The Push(62)

Maybe she told you very little about the year of friendship we shared. But it meant a great deal to me. I hadn’t had a friend like her before, someone for whom my fondness felt so warm and easy. She was like a temperate summer day. She felt to me like you once had. Before. It wasn’t until she was gone from my life that I realized how lonely I was.

My curiosity ate away at me until I worked up the nerve to ask Violet one day.

“How’s Gemma?”

“Why are you asking?”

“Just curious.”

“She’s fine.”

“And the baby?”

The baby. We had never discussed him. Her fork stayed in her mouth and she stared at the vegetables on the plate, wondering, I’m sure, how I knew—maybe she was processing the shift in power, that she no longer harbored this secret.

“He’s fine.” Something about the way she cleared her throat afterward made me feel uneasy. She excused herself from the table and neither of us mentioned Jet again that evening. Before bed she asked if she could stay with you for the weekend—your parents would be visiting. I still hadn’t spoken to your mother since I discovered the affair. She called every so often but had stopped leaving me messages by then.

“All right, but your father should be the one to ask me that.”

She shrugged. We both knew there was no place for protocol in this mess we’d created. My phone chimed from the other room. It was Gemma. She had sent me a text:

Can we talk?

I bent over in relief.

We met the next day for tea near the bookstore. I didn’t sleep the night before, playing out versions of what I’d say, how I’d possibly explain myself. I was most nervous, insanely, for her to see me in my own hair, without the mousy brown wig I’d come to love wearing. I focused my sea of nerves on confronting this one thing—my hair. Not my twisted manipulation, not the deranged way I’d brought my son back to life, not the shocking ease with which I lied, as though I were having mindless chitchat with strangers during a morning of errands.

I saw from the door that she had ordered a cup of tea for each of us. We didn’t hug as usual when I said hello. I slipped into the chair and reached for the ends of my hair and then remembered—I was Blythe, not Anne. I straightened the collar on my shirt instead. I’d worn something I knew she liked—she’d mentioned so once, fingering the sleeve to feel the weight of the linen.

“I don’t know what to say.” I hadn’t planned to speak first, but there it was.

Gemma nodded, but then shook her head uncomfortably and I understood. I chewed on my lip as she poured a bit of milk into her cup. She waited a moment and then slid the milk and sugar across to me. We listened to my spoon clink against the china as I stirred. It was clear she didn’t want to speak and so maybe she just wanted to know what I’d say to her if I were given the chance.

“I don’t expect you to ever forgive me. There’s no excuse for what I’ve done.”

She looked over me and watched the world pass by the café. Her eyes followed each person, like a teacher silently counting her students as they came in from recess. I wondered if she regretted asking me to meet. I wondered if I should just shut up.

“I’m ashamed of myself, Gemma. I’m deeply ashamed. I look back now and I can’t believe what I did, I can’t believe I’m capable of something so . . . psychotic. I . . .”

I waited for her to tear me apart. Her eyes moved away from the window and studied my hair. I’d worn it the same way for years. I wondered if she noticed the wiry gray strands among the ash blond. I wondered if she thought I looked older this way.

“If there’s anything I can answer, anything—”

“I’m sorry about your son. I’m sorry you lost him.”

Her words shocked me.

“I can’t imagine losing Jet.” She touched her lip.

I exhaled and touched mine, too, wondering where her compassion came from. She should have loathed me. Dead child and all.

“Fox never told me what happened.” She looked down at her tea and swirled the cup. “All I know is that he had a son, that you had a son, together, and he was killed in an accident. I’ve always assumed it was a car crash. Was it?”

I’d told so many lies. I couldn’t tell another one. I opened my mouth and the truth came out. I told her exactly what I remembered. Step by step. My memory of her pink mittens on the handle. The sound of the car slamming into the stroller. That he was still strapped in when he died. That we couldn’t even see his body after. That the stepdaughter she loved and trusted, the sister of her own child, had pushed that stroller into oncoming traffic and killed my son.

She didn’t react as she listened. She was still and looked me in the eye the entire time I spoke. I thought I saw her swallow, the way people do when they’re tempering something, a realization they wished they weren’t having. I saw a hairline crack crawl through the ice. I leaned toward her.

“Gemma. Do you ever think there’s something different about Violet? Have you had even a hint of worry that your son wasn’t safe being alone with her?”

She pushed her chair away and the screeching sound on the tiles made me cringe. She placed a twenty-dollar bill on the table and then carried her coat outside into November’s early falling snow. She didn’t even stop to put it on.