Chapter 48 | Cecilia

Chapter 48

Cecilia

I ’ve never been a wallower. Not really. But it’s a Reid trait. I wonder if it’s from my father, because my mother turned to work and remodeling, with the exception of those weekends in my dorm. But Liz? It’s like all the melodramatic genes were saved for her. She cried for days after each breakup with Julian. She came home from prom, mascara running down her cheeks, her hair askew, barely breathing between sobs. Jane brought her home. And then built her back up, which I can’t even comprehend. To be connected so wholly to twins. And Zoey went crazy this summer trying to out-sex her former best friend for a guy I’m not entirely sure she ever actually wanted back.

There have been very few who made me want to wallow, however. It’s not my nature. But Evie makes me want to curl up and cry and eat ice cream and do all those ridiculous things. I gave in. Once. Then I cleaned and bought a new wardrobe and organized incessantly. Like mother, like daughter. I rid every room in my apartment of any vestige of Evie, down to the hot sauce brand she likes. Now, whatever is left sits in a box in my hall closet. None of it seems overly important. It’s the stuff I would sacrifice to never see my ex again—a sweater, pajama pants, a book or three. But I can’t bring myself to throw it away. Maybe I’ll drop it off one morning. Leave it on the doorstep like she left my key in that bowl.

I sit at the kitchen table with a glass of wine and open the Zoom meeting on my laptop. While I wouldn’t say I’ve fully forgiven either my mom or Liz, I couldn’t stay angry after the baby bomb. That doesn’t mean I know how to get past what happened. In each conversation, it feels like there’s a Zoey-shaped barrier between us. But Liz is trying, so when she suggested these family dinners via Zoom, I agreed, even though I have total Zoom fatigue.

“How clean is your apartment?” Liz asks by way of greeting.

“Quite,” I say with chagrin.

She frowns. “I’m sorry, Cee.”

“I’m fine,” I say. “Stand up. I want to see the bump.”

The smallest of bumps is visible under Liz’s shirt, and the sight is so unexpected, a tremor runs through me. Her normal preppy look has been replaced by jeans and a summer sweater. She looks happy. Motherly. I wish our détente on the Zoey situation could be a full-on treaty, but we’ve been waging the war for seventeen years, and there’s no resolution. Liz will not step away from Zoey and our dad, and I refuse to capitulate.

My mom comes into view and waves with the wine she’s holding. A whole bottle, for herself.

“Thirsty, Mom?” I ask.

“I sold a one-point-eight-million-dollar home today. I deserve some wine.”

“Oh my god!” Liz says, pulling Mom into a hug. It’s endearing to watch, but I also wish I could hug her too. That my toast didn’t have to be to a screen.

“Congratulations,” I say.

“Thank you, girls. Now”—she opens up the takeout bag—“I brought the naan for us. Do you have yours?”

Naan fixes everything. That’s been a Reid women mantra since my first heartbreak back in high school. I hold up my slice. “Naan is accounted for.”

Liz’s eyes meet mine. “How are you? And do not say fine.”

“I’m coping.” I pick at my masala. “I miss her.”

It’s the most I’ve said on the topic of Evie to anyone. Even to myself, if I’m honest. I don’t want to look at it too closely because there’s too much to unpack. Too much that squarely falls on me. I do miss her. But Evie was clear. There wasn’t a test hidden in her breakup monologue. She didn’t simply need to know I loved her and needed her. I hurt her.

“Do you think—”

I shake my head at Liz’s inquiry. “She wanted to end it for a while. It’s like when you play hard to get because once they have you, they don’t want you? Well, she finally had me, and she didn’t like me.”

“She said that?” Liz asks quietly.

I shrug. “Essentially.”

“What a bitch.”

I shoot a look at my mother, who is shaking her head with pursed lips. “Mom.”

“What?” She takes a sip of her wine. “There’s a time for lying, and that was it. She could’ve been nicer about it.”

“Evie would never lie about something like that. She would think that it would stunt my emotional growth.” Even saying those words makes my heart hurt. I miss her psychologist voice and her prying and her digging.

Anna snorts. “I think your growth was stunted long ago.”

“Mom!” both Liz and I exclaim at the same time.

“Oh, eat your naan. You’ll feel better.”

I take an exaggerated bite, and yes, I do feel better. Carbs are magical. “How are you feeling, Liz? Still sick?”

She pauses with a forkful of rice halfway to her mouth. “Clearly not if I’m eating Indian food in the middle of the day. The doctor said it’s normal this close to the end of the first trimester to start to feel better. Stop changing the subject.”

I roll my eyes. “There’s nothing to talk about. We broke up. End of story.”

“But you love her.” The rest of her thought— and you never love anyone —hangs in the silence between us.

It’s such a Liz thing to say. Even after everything that happened with Julian, she’s still a hopeless romantic. If you love someone, let them go. If they come back, they’re yours. How many times has she spouted those lines? And Julian always comes back. Even now.

