Chapter 7 - The Train South
Lillian bought a ticket she could not refund. The price was thirty-two dollars, and the tiny extravagance of choosing not to care about the money made her unexpectedly cheerful.
Noah drove her to the station. They stopped at a red light beside a gas station advertising coffee for ninety-nine cents.
“Are you going to ask him to apologize?” Noah said.
“I don't know. I want to hear him answer a question without telling me how difficult his life has been.”
“That's a tough assignment.”
“He was good to me, Noah. When I got sick in seventh grade, he slept beside my bed. He coached my soccer team. He checked the oil in my car the morning I left for college.”
“Those things can be true.”
“And he still used me.”
“Yes.”
She stared through the windshield. “I hate how easy you say that.”
“I'm not the one who has to go talk to him.”
Lillian had almost canceled the trip twice. Once when she'd seen the station parking rate and thought about all the money they'd already wasted changing the honeymoon. Once when Noah asked whether she wanted breakfast and she realized she hadn't eaten since the night before. Anger could make a woman feel busy while she was doing very little.
Noah bought her a banana and put it in the side pocket of her bag. It irritated her that he'd noticed she needed one. Then it irritated her that she was irritated. She kissed him harder than she'd intended.
“I don't know if I'm going to say the right thing,” she confessed.
“You're going to say your thing,” he replied. “You can fix the wording later.”
That was something her mother might have said. Lillian pulled the banana out, took a bite, and boarded before she could turn the trip into another test of whether somebody would stop her.
At the station, Noah hugged her without trying to hurry her. They had spent most of the previous night arguing about why he invited Reed and why she made a public accusation at their own wedding. Both apologies felt incomplete. He had said he'd been trying to fix her family without her permission. She had said she'd been treating him like another person assigned to help her carry it.
“Call me when you get there,” he said.
“Don't hover.”
“I'll hover once. As a husband.”
She kissed his cheek and got on the train.
Richard met her at the family house with a kettle already boiling. She had called ahead because walking into an argument with no warning had begun to feel like another way to avoid listening.
“I made tea,” he said.
“Can we sit outside? It's too hot in here.”
He looked puzzled but brought two mugs to the back patio. The lawn was overgrown around the swing set no one used. A cardinal hopped along a fence rail.
“Maeve said you stopped by,” he began.
“She brought me Mom's scarf.”
“Did she tell you about our conversation?”
“No. I haven't asked.”
Richard stirred his tea with a spoon though there was nothing in it. “This whole business has been a terrible distraction from your wedding.”
“Dad, I need you to stop calling it a distraction.”
He frowned. “What would you call it?”
“My wedding was where something that should've been said nine years ago finally got said. That makes it awful timing. It doesn't make the thing unimportant.”
“I did what I thought would protect you.”
“You told me Mom begged Maeve to come home.”
“I was upset.”
“You told me on the day of the funeral. And at my college graduation. And when I invited Maeve to my birthday six years ago. Were you upset every single time?”
He looked away. The cardinal flew into a hedge, leaving the fence empty.
“I needed you to understand,” he said at last, “that leaving had consequences.”
“Did you need me to understand, or did you need me to stay mad so I wouldn't leave too?”
The spoon stopped. He set it on the saucer carefully.
“When your mother died, I couldn't stand coming home to an empty house.”
“I know.”
“You were going to move to Chicago for your first job. Maeve had already gone. I couldn't lose you both.”
“So you told me my sister had left Mom because she loved the Navy more than us.”
“I never said it in those words.”
“You didn't have to.”
Richard rubbed his forehead. “I thought you'd work in Annapolis for a year. Then you stayed. I didn't order you to.”
“No. You found something wrong with every apartment I looked at. You said Mom would be disappointed if I moved far away. You called every time I drove out of town to ask if I'd made it home.”
“I was concerned.”
“You made your concern my job.”
They sat in silence. Lillian could hear a neighbor's lawn mower starting up, sputtering, then catching properly.
“I know you loved her,” she said. “I know you were scared. But she was dying and I was twenty-two and there wasn't a single grown-up I could lean on because you kept asking me to hold you up.”
Richard's eyes grew wet. He looked offended by his own tears.
“You were the capable one,” he said.
“That's what people say when they don't want to notice somebody drowning.”
He covered his face with both hands. Lillian's old habit sprang up: bring him tissues, make tea, change the subject, reassure him he wasn't a bad father. She held her mug instead.
After a while he said, “I am sorry I gave you a reason to hate her.”
“That isn't all I need you to be sorry for.”
“I don't know how to say it better.”
“Then sit with that for a while.”
She stayed another half hour. They talked about her work with children who struggled to speak clearly, about the roof that leaked near the garage, about how Eleanor used to pronounce the word pecan to annoy Richard. Then Lillian stood to leave.
“You'll come for Sunday dinner?” he asked.
“Not this Sunday.”
His face changed. “I thought we were making progress.”
“We are. I'm taking a Sunday with my husband.”
He nodded reluctantly. When she reached the gate, he called after her.
“Do you think Maeve will ever come here again?”
Lillian turned. “You could ask her yourself.”
Richard looked toward the house, where his phone sat in the kitchen beside a handwritten list of contacts he never used.
May you like
He did not follow her. But as she headed back to the station, Lillian understood how difficult his next small decision would be.
