I’d thought I was doing so well; that I’d shut Him out of my heart and bones, and then it happened: I awoke one morning and the pain came again and again like waves rolling on top of waves. I did the most awful of all things and lied to Redmond; the only man who has ever loved me. I told him that I must go visit Birdie because she was heading toward an awful depression and needed my help. Mama came to watch Ellie for two days and I drove to Bayside—alone and with only one obsession—to see Him.

I needed to know what He thought and felt and understood. When I arrived at His apartment, He wasn’t there, but the door was unlocked. I waited and hours later when He arrived I still sat in the same chair, my hands folded, my body waiting.

He knelt in front of me to tell me the words I can barely stand to write, but that I must write because they are true and truer than truth. I must be able to read these words and remember them. He said this: “I do not love you anymore, Lilly. Go have a happy life.”

I knew He was angry about the marriage and the baby, but there is no way to know what these words (I don’t love you), just words, really, feel like. They must—in that order—be more than words. They are knives.

I drove straight home and crawled into my safe, wide king-size bed. It took days, but I talked myself into getting out of that bed, into living my happy life just as He had told me to do. Just as I am doing now pretending to live this happy life … .

But here is still and always what I wish: This is the year that He will know He loves me. This is the year He will love me as much as I love Him and He will know how it feels.

Twenty-one

Twenty-one

After I’d left Micah, I sat on the back porch with Birdie, telling her what Hutch and I had found. My cell phone rang twice, with Dad’s number flashing on the screen. “Sorry,” I said to her. “I must get this.”

I took the cell phone out onto the porch and returned Dad’s call. We went through our formal greetings and talked of weather and Lil, and then he got to the reason for his call.

“Ellie, darling, I don’t think your mother would appreciate or approve of what you’re doing right now.”

“You don’t think she’d approve of me sitting on a back porch drinking wine with Ms. Birdie, her best friend?”

“You damn well know that’s not what I mean.”

“Dad, please.”