DIRTY[COMPLETED]✔️

Chapter Eighteen

I didn’t wait for his reaction. By that time, my bladder threatened to explode and I thought I might also puke, so I pushed past him and locked myself in the bathroom where I peed for what seemed forever and held myself from vomiting by reciting the multiplication tables over and over. Once that bathroom had been white, but apparently blood is also impossible to get out of towels and curtains. My mother had changed her color scheme to dark blue with yellow accents. Wallpaper decorated with sailing ships had replaced the stenciled pansies that had once danced along the white-painted walls. I touched the merry little boats, counting them. If I peeled it away, would I find the blood still beneath? Or had she tried to bleach it first?
“Elle?” The doorknob rattled. “Let me in. Please?”
I took a deep breath. “Dan, please go away.”
Silence. I washed my hands, taking time to scrub each individual finger and rinse them, over and over. I went to the door. “Dan?” I knew he was still there, but I asked, anyway. He didn’t jiggle the knob. I imagined him standing on the opposite side of the door, and I flattened a palm against the wood like maybe I could touch him through it. I pressed my forehead to it, my eyes closed.
“I’m still here.”
I had to swallow, hard, before I could force myself to speak without my voice crumbling. “I need you to go away.”
“Oh, Elle.” He didn’t ask me why.
I didn’t want to tell him. What could I say? That shame was easier to bear alone? That seeing his face and knowing he knew what had happened was too much, right now, with my father’s death still so raw?
“You don’t want me to leave you.” The steadiness of his voice was a comfort that could break me, if I took it.
“That won’t work this time. I do want you to go. I need you to go, Dan.”
A soft shuffle on the other side of the door made me think of him, standing as I did, pressed up against the wood. He sighed so heavily I had no trouble hearing it. I heard the clink of keys.
“I don’t want to go, Elle. Won’t you just let me in? We don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to—”
“No!” My shout echoed in the bathroom, and I winced at the way it bludgeoned my ears. “No, I mean it. I want you to go away! I have to be alone right now!”
“You don’t have to be alone,” he said quietly.
“But I want to be,” I told him.
To that, he seemed to have no answer. I waited, but at last the sound of footsteps led away from the door, the jingle of keys getting fainter and at last, fading away. By the time I came out, most everyone had gone home, leaving behind them the remains of casseroles and cakes I knew I’d be expected to put in containers and freeze.
Mrs. Cooper had stayed behind. I found her in the kitchen, putting the kettle on and tying an apron around her waist. She turned when I came in, and her smile was meant to warm me but missed a big icy section in the middle of my chest.
“I put your mother to bed, poor dear, with one of her headache pills. She’s resting. I’ll just get these dishes started.”
“You don’t have to do that, Mrs. Cooper.”
“Oh, but, my dear, it’s no trouble, really. What are neighbors for if not to help each other out in a time of need?” She smiled and reached for the bottle of dish soap.
I bent to find the neat stacks of butter tubs my mother used as storage containers, but found instead a cupboard full of matching containers and lids. My muffled noise of surprise drew Mrs. Cooper’s attention.
“Oh, God love her, your mother,” she said with a chuckle. “She had one of those parties, you know? And she went a bit hog wild, I’d say. She’ll never use more than a few of those at a time, what with it just being her now, but well, I guess they’ll come in handy, won’t they?”
She indicated the table groaning with the offerings of potato salad and meat loaf, pierogies in butter sauce and carrot cake. “People were so generous. Look at all that food!”
“You should take some,” I told her. “Maybe Mr. Cooper would like some.”
“Thanks, honey.” Mrs. Cooper started scrubbing while I started packing. I smoothed a spoon over the top of a mound of tuna salad to finish filling the container.
“Where’s your young man gone?”
“I think he had to leave.” Dan had gone, like I’d asked him to. He gave me what I wanted, the way he always did.
“He seemed nice.” She gave me a birdlike glance. “Your mother seemed to like him.”
I looked up, startled. “She did?”
“Oh, yes.” Mrs. Cooper smiled. “Your mother is so very proud of you, you’re all she ever talks about. How well you’re doing with your job, how you’re always getting promotions. How you fixed up that house of yours all on your own, without her help. Yes, she seemed quite impressed by your young man. He has a good job, she said, and is very polite.”
That didn’t sound like my mother, but I didn’t argue with Mrs. Cooper. I kept my attention focused on filling containers with food and stacking them to be taken to the freezer in the basement.
