The Things We Wish Were True (16 page)

JENCEY

After that first night, their relationship unfolded with surprising ease. The days bled together in a summer haze. She felt as if she were living in one of those montages from a romantic movie. Here’s the happy couple under the covers in bed, whispering and giggling and hiding from their kids. Here’s the dad sneaking back into his own bed as the first light of dawn streaks the sky. Here are the two families eating burgers outside around the picnic table, the kids’ mouths ringed with bright-red ketchup. Here’s him baiting her hook as they all fish at the neighborhood lake on the tacky metal pier, the setting sun painting the sky beyond them with wide brushstrokes of pink and orange and blue.

It was weeks before she finally told him about Arch, her words coming out in a rush sometime in the wee hours of the morning. She rested her head on his chest and whispered the whole story—the flight to the college up north to escape her stalker’s increasing menace, the whirlwind courtship and building a life with this man she loved far from home, the criminal behavior she’d been oblivious to, the agents who looked remarkably like the Men in Black showing up, trampling all over her flowers and her life. She breathed the tale in one long exhale, and when she was finished, neither of them spoke, each thinking, she imagined, about how far afield their lives had gone.

“Thanks,” Lance finally spoke. “For telling me.” He kissed the top of her head. “I’m sure that wasn’t easy.” She was getting used to his scent, his touch, his shape. She let herself lean into it, telling herself not to get too cozy as she did.

Sometimes after Lance snuck back to his own bed and she was left alone, she had stern talks with herself. This wasn’t a permanent solution. It couldn’t last between them. And yet, they behaved as if it could. The worst part was, they were dragging their children into it with them, the six of them forming this odd unit, complete with inside jokes and alliances that grew stronger with each passing summer day. Every day she told herself that soon they would talk about it. And every day it just didn’t seem like a good time to bring up the future. Why put a damper on things? She would deal with it tomorrow, or next week, or . . . when he did. There was no need to mess with a good thing.

Because this was a good thing. And good things, she knew all too well, were rare. And fleeting.

She was just home from his house, arriving back at her parents’ home late in the morning as usual, after they’d all had breakfast together. She’d made French toast, and her hair still smelled of bacon and syrup. She was thinking about a shower, about how long it would take him to get the work done that he needed to do, about what they’d do that evening, when she felt someone watching her. She looked over to find her mother standing on the back deck, looking in at her, a frown on her face. Jencey felt her smile die on her own face. She swallowed, gave her mother a little wave.

Instead of waving back, her mother beckoned to her, summoning her out to the deck. She nodded and walked toward her, thinking as she did just where the girls were, if they were in earshot of whatever her mother was about to say. Just to be safe, she closed the door behind her when she got out onto the deck. “Hey, Mom,” she said, willing her voice to stay light and upbeat.

“Hi, Jencey.” Her mother rarely referred to her by name, choosing a variety of other endearments instead: honey, dear, sweetie. Lois Cabot’s mouth was a straight line, and there were more wrinkles around it than Jencey had ever noticed before. She wanted to reach over and smooth the wrinkles out like she sometimes smoothed her daughters’ clothes or hair. Instead, she clasped one hand inside the other, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.

“What’s up?” she asked.

“I take it this is going to be a . . . habit?” Lois asked.

She almost played dumb and asked what her mother meant. But she was not a teenager anymore. “We were up late watching a movie, and I had a few glasses of wine so I didn’t want to drive. The kids fell asleep, and so I just slept in his guest room, Mom.” She shrugged her shoulders for emphasis, as if she hadn’t given her mother the same exact story multiple times in recent weeks.

“He’s married, Jencey.” Her mother using her name more than once in a conversation—this had to be some kind of record.

“It’s nothing, Mom. I promise.” She held her hands up like the scales of justice.

Lois continued. “And you’re in the midst of a very difficult time in your life.”

She refrained from saying, “Thank you, Captain Obvious.” Instead, she nodded, hoping to achieve a penitent, contemplative posture. “Our kids are friends. They enjoy spending time together. He’s also been through something . . . unexpected in his own life. We’re good company for each other.” The explanation sounded good in her own head, reasonable.

“I know all about his wife leaving him.” Her mother raised an eyebrow. “You forget how active the rumor mill is in this neighborhood.”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, I remember.”