But Evie isn’t coming back.

“And Evie thinks I can’t truly love someone until I forgive Dad. We’re at an impasse.” I clamp my mouth shut. I didn’t want to get into the details, but Liz’s prodding makes me want to prove that I’m right. That my relationship is forever and always doomed.

“You know, honey,” Mom hedges. She rarely hedges, but then I’ve never blown up at my entire family before and then left the state. “Forgiveness doesn’t make you weak.”

My sister nods encouragingly. “It doesn’t mean you have to suddenly have Sunday dinners with Dad.”

“It might make you feel lighter.” Mom looks down at her hands, her left thumb going to her ring finger unconsciously. It’s been one of her tells for years. “Carrying all that weight around, it’s too much for anyone.”

I turn my attention to my sister, annoyed at this tag-team effort that’s seventeen years too late. “Are you going to forgive Julian?”

“I forgave Julian a long time ago, Cee,” she says. “That’s sort of the point.”

“Will you take him back?” Again goes unsaid but it’s clear we all heard it.

At this point, I honestly don’t even know what makes more sense or what I want her to do or even what she will do. Liz and Julian are Liz and Julian. They do things like this, and somehow it works out in the end. And not in an icky way where you wish they would get a divorce, but in a fully committed, sickeningly sweet way that makes you believe in love. Now there’s the baby. But a baby is no reason to stay in a failing marriage.

“I don’t know,” she says. Her hand drops from view, and I know she has it pressed to her bump. “I don’t think I’ll know until, well, until I know. We haven’t seen each other since before... and he was with someone when I called.”

I shift in my seat, pulling my leg up under me. I wonder if Liz’s “before” is Spencer or the baby or Julian’s cheating. But all I say is “Someone?”

“Sheila. Definitely Sheila. But I can’t be mad at him for that, can I? I mean, I slept with Spencer and had no intention of...” She pauses and chews at her bottom lip, her eyes going from me to Mom and back. “How did you know, Mom?”

Our mother looks over at her, surprise etched into her features. “About your father?”

“Yeah,” Liz says, taking a sip of water. “The other night you said you had to divorce him.”

Mom plays with the food on her plate, her eyes unfocused. “I might have been able to forgive him the affair, but I couldn’t raise the child that came out of it. And he was always going to keep her. I mean, that woman gave him no choice, but even if she had, your father would’ve used every legal connection he had to get custody of Zoey. I couldn’t look at him without pain. There was no hope or love mixed in with it.

“One day, he walked into the house after work, and I remember I was cooking spaghetti and meatballs in bulk for one of your team dinners, and he came into the kitchen, and our eyes met, and something clicked. I knew our marriage was over. The next morning, I asked him for a divorce.” She sighs and finally looks up at the both of us. “All that is to say, when you see Julian tomorrow, I suspect that you’ll know the way forward.”

Liz nods and picks up another piece of naan.

“Either way, we all have your back—me, Mom, Zoey, and Dad.”

The names are awkward in my mouth, but I try because she’s my sister, and she needs to know that she isn’t alone in this. Her village will include all of us, no matter what.

“I know.” Liz bites her lip and looks at me with wide, guileless eyes. I’m not going to like whatever she says next. “Speaking of Dad and Zoey, I’m, uh, having dinner with them next week. Meeting Zoey’s new beau for the first time and Dad’s girlfriend. Any chance you might feel like coming back to New Jersey for a few days?”

“I highly doubt Zoey wants me intruding on her last days with all of you,” I say sharply. How could she after all I said? Plus, there is no way I’m going to that dinner. I can’t put on a show like Patrick Reid has three loving daughters for his girlfriend. I can’t act like I didn’t say mean things about him and Zoey, basically to their faces, or that my resentment didn’t end the one relationship I had in over a decade that mattered. I can’t pretend. It’s too much to ask.

“That’s not an answer,” Liz prods.

Why can’t my sister ever leave well enough alone? “I can’t keep flying across the country every few weeks, Liz.”

“Oh, come on. I’ll pay for your ticket.”

“Liz, no, I can’t.”

“Why?”

It’s the question I’ve been asking myself since Evie broke up with me. Why can’t I move past it all? Everyone else has. But how do you brush away all those years of pain and hurt? How do you sit down to dinner with the physical embodiment of the worst moment of your life? When any innocence you had left vanished forever? The answer is simple. You do. People do it every day. Zoey talks to her mom. My mom helped my dad. But I don’t know how to get there. How to even want that.

I was happy this summer with Evie. Happy going all in. It was exhilarating and terrifying. I felt walls coming down. But that’s all gone now, and I’m vulnerable and unprotected, exactly what I spent all these years avoiding.

Liz grimaces at my lack of a response but acquiesces. “Think about it, okay?”

I imagine that I’ll be doing little else for the next three days and much longer than that. The only wall I have left is my stronghold. If I let it down, I’ll be defenseless. If I let it down, who will I even be?