“It was so good to see you. It’s been so long. I’m sorry it had to be such a sad occasion. We miss you around here, Fred and I.”
The stack in front of me doubled and tripled, and I blinked away tears. “That’s nice to hear, Mrs. Cooper.”
“Ella,” she said gently, but I didn’t turn, “you know we were all sorry about what happened.”
“My father dug his own grave,” I said. “Not to be rude, but you know it as well as I do.”
“Not about your dad,” said the woman who’d given me my first copy of The Little Prince. “About Andrew.”
Sometimes when things break, you can hold them together for a while with string or glue or tape. Sometimes, nothing will hold what’s broken, and the pieces fly all over, and though you think you might be able to find them all again, one or two will always be missing.
I flew apart. I broke. I shattered like a crystal vase dropped on a concrete floor, and pieces of me scattered all over. Some of them I was glad to see go. Some I never wanted to see again.
I sobbed, and Mrs. Cooper rubbed my back and let me do it.
It is such a secret place, the land of tears. That is what the narrator of The Little Prince says after the little prince argues with him the first time about matters of consequence. And he was right. My land of tears had been a secret for a very long time.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Mrs. Cooper told me, stroking my hair the way she’d done when I was a little girl and had run into her kitchen for a cookie and tripped and scraped my knee instead. “None of it was your fault. Stop blaming yourself, honey.”
“What good is it to stop blaming myself,” I sobbed, “when she still does?”
And for that Mrs. Cooper had no answer.
Dan left ten messages before I called him back. I know the number of times I lifted the phone to return his calls, but I’m too embarrassed to say it. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It was fine for Mrs. Cooper to tell me not to blame myself, but I couldn’t do that any more than I could face Dan. I didn’t want him to see something different in his eyes when he looked at me.
“I can’t see you anymore,” I said finally when I’d managed to finish dialing and stay on the line long enough for him to answer. “I’m sorry. I just can’t do it. I can’t do this. Us. I can’t do it, Dan.”
I heard the sound of his breathing, this time separated by a far greater distance than a wooden bathroom door.
“I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“I want you to say okay.”
His voice hardened a bit. “I won’t say it’s okay, because it’s not. If you want to break up with me, Elle, then do it. But I’m not going to make it easy for you.”
“I’m not asking you to make it easy for me!” I bit out the words, pacing as I talked.
“That’s exactly what you’re doing.”
“So then do it!” I cried.
“No,” he said after what seemed like forever. “I can’t, Elle. I wish I could. But I can’t.”
I sat down on the floor because the chair was too far to walk. “I’m sorry, Dan.”
“Yeah,” he said, like he didn’t believe me. “Me, too.”
I wanted to hang up, but couldn’t make myself do it. “Goodbye, Dan.”
“You don’t have to be alone” was his answer. “I know you think you do, but you don’t. When you change your mind, call me.”
“I won’t change my mind.”
“You want to change your mind, Elle,” Dan said.
I couldn’t deny the truth of it, so I hung up instead. I let him go. I let him slide away. I convinced myself it was better that way…to say goodbye to something before it had a chance to start. I didn’t have time, in my grief, for more.
The days passed, as they do. I went back to work, because I could and because it helped me not to think so much about my father, Dan, my mother, my brothers, both of them. One dead and one so far away. I still hadn’t heard from Chad, and I stopped calling.
It didn’t seem as if it ought to have been a good time in my life, but the introspection and time alone, undistracted, proved to be the best thing I could have done. I stopped trying to forget what had happened in our house, and instead started trying to let it go. I wasn’t very good at it. I’d cloaked myself in my secrets for a long time. They’d become habit, too, one I was at last ready to shed.
Summer ended and fall began. Apples came into season, and I went to hunt some at the Broad Street Market. As I bent over a display of local-grown fruit, a voice once familiar made me turn.
“Elle?”
My smile tried to fade, but I forced it to remain in place. “Matthew.”
He was still tall. Still handsome. Gray streaked his hair at the temples now, and when he smiled I clearly saw lines around his eyes and on his forehead.
“Hi,” he said, like we’d seen each other only yesterday. Incredibly, he moved forward, like he meant to…what? Hug me?
I drew away. His eyes flashed; his ready smile grew a bit strained. He put his hands in his pockets.
“Hello,” I said carefully.
“Elle,” he sighed. “It’s good to see you.”
I lifted my chin a bit. “Thanks.”