“People are talking. They see your car there overnight, how much time the two of you are spending together,” Lois said. “I just thought you’d want to know.”

“People are always talking, Mom, in case you haven’t noticed. It’s whether you care what they’re saying that matters.”

Her mother sniffed. “If history is any indication, you’ll move on. And we’ll be left here to answer for you. So will he.”

She knew this wasn’t about Lance. It was about the past, about how her flight from this place had been a one-way ticket instead of a round-trip. Her mother always thought she’d come back, had kept her old room intact as though she’d be back in a year instead of more than a decade. Though she’d never said it outright, Jencey knew her mother had felt rejected when she’d decided to stay up north. But Jencey didn’t have it in her to argue about the past. She didn’t have it in her to argue about the present, come to think of it. She wanted to hold on to the happiness she’d felt when she woke up, when she made breakfast, when they said they’d see each other later. She wanted to hold on to
later
. There was always something better just ahead. Isn’t that what she’d spent her life believing? Isn’t that what she’d fought hard to hold on to in recent months?

“I’m sorry, Mom,” she said, again angling for a look of remorse underneath her mother’s intense gaze. “I’ll try to be less . . . obvious.” She turned on her heel and stalked away, feeling every bit the teenager she’d once been, the old arguments rising up like ghosts. All that was missing was the slamming door.

CAILEY

When Zell got to feeling better, Ty came for dinner. He tried not to show he was mad when he found out I was using his old room, but when he thought I wasn’t around, I heard him ask Zell, “Why didn’t you put her in Melanie’s room?”

Zell said, “Shhh.” Then a few seconds later, she added, “You don’t live here anymore, so I’d say technically you don’t have a room.”

I smiled to myself and waited a few minutes before I came back in the room so they wouldn’t know I heard, though I suspected Ty wouldn’t care if I did. He would really hate having me in his room if he knew I’d dug all through it, looking at his old stuff from when he was a kid. He’d probably want to help me pack and walk me out himself. But I was the one who’d been around all summer keeping his mother company, and it was the first I’d seen of him. His brother and sister both lived out of town, so they had excuses not to come around. But he didn’t.

The whole time he was there, he watched me like I was going to make off with the family silver or some of Zell’s jewelry. It wasn’t hard for me to figure out he didn’t like me very much. But to be honest, it seemed like he didn’t like Zell or Mr. John very much, either. He complained that Zell made chicken instead of steak, and pouted that she made roasted instead of mashed potatoes. I thought about the lame diary I’d found under his bed, covered in dust and forgotten. He’d kept a log of what he ate for dinner every night. Boring. I looked at his belly, hanging over his waistband. If you asked me, he was a little too concerned with food. And he didn’t need potatoes at all. He needed one of those low-carb diets Zell was always talking about.

Mr. John and him hardly spoke, and Zell just chattered about mindless stuff: the weather, our wildlife habitat, the new way she made the broccoli. “It’s roasted instead of steamed,” she said. “Isn’t it so much better?”

Ty just shrugged and kept shoveling food into his big open hole of a mouth. So I said I agreed it was much better roasted, which was a mistake, because then I had to listen to her explanation of how she made it, which went on way too long. Mr. John and Ty didn’t seem to hear her at all.

Ty didn’t stay very long, though of course I wasn’t sorry to see him go. Zell made me walk him out with her, and I did, but I lagged behind. I was happy to see that Lilah, Alec, Pilar, and Zara were outside, too, and waved at them as soon as I saw them. Pilar and Zara were over at Alec and Lilah’s all the time. I was a little jealous and wished my mom would date someone with kids my age, someone Cutter and I could hang out with all the time. I wondered if Ambulance Guy had kids. I doubted it.

“Can I go over and say hi?” I asked.

Zell said yes, and I started to run off, but then Zell hollered, “You forgot to tell Ty goodbye, Cailey.”

I stopped and turned around, giving him my most sincere smile, which wasn’t sincere at all. “Goodbye, Ty. It was nice to meet you,” I said.

“You, too,” he said, but his voice told me he didn’t mean it any more than I did.

