see if Emily and Andrea can come sit with you.”

For a second, she’s silent. Then she offers: “And do one-two-three-fly?”

I nod. “If they don’t mind.”

She presses a sloppy kiss to my hot cheek.

“I love you,” I say one more time.





Chapter 41

Christian said he’d be at the Rum Barrel, but after a quick pass through the first floor, which boasts a plethora of Philadelphia Phillies memorabilia, and a quick scan of the second, I don’t see him.

The upstairs section of the Rum Barrel is somewhat enclosed, but farther from the staircase stands an open-air veranda, where a band plays. The sign out front referred to the music as cantina hits; funny, it sounds more like a Billy Joel cover band than a group of Marley wannabes, despite the maracas and steel drums.

A sense of homesickness rushes through me. I practically ache for Old Town, for the street festivals in midsummer—Micah’s favorite time of year. I gravitate toward the sound of the music, as if I’ll be miraculously passing through to Chicago—and turning back the hands of time—by the time I reach the platform.