“You look…fantastic.”
I hadn’t seen him in more than eight years. “You know what they say. Best revenge is looking good, right?”
He frowned. He’d never really understood my sense of humor. I’d forgotten how he pouted. “Elle.”
I shook my head and put the apples back on the stand. I had no appetite for them now. “I’m sorry, Matthew. It’s been a long time. You look good yourself.”
We stared at each other for a long time while the tide of patrons surged and ebbed around us.
“Have coffee with me,” he suggested, and how could I really say no?
So I let him buy me coffee, which warmed my fingers, and I sat across from him at one of the tiny tables at the Green Bean, a small coffee shop just down the street. We chatted about work and mutual friends, all of whom he still saw and none of whom I did. He told me about his wife, their kids, his job, his life, which I couldn’t help envying, even if the car-pool and soccer-mom lifestyle seemed more than a bit stifling.
“And you? How are you?” He reached for my hand. I turned it so I could hold his, and I looked into the eyes I’d once loved so much I thought I’d die if they didn’t look at me every day. “Are you happy?”
“Are you asking because it will make you feel better to know I am?”
“Yes. But also because I’d like to know you are.”
I smiled. He stared. I shrugged, a little.
“You won’t even tell me you’re happy,” he said, resigned, and pulled his hand away. “Listen, I’m sorry, all right? I’m sorry for the things I said and did. I was young. Anyone would have done the same thing. You lied. You weren’t honest with me. What was I supposed to think?”
I smiled again.
“Elle, I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry.”
“You don’t have to be,” I replied. “It was a long time ago, and hardly matters now.”
“You’re so beautiful,” he said in a low voice. “I wish—”
“You wish what?” The words came out harsh, not curious.
“Do you want to go somewhere?”
I gaped but couldn’t find the words at first. “Like a motel, somewhere?”
He looked miserable, guilty, but also flushed with the excitement I recognized from old. The thumb of his left hand turned his wedding band at its place on his finger. “Yes.”
Not so many months ago, I might have said yes, but now I stood. “No.”
He stood, too. “Sorry.”
I clenched my fists. “You accused me of cheating on you. You said being unfaithful was the worst—an unfaithful person was worse than anything. What would you tell your wife about this?”
He looked uncomfortable, and I understood it hadn’t only been the letters he’d found, but the knowledge of who’d sent them that had made their end. Furious, I left. On the street he caught me by the elbow, turned me, left a mark that would likely bruise.
“I’m trying to tell you I was wrong!”
“You said you loved me, but guess what, Matthew, I’ve heard better lines from worse men, and if you had loved me you wouldn’t have left me like you did.”
A grimace twisted the mouth that had once kissed me all over. “You should have told me the truth.”
I laughed, low and full of bitterness. “I did tell you the truth, and you turned me away.”
I could still recall the look on his face. Disgust. The way he’d backed off, the way he’d never kissed me again.
“It wasn’t my fault,” I said. “I didn’t make it happen. I didn’t let him do those things, Matthew, he just did them. I didn’t ask him to write those letters to me. He just did.”
He said nothing.
I yanked my arm from his grip. “I did not let my brother do what he did,” I said, glad to see him wince. “He just did it. And I counted on you to love me anyway. And you didn’t. So tell me something, Matthew, who really fucked me, in the end?”
Then I turned and walked away, sick to my stomach, and when he called after me, I didn’t turn.
“Great job on the location, Bob.” I looked around the mall courtyard, which teemed with families attending the festival.
Bob smiled at me. “Yeah. We’ll get a lot of traffic here.”
Triple Smith and Brown didn’t need to do something like this. The company had enough business without having to actively solicit it. I liked that the senior Smiths allowed us to take part, though. It was good to be part of a company that didn’t only care about its employees, but also the community in which we lived and worked.
I haven’t been around children much. I don’t have nieces or nephews, and while my cousins have all begun having children, my experience with them has been admiration from afar. I’m never quite sure how to speak to kids. I hate the smarmy face adults put on, like children are stupid, and yet the way young humans act usually baffles me.
“Hi,” I said to a little girl holding on to her younger brother’s hand. “Would you like a treat bag?”
Nothing. Not a smile, not a nod, not word. The little boy grunted, but the girl was silent as a tomb.
“Kara,” said the woman with them, I assumed was their mother. “The lady asked you a question.”