I skipped across the Brysons’ yard toward the kids, who were swinging each other on the tire swing Mr. Lance had hung there a few weeks before. Pilar was pushing Alec, and Lilah and Zara were doing “Poof with the Attitude,” a clapping game they did all the time. Mr. Lance and Miss Jencey were sitting on the picnic table, hardly paying attention to the kids. If they were, they would’ve told Pilar not to push Alec so high, and Alec to hang on tighter. And they would’ve told Lilah and Zara to find a new game to play, one that didn’t get on all our last nerves because we’d heard it so much.

“Hi, Cailey,” Miss Jencey called out as I walked by them, surprising me that they even saw me. She pointed out Ty’s car, finally backing out of Zell’s drive. “Did you guys have company for dinner tonight?” She was smiling. She was always smiling when she and Mr. Lance were together. She didn’t smile much when I first met her, always wearing sunglasses and looking like she just came from a funeral.

I stopped in front of the picnic table and eyed the graham crackers, Hershey’s bars, and marshmallows stacked there. If I played my cards right, I might get a s’more. “Yes, ma’am,” I said, using the same voice I used with Ty. It was the voice I used with most adults I didn’t know all that well. I used it with Zell at first, but now I mostly forgot and just talked to her in my regular voice. “Zell’s son was here. Ty.”

“Oh, Ty!” Jencey said. “I knew Ty way back when.”

Then I remembered. “Oh, yeah!” I said. “You did know him.” I raised my eyebrows and gave her a look. “You knew him pretty well.” I looked over at Lance, who’d stopped holding Jencey’s hand with me around, but they didn’t fool me. “Don’t get jealous, Mr. Lance,” I said. “It was a long time ago.” I froze, realizing what I’d done. In teasing them, I’d told on myself. But it was too late now. I could tell by the looks on their faces I was going to have to explain.

I’d found a whole box of stuff in Ty’s closet that had to do with Jencey. Little cut-out hearts with her name on them, and poems he’d written about her (which were so lame I laughed when I read them), and a lot of pictures of her, some with the heads of other people cut out in them. You could tell that, at least back then, she was the only girl for him. Which kind of didn’t make any sense because she seemed way too pretty for him. But who was I to know? Maybe back in high school he was a stud. He had the photo of her when she was homecoming queen, standing on a stage with a crown on her head, looking surprised and really, really happy.

I started to walk over to the kids to see if I could get a turn on the tire swing when Jencey stopped me. “What was a long time ago, Cailey?” she asked.

“Oh, well, um, when you guys were boyfriend and girlfriend,” I said, wishing I’d never said anything. I didn’t want to stand there and discuss an adult’s old boyfriend with her, especially when I’d just gotten away from his gross self. I waved my hand in the air like it didn’t matter a hill of beans, as Zell would say, and started to walk away again. But Jencey stopped me again.

“Cailey, we were never boyfriend and girlfriend. I barely knew him,” she said. “Where would you get an idea like that?”

I looked at her, feeling a little sick inside for bringing it up. I didn’t want to talk about it—whatever it was—anymore. But the way she was looking at me, I could tell I didn’t have much choice. “Um, well, um, I found the box of stuff. In his, um, closet,” I tried to explain. “I’m staying in his old bedroom?” I added, as if that explained my snooping around in Ty’s private stuff. The last thing I wanted was for her to tell Zell on me. I had no business rummaging through Ty’s closet. I just got bored sometimes. And I was curious. I heard my mother’s voice in my head:
I told you not to snoop in other people’s things.

Jencey leaned forward, looking at me intently. “What box of stuff?” She looked as confused and sick as I felt.

“There’s an old shoe box in the back of his closet. I, um, sort of opened it and looked through it one night when I couldn’t sleep. And it has pictures of you and, um, poems he wrote about you, and a lot of cut-out hearts with your name on them and stuff?” I looked at Lance, who’d put his hand on her back and looked concerned. “I thought you’d know about it. Like it was something he kept from when y’all went out? Like maybe he just couldn’t bear to part with it, or . . . something.” I looked down and drew a line in the grass with the toe of my tennis shoe, wishing I’d never walked over, wishing Zell had never made me come outside with her in the first place.

Jencey hopped down from the picnic table. “Can you show it to me?” she asked, her voice sounding like it did when Pilar and Zara were bugging her at the pool, like she was working hard to keep from screaming.

I shrugged. “Sure,” I said. I motioned for her to follow me and headed back to Zell’s, thinking as we walked how in the world I was going to explain this one to her.