Page 69 of Forget About Me

“Both, please.” My vocal cords scrape against each other getting just those two simple words out. She drops two teabags in the cup and pours water over them. Steam swirls in the air.

“Sugar?”

“No, thank you.”

She tops off her own cup with hot water before returning the ancient kettle to the stove. Sitting down across from me, she straightens a pile of papers and moves them to the side. “Lucy wasn’t feeling well and went to bed early.” She sits back in her chair, hands cradling her teacup. “I don’t think she’s been getting enough sleep.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. M. I know you probably disapprove of her… staying over… with me.”

Surprisingly, she waves that down. “I’m fine with it, actually. Gio, that’s another matter. To him, she’s still his little girl.” A soft smile takes over her face as she looks down the dark hallway. “But I’m just happy to see her… alive again.”

Puck rests his chin on her thigh, and she strokes his head. “When Tony died and you disappeared, she shut down.” She shakes her head. “She covered it by keeping busy.” She flashes an uneven smile at me. “Like I have. But when you two showed up, Lucy came back, too.”

The house is so quiet that the clanking pipes from the furnace are startlingly loud. I don’t think I’ve ever been here when it was like this. With four kids, three of them boys, someone was always pounding up and down the stairs, blowing through the back door, laughing or fighting. The complete opposite of the house I shared with my dad, so hushed and still you could sit and watch dust float in a patch of sunlight without hearing a single sound beyond the ticking of the grandfather clock in the hall.

Here, now, the quiet is welcome.

But I don’t deserve to enjoy it until I come clean. “The day of the accident? The day Tony…”

Her hand stills on Puck’s brow. When she smooths it over his fur again, I blow out a breath and make myself keep going. “We were fighting. Me and Tony. Because… Lucy and me, the summer before—before she went to UMass?” I’m doing this all wrong, all out of order, but I stumble on. “We were seeing each other. When we told you she was giving me cooking lessons, that’s not all we were doing.” Her eyebrows rise slightly but she doesn’t say anything. “I was in love with her, Mrs. M—I was in love with her, but I didn’t want to hold her back when she went to school. So I convinced her we should date other people. But I regretted doing that. I didn’t tell her, though. Instead I told Tony, but it didn’t come out right, kind of like how this isn’t coming out right right now.”

There’s a lump in my throat I can’t swallow past. But I’m halfway through this dress rehearsal, so I press on. “And he got mad. Really mad. He always said I had to stay away from her, protect her while he was gone. So we were yelling at each other when that guy hit us. And I think?—?”

My throat’s completely closed now, my face wet, but I push to the finish. “I think, if we hadn’t been arguing, Tony might’ve—I’m sorry. It’s my fault. That guy was—I know he was going fast, but if Tony hadn’t—?” I drop my head into my hands. I’m not even making sense.

A warm hand squeezes my arm. I can barely hold my head up, but I force myself to meet her eyes. “I’m sorry,” I whisper.

Her hand slides down my forearm to grasp my hand. “Oh, Benny.” She shakes her head. “It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t anybody’s fault. Not even that man who drank too much and decided to get in his car. So many little things led to you all being in that place at that time.” She takes my other hand and squeezes both. “I’m sorry you feel this way, or—have you maybe felt this way for a long time?”

I nod, snot running out of my nose, lower lip trembling like a three-year-old.

“Is that what kept you away from us?”

I nod again.

She gets up abruptly, grabs a tissue box from a drawer and plunks it down in front of me. “Well, then. Stop it.” Her hands fly in the air, and she looks ten years younger. “You need to just stop it. You need to be back in our lives. We all need to let Tony go and live again. Every single one of us.”

She takes her cup to the sink. When she comes back, she looks me up and down, hands on hips. “All you need to worry about is making my daughter happy.” She holds my gaze until I nod. “But right now? Go home and go to bed. I think we all need a good night’s sleep.”

Nodding again, I let her guide me and my dog to the door. That was not the reaction I’d expected from Mrs. Minola. Even though I did a terrible job telling her, she doesn’t hate me.

Maybe it won’t be so bad to tell Lucy, after all.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

“Under Pressure” - Queen & David Bowie

Lucy’s Right On Rock On Mixtape, Song #1

LUCY

Despite the fact that I’m only getting a few hours of sleep these days, I can’t stop smiling—even stuck in Boston traffic. Who cares? I’m car dancing to an old mixtape I stole back from Ben, and life is good. I’m helping people and their pets and getting paid well to do it. So well that my savings have doubled in the past couple weeks, making getting out of bed at oh dark hundred a little easier.

Plus, knowing that I’ll be with naked Ben at the end of the day—in person, not on the pages of a magazine—puts extra pep in my step.

Good thing, because I’m signing on new clients practically every day. The feature in the paper started the ball rolling, but now it’s referrals from people I’m already working with or people who read the review or saw the show. I had to get a pager and answering service so the calls don’t clog up the vet office’s or my family’s phones.

I’m just not sure how many more I can handle. I’m working the earliest morning shift so I can fit in two or three or even four training appointments in the afternoon and evening, depending on where people live. I’ve completely monopolized our second car. Luckily, the boys have been resourceful about getting where they needed to be on their own, and my dad always drives my mom to work.

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