“So what happened?” she asked.
“What do you think?”
Because he thought Amber looked different already. That she wore her relief on her skin, in her face, and he could see it when he looked at himself in the mirror, too.
He thought the kids could sense it.
It seemed so obvious to him, he couldn’t believe it wasn’t obvious to Janet.
But she was an ornery old woman, so he was waiting for her to say How should I know? or something like it.
Instead she said, “I left Derek once.”
The confession seemed to echo in the empty kitchen. “I didn’t know that.”
“I don’t think any of the kids realized. It was right after we moved here. Katie wasn’t born yet, and Caleb was little. I told Amber we were going to visit her auntie in Detroit, but I packed every suitcase we owned.”
She turned away from him and looked out the picture window at the driveway, where Derek sat in the car, a dark shadow behind the windshield.
“I was so mad at him.” She sounded more vulnerable than he was used to hearing her. Like a regular person instead of his fierce, intimidating mother-in-law. “I was mad that he didn’t know how hard it was for me, moving so far away and being with the kids all day, day in and day out, without much help from him. I missed my sister. I missed feeling like I was somebody other than a snot rag for my kids to wipe their noses on.” She smiled faintly. “I hate having things wiped on me. Absolutely hate it.”
She rummaged through her purse for a package of tissues, extracted one, and wiped her eyes. Then she looked at Tony.
“It’s hard, what she’s doing,” she said.
“I know.”
She shook her head. “No. You think you know, but you can’t. That’s the worst part.”
Janet looked outside again. “I left him because I thought, ‘It can’t get any worse. If I’m divorced, I can move back home, and even if I’m single I’ll have my family to help me raise the kids. Derek won’t miss us. He’s always working, anyway, or at the bar. We’ll both be happier.’ I was so sure of that, it almost seemed like … like an act of grace. I convinced myself I was doing him a favor.”
She looked outside for a minute, silent. Tony wondered what he was supposed to say. Upstairs, he could hear Amber talking. Jake’s happy chatter.
He could hear footsteps on the wood floors, and he thought, I built this place. This home, for my family. Wood and cement and metal, arranged together in a way that he’d thought would please his wife.
But he could do it again, if that was what had to happen. Build another house, a smaller house. Renovate a place. Fix up a rental.
He didn’t believe leaving could ever be an act of grace. He thought the acts of grace happened when you stayed. When you found something you thought you’d lost, gave something you’d forgotten you had, got something back that you didn’t even know you needed.
“What happened when you got to Detroit?” he asked.
“He came after me.”
“What did he say to convince you to come back?”
“Him?” Janet turned to look at Tony. She had this way of looking down her nose, even though she was shorter. “He didn’t have to say anything. I already kn
ew. Every mile we traveled from the house, I knew. I wouldn’t be happier without him. Amber and Caleb wouldn’t. And he would be miserable without me. The man can’t even work a washing machine. He doesn’t eat properly unless I nag. We were in it together, you see? There wasn’t anything to be done about it.”
She put the tissue in her purse and clutched at it for a moment before she met his eyes again and touched his arm. “Love is mean like that,” she said. “It doesn’t give you good choices. You think it’s going to free you—that you’ll get married and turn into a butterfly or some such silly nonsense. But marriage makes almost everything harder.”
Tony looked down at her hand, wondering when she’d touched him before voluntarily. He couldn’t remember. Her veins stood out, tunnels beneath the smooth brown skin. It looked thinner than he’d expected. She’d aged since he met her. Aged a hell of a lot since Derek had his stroke.
Her life hadn’t been easy—certainly not in the past couple of years. Her youngest daughter moving back to Camelot in a funk, her husband’s hospitalization, her son coming home and all the anxiety when the paparazzi had descended and he’d hooked up with his wife. A lot to worry about, if you were the worrying type, and Janet was.
When Derek was in the hospital, Janet had sat by his bed for days, refusing to leave. Refusing to eat.
She loved fiercely—loved hard—and he felt an affinity to her he’d never felt before, because it couldn’t be easy to be Janet. It was painful to feel like everything you loved was walking around vulnerable, and you were the only thing standing between it and disaster. Your vigilance. Your protective work.