She nudged her forward. I held out the bag
encouragingly. I felt like Dian Fossey, tempting a shy primate to accept her. The little girl still stared. The brother stuck his finger up his nose. I recoiled and handed two treat bags to the mother.
“You can give them to the kids,” I told her. “There’s a pack of tissues in there.”
She didn’t get it. Maybe nose-mining was such a commonplace occurrence it no longer shocked. She took the bags, though, and thanked me, and then moved off into the crowd.
“Hi,” I said, turning from my box of treat bags to confront the next festival-goer. “Would you like a treat bag?”
The boy who stood in front of our table was a bit too old for minitablets and crayons, though I supposed the tissues might come in handy. Gavin shifted from foot to foot, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his oversize sweatshirt. His hair had grown longer and obscured his eyes, but I didn’t think he was looking at me.
“Hi, Miss Kavanagh.”
He’d hit us at a lull in the crowd. I glanced over my shoulder at Bob, who was opening another box of treat bags. Marcy had defected from her post at the popcorn machine to grab us all some snacks. I straightened my spine and kept my voice neutral.
“Hello, Gavin.”
“I saw you over here, and I just wanted to say…I wanted to say…”
I didn’t help him out. I kept my eyes fixed on a spot just over his shoulder. The accusations from his mother had cut too deep for me to smile at him.
“My mom, she kinda got out of control.”
I nodded and fussed with the literature set out on our table. He shifted some more. The front of his sweatshirt featured a grinning skeleton with a dagger through its skull.
“My mom, she…she just got a little upset about me not doing my chores when I was spending so much time with you, and she wanted to know what we were doing over there.”
“I see.” I looked up and right into his eyes beneath the fringe of his hair. “And you told her, I guess.”
He chewed his lip. “Yeah.”
I nodded and went back to tidying the piles of notepads and stacks of pencils in front of me. “Interesting, then, that she thinks it’s something else.”
He didn’t say much else, then the defensiveness kicked in. “Hey, you’re a pretty lady and I’m a kid—”
I looked up again and my glare must have struck him because he cut himself off. “I don’t think you understand, Gavin, exactly how much trouble you could get me into.”
I kept my voice pitched low. I handed out another couple treat bags to a set of identical twins wearing matching outfits. Chocolate ice cream stained their matching smiles. Their parents urged them away, and I turned back to him.
“Do you understand?”
He shrugged. “Mom said she knew I was a horny teenage boy and if I had the chance to do something dirty, I would.”
Dirty. That word again. The feeling of it was worse. I crossed my arms over my chest as Bob told me he was off to the bathroom. He left us alone, and I was glad.
“I never did anything dirty to you.” My words clunked like ice between us.
He stared at his shuffling feet. “It got her off my back. So she didn’t ask about the other stuff.”
“I thought we were friends,” I told him, at last, without sympathy. “Friends don’t betray other friends to save their own butts.”
He shrugged again. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m working,” I said. “You need to go away now.”
And he did, looking over his shoulder with a mournful glance I refused to acknowledge.
“Pardon me for saying so, honey, but you look like six kinds of shit on a splintered stick.”
“Gee, Marcy. Thanks so much.” I added sugar and creamer to my mug of coffee and sipped. Awful. I drank it anyway.
“Seriously, punkin.” She shook her head. “Tell me what’s wrong or I’ll force you to listen to stories of my vacation in Aruba.”
Marcy had convinced me to go out to lunch with her and take advantage of the last bright days to eat outside. Now I couldn’t escape her, and not even the four coats of mascara she wore on each eye could keep her from peering right inside me.
“When did you go to Aruba?”
“I haven’t, yet, but I’m going there on my honeymoon.”
I drank more coffee, though by this point I was so wide-eyed from caffeine I wouldn’t have been surprised had my lashes met my hairline. Then it registered, what she’d said, and I looked to her left hand at the new diamond ring she wore. I put down my cup with a thunk.
“Marcy! You’re engaged?”
She beamed. “Yep.”
She told me how Wayne had gotten down on one knee and proposed. Our food came and she talked as we ate, her fork waving animatedly and earning her bemused looks from the table next to us. I sat and listened and nodded, her pure, giddy joy infectious.
Finally, with cheesecake clinging to the tines of her fork, she paused for air. “This is my last cheesecake until after the wedding. I want to lose at least ten pounds. But, Elle. How are you doing, honey?”
I studied my own, half-eaten dessert. “I’m all right. Thanks for the card and the plant.”
She smiled. “Wayne thought you might like the plant better than flowers.”
