Wish You Were Gone(24)
“Can I go to my room now?”
“Just tell me one thing,” Lizzie said. “Why do you do it? Is it the rush? Do you gift all the things you steal? Sell them? What?”
“I just… I don’t know, okay?” Willow straightened her arms and shook her hands, flexing and extending her fingers over and over again. “I don’t want to talk about it. Can I just go?”
Her daughter was on the verge of tears, and Lizzie was exhausted. “Yes,” she said. “Go. I’ll call you when dinner’s ready.”
Willow stomped up the stairs, slammed the door to her room, and cranked her music so loud it drowned out the James Taylor on the surround sound. Lizzie went back to the kitchen and carefully placed the earrings in a drawer.
She had always given her daughter a long leash, both out of necessity, since she had to work long hours, and out of guilt, because she hadn’t given Willow a father or a stable family situation. Asking a lot of questions never went over well and usually resulted in exactly this—moodiness, Willow sequestering herself, the silent treatment. If Lizzie had it to do all over again, she would have been a bit stricter, would have started asking questions from the beginning. But there was no going back now. Especially not after Willow’s eighteenth birthday and everything that happened surrounding that particular milestone—all the drama for which Lizzie had felt partially, if not entirely, responsible.
But she couldn’t let her daughter become a felon. She had to find a way to put a stop to this before it got out of control. When Willow first expressed an interest in magic back in third grade, Lizzie had thought it was a passing phase. Every kid had that moment when they were fascinated by card tricks and those magic kits that offered up false-bottomed hats and disappearing coins. But for Willow, it hadn’t been a phase. The books she’d taken out of the library were never returned. She’d started watching YouTube videos obsessively and asking Lizzie to take her to shows in the city. Every summer in middle school, Willow had attended magic camp at the local community college, and by the time she was fifteen, she was so deft of hand that the camp was begging her to come back as a counselor. Lizzie knew that a lot of people thought her daughter was strange, but she thought it was sort of cool that her beautiful, math-genius girl had such an outside-the-box interest. Willow was unapologetically Willow, and Lizzie loved that about her.
But this shoplifting thing was out of left field. It couldn’t be a plea for her attention—Willow never lacked for motherly love. So what was it? A plea for someone else’s? If so, whose? Maybe it was an extension of the magic thing. She’d gone as far as she could with that, so now she was using her special sleight-of-hand talents on another playing field. But her daughter was not stupid. She had to know the risks she was taking.
Lizzie wished she had someone to talk to. A husband, a partner, anyone. Usually she would have called Emma to hash it out, but she hadn’t let her friend in on this particular facet of her and Willow’s lives because she’d felt—well—like a loser. Like a bad mom. Emma’s perfect children would never do something like this. Now it felt like it was too late to talk to her about it. Emma would wonder why she hadn’t told her the first time it happened, and she didn’t have the energy for a long, drawn-out explanation.
Lizzie was just going to have to handle this one on her own, like she did most things. She picked up a knife and cutting board, now more ready than ever to massacre that onion.
EMMA
The waiter placed a steaming pizza down on their table and a huge bowl of salad in front of Emma. Hunter immediately grabbed a slice, pulling half the cheese off with it, and shoved it in his mouth, third-degree burns be damned.
Your father was going to divorce me.
Kelsey pushed her pasta around in her bowl, then reached for the Parmesan cheese.
He was going to leave us. But then he died.
The words were on the tip of her tongue, itching to be said; possibly screamed. Hunter reached for his soda and took a long gulp, eyeing her over his glass.
“You’re not hungry?” he asked.
“No. I’m fine.” She pushed a forkful of salad past her lips to prove how very fine she was. Over at the corner booth, a family with smaller children was crowded in, the mother leaning toward the father to whisper, but glancing over at Emma.
That’s them, she imagined the woman saying. That family with the father who drove through his own garage. For the first time it occurred to her that it might seem odd to other people, her and her children going out to dinner less than two weeks after James died. What was the proper mourning period for a husband who was almost never around and a father who terrorized his children? Should she have checked Emily Post? Martha Stewart? In Victorian times they’d all still be wearing black. At the moment, Emma felt like wearing a placard that read BACK THE FUCK OFF.
James should have just left her. At least that sort of thing happened every day. Unlike seemingly unprovoked car accidents on one’s own property. She wondered if he’d told anyone he was going to leave her. Darnell? His assistant? A friend? Did James even have friends anymore?
“Mom?” Kelsey said.
“What, honey?”
Kelsey was looking at Emma’s fork. Which she realized now she’d been tapping maniacally against the table. She put it down, embarrassed, and folded her hands in her lap.