Gretchen spun around and jabbed her index finger into her chest over and over. “I care about you!”

Jax shook her head sadly. “You didn’t, though. Not for a while.”

Gretchen sat on the edge of the bed, barely holding steady on the uneven pile of garments. She clamped her eyes shut. “That’s impossible.”

“You worked every day, from morning until night. You practically stopped coming home for any other reason than to sleep. Caleb barely saw you, and whenever I did, we argued. I was tired of feeling like a single mother who slept next to a stranger.”

Tears distorted Gretchen’s vision, and she could no longer read Jax’s face. “I couldn’t…”

“You did.”

Gretchen started crying again, and this time she welcomed the way her ribs felt like they were separating. She deserved this pain, all of it.

“Please calm down. It’s okay,” Jax said softly. “I should leave you alone. All I’m doing is upsetting you.” Jax started to go, but she stopped just inside the doorway. “We can get to a better place now and be the best mothers we can be. I do believe that.” Jax left the room and it took six consecutive, counted breaths for Gretchen to start to calm.

She swallowed back her last cry and whispered, “But I still love you.”

Chapter Seventeen

25 days, 14 hours, 7 minutes

“None of it makes sense. How was I living like this?” Gretchen took the mugs from the cabinet and placed them on the granite countertop. She turned one mug in a circle. “This is nice. Where are the rest of the mugs? Did Jax take them?”

Amanda paused her meal prep and wiped her hands on a towel. “What mugs are you talking about?”

Gretchen used a chair to look in the inconvenient cabinet above the stove. “We had all these colorful, fun mugs. I’d pick one up everywhere we went and sometimes Jax would need one from Target just because. All of these are plain and part of a set.”

“I have no clue. I’ve only ever seen these.”

Weird. If she had been spending more time with Amanda over the past two years since her mother’s death, when did she change the mugs? “I shouldn’t have the spices all the way in the pantry. They were perfect right here.” She stacked the containers closer to the oven. “I have to go up in the attic later.”

“I will go up for you. The last thing you need to be doing is going up and down scary steps.”

“Fine. When you’re done with that salad, you’re going up.”

“And what exactly will I be looking for?”

“Mugs and clothes. I can’t imagine I actually got rid of all my old clothes.” Gretchen tugged at the hem of the sweatshirt she had been wearing for days. None of her other clothes felt like her, like they belonged on her body or like they were ever worn.

“Did you get any sleep last night?”