“I did. You can tell him so.” I poked a hole in my cake. “It was very thoughtful of both of you. I really appreciate it.”
“Sure.” She chewed, swallowed, sipped her coffee.
I felt the weight of her eyes on me but didn’t look up. Marcy, however, was not to be deterred by something so simple a social-avoidance technique like avoiding eye contact.
“You know you can talk to me, if you want. About anything.”
I nodded. “Thanks, Marcy, but my dad was sick for a while. It wasn’t a surprise.”
Her concern hadn’t made me look up, but the aggravated sigh she gave now did.
“I wasn’t talking about your dad.”
“You weren’t?”
She shook her head and popped the last piece of cheesecake between her lips. “Nope.”
I sat for a moment, staring, then forked a bite of cake into my mouth. Sweet sugar, gooey chocolate…my mouth applauded.
“I saw Dan downtown last weekend.” Marcy wiped her fingers on her napkin.
I made a noncommittal noise. Marcy pinned me with her bright-blue gaze, her spangled shadow glittering. She wore a new shade of lipstick, today, her mouth pursed. I braced myself for the lecture.
“He said you two broke up. That you wouldn’t answer his calls.”
I meant to laugh, I really did, but the sound came out somewhat strangled. “Broke up?”
“Did you?”
“We weren’t—”
“Elle.” Marcy put her hand over mine, and I put down my fork. “What happened?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” I looked into her eyes.
She squeezed my fingers. “Okay.”
“I mean, even if I had anything to say about it, which I don’t, really.” It wasn’t often that my mouth outraced my mind, but it did that day. The more I said, the more I felt I had to say. To explain. To deny, postulate, consider. To justify.
Marcy sat and listened, silent for once.
“He wasn’t my boyfriend. We were just having a good time. It wasn’t serious. I don’t get serious. I told him right up front, that it wasn’t going to be a relationship. I don’t do that. I told him that. He said it was all right.” Words, like raindrops on a windowpane, sliding down, dividing, branching out, always one more showing up when it seemed they’d all disappeared. “It’s not my fault he misunderstood, I was honest with him. I was always honest, right from the start. He knew. I knew. We both knew. And now it’s over, but really, can something be over that never started?”
“You tell me,” Marcy said gently, sitting back in her chair and looking as calm as though someone verbally drenched her every day.
“Yes,” I said firmly. “I mean…no.”
She smiled. “Elle. Honey. Sweetie-pie. What’s so wrong with being happy?”
I didn’t have an answer for that at first. The cake sat in my stomach like a rock. I finished my coffee, even though it was cold.
“I’m afraid,” I whispered at last, ashamed.
“We’re all afraid, honey.”
I looked up at her with a heavy, heavy sigh. “Even you?”
She nodded. “Even me.”
That made me feel better, a little, and I smiled. She smiled back. She reached for my hand again, linking her fingers through mine.
“Look at those two old guys over there,” she said. “They’re anxiously awaiting some girl-on-girl action.”
She won a laugh from me. I didn’t let go of her hand. “Except in their version, there’ll be pudding involved.”
“Oooh, pudding,” Marcy said. “I could get into that.”
We shared another smile, and something in me eased. I reached for my fork again. We signaled for the check.
“Listen, I can’t pretend to be the queen of good advice, here. I’ve had more boyfriends than I can count, and I’m not so sure that’s any better than not having any. But I do know this. When you find someone who makes you smile and laugh, when you find someone who makes you feel safe…you shouldn’t let that person go just because you’re afraid.”
“Is Wayne that person for you?”
She nodded, and every line of her expression softened with joy. “Yep.”
“And you’re not afraid of it ending?”
“Sure I am. But I’d rather have something this good for a little while than have nothing forever.”
I finished my dessert and wiped my mouth. “Thanks for the advice, but I think it’s over. Dan, I mean.”
“He’s a good man, Elle. Won’t you give him another chance?”
Her assumption that I was the one who had the right to give him anything surprised me. “There’s nothing to give. He didn’t do anything wrong. He’s not the one who…he didn’t—”
While only moments before, my mouth had spewed word after word, now my lips moved but nothing came out. I was wordless. I couldn’t think of what I meant to say.
Marcy, heaven bless her, didn’t need me to say anything.
“You could just call him, you know. Talk to him. Work it out.”
For a moment, the thought of doing that lifted my spirits, but it passed as soon as it came. “No. I don’t think so.”
