The Push, Ashley Audrain [popular novels TXT] 📗

writing, agreeing to see the agent when he asked to come over, although at some point I started to feel even lonelier when he was there.

He would run the shower while I checked the weather. Rainy and cold. Bring an umbrella today, I would say. He would ask about my plans. Writing, calling someone to clean the gutters. Did he have time for breakfast? He did not – a meeting at eight o’clock, remember? Would he want to come over that night? He couldn’t – dinner with a new author. He would come tomorrow instead. Would I make that lamb stew? He would step past the partition into the shower where he could have been anyone behind the wet, distorted glass – it was then I would watch him. He would leave the bathroom door open so the steam wouldn’t fill the mirror. I didn’t like the streaks the towel left when he wiped it before he shaved. I didn’t like the speckles of his shavings in my sink. Before he was done, I would leave to boil water for the tea. Downstairs he would kiss me good-bye and I would barely lean into him. I’m not sure he ever noticed.

76

On a random day in June, Violet called to ask if she could stay with me for the weekend. She hadn’t wanted to stay the weekend since the beginning of the school year. I canceled my plans with the agent and told her to tell you she’d be with me. The overnight bag she put in the trunk when I picked her up from school was full of clothes I’d never seen before. I was missing so much of her life. The gold sparkly leggings made me sad – they were something I should have bought her if I’d seen them in a store, but I didn’t think to buy her things anymore.

We went to the movies and had ice cream afterward. We didn’t speak much but there was something about her that was less agitated. Less bristly. I was cautious. I gave her space. At one point we were in the car and a skit came on the radio, something about a cat in heat. I wasn’t sure she knew what that meant, but we looked at each other and laughed and I felt my stomach sink. Not for the moment we shared, but for how foreign it had felt – how much we had missed.

She was the same age I was when I last saw my mother.

I usually said good night standing in her doorway. That evening, I sat on the end of her bed and I put my hand over her feet under the blanket. I squeezed them. I had done this when she was younger, before she stopped letting me touch her. She looked up from her book and met my eyes. She didn’t pull her feet away.

‘Nana misses you. She said so the other day.’

‘Oh,’ I said gently, surprised Violet would tell me this. Your mother and I still hadn’t spoken.

‘I miss her, too.’

‘Why don’t you call her?’

‘I don’t know.’ I sighed. ‘I think it will make me feel too sad to talk with her. I bet she loves Jet, doesn’t she?’

Violet shrugged dismissively. I wondered for a moment if she was envious of the attention he got in your house, but then it occurred to me that maybe she thought I was better off not hearing about your son. Her eyes flickered as they wandered the room, and I wondered if Sam had crossed both of our minds then. I wanted desperately to mention him, to put him there in the bedroom with us. I looked back down at the shape of her feet under my hand. I felt strangely calm.

‘Is there anything you want to talk about? Anything at school, or … anything else?’ I didn’t want to leave her room. I didn’t want to take my hand off her.

She shook her head. ‘No, I’m good. Night, Mom.’ She opened the book to the page she’d held with her finger and settled her back into her pillow. ‘Thanks for the movie.’

I fell asleep that night on the couch, still in my clothes, thinking about how nice it was to be around her. I wondered if things were changing.

I woke up to light footsteps on the wooden floor above. It had been six years since Sam died, but my instinct to wake in the middle of the night at the slightest noise was still just as strong as when he was born.

Violet was walking on her toes, moving from her room to mine. The door opened. Was she looking for me? I wondered if she would call for me. Her steps became even quieter. She was near my dresser now. I heard the hanging brass handle touch the wood. And then again when it closed. She’d been brief. Efficient. I wondered which drawer, what she was looking for. The bracelet I’d found tossed aside on the bus months ago was in there. Of course. I should have thrown it away – I never would have imagined she’d find it. I couldn’t remember the last time she’d gone into my room. I heard her steps carry her back to bed. I waited, giving her time to fall back asleep, and then I went upstairs quietly. I put on my nightshirt and checked the drawer – the bracelet was still there. She hadn’t taken it if she had seen it.

She was pleasant over breakfast. Not friendly, not chatty, just pleasant. I dropped her off at your house and watched from my car as she ran up the driveway and flew through the door. I could see Gemma through the living-room window, rushing to greet her, to welcome her home.

That was when the idea first came to me. To drive back later, after the sun had set. To watch you