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When we enter the dining room, Alice is adjusting my flatware so it’s perfectly perpendicular to my plate before looking up.
I’ve taken quite a few pictures in my lifetime. And in doing so I’ve come to realize that light is essential to capturing the beauty of the moment. More so than composition or subject matter. It’s the light that always draws you in.
For better or for worse, looking at Alice, clad in play clothes of her own – her worn leggings and an oversized T-shirt – standing under the glow of the nineteenth-century, hand-cut crystal chandelier, I’m fixed in the moment, staring long enough, hard enough, that I’m struck with a realization.
I haven’t been working late to avoid my home’s chaos, I’ve been staying late to avoid facing the truth. All those times I’ve taken Alice’s picture, I hadn’t been trying to capture the light, I’d been trying to capture a feeling.
She gestures to the casserole dish and large salad bowl on the table. ‘I thought we’d eat family style tonight since it’s just us.’
Swallowing past a lump in my throat, I sit. Between Mary and Alice.
And it feels right.
* * *
Alice
‘Thomas?’
Rubber-gloved and elbow deep in the suds-filled sink next to me, Thomas angles his head to the right. ‘Yes?’
Standing beside him, drying the dishes he’s washed, I’m suddenly self-conscious. ‘Um, thank you for helping with the dishes.’
Thomas scoffs and returns to scrubbing the lasagne pan. ‘You would’ve just waited until I wasn’t around to do them yourself.’
The familiarity that’s grown between us, whether Thomas was willing or not, has enabled me to look back at the start of our relationship with much clearer eyes. Eyes unburdened by prejudice and nerves.
All those times he scolded me for doing things out of my job description, he was worried about me. And when he pointed out flaws in my displays or reprimanded Chase during the Code Penis bachelorette party planning, he was helping, not criticizing or condescending.
It’s amazing how he fools people into thinking he’s unfeeling.
And I the biggest fool.
An unfeeling man wouldn’t arrange multicolored cocks in a hotel suite for his future sister-in-law’s bachelorette party. An unfeeling man wouldn’t walk down the aisle in baby blue suede shoes in a ceremony that involved a hairless cat he hates and a fat Elvis. And an unfeeling man wouldn’t take in a woman and her niece while extending a marriage he wants no part of.
Still waters run deep, they say. Thomas is as still as it gets.
Ironically, a wave of suds crests the sink after a particular vigorous scrub. He glares down at his soaked T-shirt. ‘I pay a housekeeper a perfectly good salary to do dishes, you know.’
Biting my lip, I attempt to swallow back my amusement, but a small bubble of laughter escapes. And when he turns that sardonic raised eyebrow at me, I can’t help but giggle.
Instead of glaring, like I expect him to, he smiles, and the shock of it melts my own off my face.
Seeing the sudden change, he frowns. ‘What’s wrong?’
I twist the tea towel in my hands. ‘I just feel really guilty that I’m here, enjoying myself when Kayla…’ With a deep breath, I carefully lay the towel on the counter, smoothing the creases out as I try to get a hold of my sudden onslaught of emotion. ‘I thought she’d be back by now.’ I’ve called the police station every morning since the hospital. Nothing.
I grab the edge of the counter unable to look at him now that I’ve started to speak my worries out loud. Without Bell or Leslie to listen, the shame and guilt warring in my chest has built up until I’ve let hope blind me to the most likely outcome. To the outcome I faced as a child. ‘I’ll start looking for apartments tomorrow.’ I nod to myself. ‘Just in case.’
The silence stretches out between us until Thomas, slowly, methodically, lifts his arms from the water and removes his gloves, draping them over the edge of the sink, as if preparing to impart soul-shattering advice that will make everything seem better. ‘Stop worrying.’
I bust out laughing, awkwardly long and loud. ‘You know that even the great and scary Thomas Moore can’t order someone to stop worrying.’ The tension coiled inside me eases with each chuckle. ‘It doesn’t quite work like that.’
His brow pinches, the light over the sink illuminating the faint bruise still marking the corner of his eye. ‘It should.’
His consternation makes me laugh again. ‘Yeah, that would be great.’ With the back of my hand I wipe away a few tears that escaped. From sadness or laughter, I’m not sure.
‘Aunt Alice?’ Mary shuffles into the kitchen dressed in her pajamas. Mike, in a matching set, at her heels. ‘I want to sleep by myself tonight, okay?’