“Oh, Elle.” She seemed disappointed in me, and that stung more than I expected it to. “How come?”
“Because,” I said after another long pause. “I don’t have enough of myself to give to anyone else. And until I do, Dan deserves better than someone with only half to give him.”
She studied me, then nodded slowly. “Did you kill someone?”
“What?” My cheeks bloomed with heat and I coughed. “Jesus, Marcy!”
“Did you?” She asked calmly. “Because I can’t really think of anything else that would be so bad you couldn’t forgive yourself for it.”
I gaped, my mouth working but nothing coming out for a second. “What if I said yes?”
“Did you?”
“Maybe I did!” I cried. “Yes.”
“Did you?” She asked again, frighteningly perceptive. “Shot them? Stuck a knife in their guts? Poison?”
My voice sounded flat and faraway. “No. I just didn’t pick up the phone and call an ambulance when I knew I should.”
“That’s not killing someone,” she shot back. “That’s letting someone die. There’s a difference.”
I blinked, wishing for a drink to wash away the taste of sugar and coffee and anger. “There was still blood on my hands.”
Her steely gaze gave me no release. “Nobody likes a martyr, Elle.”
My body reacted faster than my thoughts could catch up. I pushed my chair back and stood so fast my hand knocked my mug to the floor. It broke with a solid “thunk,” and a splash of coffee colored the brick.
We stared at each other across the table, me with heaving chest and pounding heart and Marcy looking as cool as spring water. She took a slow, deliberate sip of her coffee. I clenched my sweating hands into fists.
“Why are you taking his side?” I asked her finally, my voice shaking. “You’re supposed to be my friend!”
“I wouldn’t be much of a friend if I didn’t try to help you. Would I?”
“You think this is helping me?”
She nodded. “Yes, Elle. I do.”
“You don’t know anything about me,” I told her. “Not a damn thing.”
“Whose fault is that?” she shot back.
My mind couldn’t seem to decide between anger and despair, and both filled me. I backed away from her, my hands up like I was pushing her away. Marcy didn’t move.
“Falling in love doesn’t make everything else magically disappear, Marcy. Finding your knight in shining armor is a fairy tale. It doesn’t change anything, and you’re fooling yourself if it does. You go ahead and live in your rainbow-glitter sunshine and marshmallow fantasies. I’m happy for you. I’m happy that you found Wayne and he filled up all those places inside of you that needed filling. Good for you. I hope you live happily ever after. But it’s just a dream, it’s not real. Love doesn’t make everything all better like a fucking fairy wand, Marcy, it doesn’t change things just like POOF, there you go, hey, I love you, now let’s run hand in hand through a field of fucking flowers!”
The venom in my voice burned my throat. Marcy flinched, her cheeks turning pink in an uncharacteristic show of discomfort. She blinked rapidly, and I should have been ashamed to see that she had tears in her eyes.
“And so what if it does? What if falling in love does make everything else seem better? Is that a crime? Is it a sin to let someone else help you out a little, once in a while? But no, you have to be a damn martyr and carry it all on your own shoulders, all the time! You just keep on hating yourself so everyone else will too, okay? Keep on being miserable because you’re too afraid to let go of it! Jesus H. Christ,” she cried. “Don’t you want to be happy?”
“Yes! I want to be happy! But don’t try to hand me Dan on a platter and try to convince me that he’s the magic key! Okay? Him or any other man. It doesn’t work that way. True love isn’t going to transform me, Marcy. Not everyone works the way you do.”
“I’m only trying to help you,” she said.
“I know you are.” I took a deep breath. “And I appreciate it. But this is my thing, okay? It has nothing to do with Dan. It’s not something that he did or didn’t do. It’s not about him. It’s something I have to work through on my own.”
“You don’t have to do it on your own. You’ve got friends. People who love you. Whatever it is, Elle.”
I knew she was right. I knew she would listen, offer advice, hold my hand. I knew she would do what she could; but what it all came down to was that in the end I needed to rid myself of the infection inside me. Cut it out, if I had to. Tear off the scab, open it to the air, get it clean.
“I’ll see you back at the office.”
She nodded. “Fine.”
There were things to say that would make this better, but I couldn’t make myself say them. I’ve never been good at building, only breaking. I left her at the café, and later that day I saw her giggling over her ring with Lisa Lewis in the copy room. They both stopped and looked up when I came in, and Marcy smiled at me as if we barely knew each other.