Page 83 of Bring me Back
“She got a date.” She smiled between tears.
I flinched. I thought my stupid plan of making my mother’s recipe was intimate enough for her. But maybe she wanted a date around town?
“Our date was special. I wanted to show you my house, my life.”
Hallie nodded, stopping my explanations. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t think it matters.”
Her tone made my blood turn cold. The finality of it, the slight rolls of her shoulders. She was already done with me, even when the words weren’t hanging between us yet.
“Hallie. I’m so sorry. I was going to tell you. I didn’t want you finding out like this. It was a coincidence. A horrible one.”
“It was a coincidence,” she agreed and for a second, I almost thought I won. It was a freaky coincidence that the first woman I started to see after my divorce was the same person who drove Hallie out of town.
“I should’ve told you the second I realized,” I offered.
“Yes. But you were right. I’d never get close to someone who…” she blinked out tears. I stepped in her direction, and she stepped away. A simple gesture that sliced me through.
“Hallie, I’m so sorry.” It was the only thing I could say.
“I know.” She nodded. “I’m sorry, too.” I didn’t like that one bit. Too raw, too final, too resolute. Hallie’s pain was the loudest. I saw it in her eyes, her frown, the shake of her hands. It tasted like spoiled milk in my tongue. I felt over my shoulders and clogging my lungs.
“You don’t need to be sorry.”
Her eyes unfocused from me, looking over my shoulder. I knew she was watching Katie somewhere in the distance. I didn’t turn around, I was done looking at Katie’s face.
Her eyes fixed back on me, swirling in tears, making them look like bottomless black lakes. “I could get over many things. But this? Her? You were right. I’d never talk to you if I knew. I’d never be with you, I’d never…” she swallowed, looking down and then back at me with a frown. “I can’t never.”
She stepped back and then turned. I watched as she left, getting lost in the street. More neighbors were out of their houses now, curious about what was the commotion. I stood there like a statue, my Adam’s apple bobbing, my eyes stinging with tears.
I fucking lost her forever.
I knew it in my bones. I slept with the devil and I could never take that back.
Like a riptide, Hallie went. Crushing, destroying, leaving me barefoot as she walked home without looking back.
The needle prickled the pads of my fingers, but I kept going.
One stitch after the other. The sewing machine stood unused at our shed, but today I was punishing myself. I brought my work to the living-room, face to face with my mother’s picture right in the middle of the wall.
It was Monday. I called Marian with a fake cough and bailed work, then texted Mrs. Carr and lied too. Sunday morning, when I arrived back home with tears still hanging off my lashes, Dad was at church. It gave me time to have a shower and clean Daniel’s smell off my body and hope to wash off the humiliation as well.
Humiliation that was unwanted, not needed. I believed him. It was just a freaky coincidence. Even when the rage coiled in my stomach, like a cobra waiting to strike. Even then, I reminded myself he was right to hide it from me. Not right exactly, but he was right to assume I’d never have given him a time of day if I knew he was linked to Katie.
I wanted to ignore it. They broke up, he said. He was with me now. I wanted to roll my shoulder and accept that in a small town, sometimes things like that happened. I wanted to be stronger and forget my past for once and for all.
I was disappointed with myself. I thought I was stronger when I decided to come back to Bluehaven, ready to face them. It wasn’t everyone in town who did me wrong, but it was the shadows who haunted me. I was for so long scared of moving, of buying the wrong clothes, eating the wrong things. For years, their snickers followed me around and I forgot it wasn’t the entire town.
Daniel was a beacon of light. The biggest proof I wasn’t the same Hallie anymore and Bluehaven wasn’t that bad. And now… Now he was tainted.
I recoiled from my own assessment, stitching the fabric in my hands with fury, until I got a little too aggressive and prickled my finger again, drawing blood. I stopped, sucking the blood between my lips. I raised my head and looked at Mom.
She was beautiful. Smiling down at me, untouched by time. Eternally young.
“I wished you were here to tell me what to do,” I whispered, too low to be heard, but loud enough to reach heaven.
I blinked tears away, resting my hands on my lap, tired of pretending to work. I was so lost in Mom, I almost missed Dad’s heavy steps coming home for lunch. He stood by the door, a frown similar to mine, arms across his chest. I sniffed away, looking down, scared of being caught crying.
“What the hell happened, Hallie?”