Page 86 of The Night the Lights Went Out
“I was thinking tomorrow would be a good day to start back. But I’ll drive you and Lily. Mrs. Cavanaugh stopped by yesterday to let me know that the carpooling situation wasn’t working out for her the way she’d hoped, so it’ll be just the two of you and me, buddy.” She forced a smile she didn’t feel. Mostly because Sharlene Cavanaugh had stopped by to snoop, to ask questions about Dan that Merilee had no idea how to answer, and had allowed her eyes to roam over every surface and through every door crack in Merilee’s house.
The front door was thrust open as Lily ran through it, sobbing as she collapsed into Merilee’s side. Lily had been extra emotional, even for her, ever since she’d heard the news about Dan. She’d always been an empathetic child, feeling others’ hurts sometimes more than she’d feel her own, and her heart had broken for her friend. It might have been easier for her if Bailey had answered her phone so Lily could tell her how sorry she was that her daddy had died.
Merilee ran her fingers through Lily’s hair, feeling its baby-fine softness, reminding her of how young Lily still was and how it was too early to have to deal with real life at this age. Merilee had always assumed that David’s death might mean she’d paid her dues already, and if that wasn’t enough to protect her from life’s seemingly insurmountable hurdles, then maybe her own kids would get a hall pass. At least in that one respect, she and Sugar were very adept at lying to themselves to get through another day. Or another decade. Surely Sugar realized that by now. But it was one thing to realize it and another thing to accept it. Self-denial was a wonderful substitute for reality.
“What is it, pumpkin?”
Lily kept her face buried in Merilee’s sweater, muffling her voice and making it hard to understand her. Merilee placed her finger under Lily’s pixie-like chin and raised her teary face to look at her. “Say that again, please.”
“Bailey finally answered her phone and she said she can’t come over this weekend to spend the night and that she can’t come over ever or speak to me again.”
“What?” Merilee held on to enough reason to know her anger was out of proportion to the crime. But she had tried to reach out to Heather for more than a week, with no response at all, and her nerves were frayed. She needed to talk with Heather, needed to know whether Liz had told her she’d seen Dan kissing her. Needed to explain to Heather that it had meant nothing and that Dan had loved his wife until the day he died. Surely Heather knew all this, though, without Merilee’s telling her. They were friends, after all. “But that’s ridiculous! Did she say why?”
Lily pressed her face into Merilee’s sweater again and nodded. Turning her face so she could be understood, she said, “Mrs. Blackford told her not to. And when I asked her why, she hung up on me.” This was followed by a loud hiccup and then hard sobbing, with Lily’s head pressed against Merilee’s hip bone so hard, she imagined it leaving a bruise.
Merilee knelt on the ground, the coldness of the earth seeping through her jeans. “Sweetheart, the Blackfords have suffered a horrible loss, one that we can’t comprehend. They are grieving in their own way, and we need to give them space now to allow them to do it. You’ve called and left messages to let Bailey know you’re thinking about her, so she knows how you feel. Maybe her mother just doesn’t think that Bailey’s ready to spend the night away from home yet. The ball’s in her court now. Give her some time, and I know she’ll call you.”
Merilee wasn’t sure how much of that she believed. She’d reached out to Heather in every way possible—including through Patricia and Claire and every person she knew on the gala committee. From the people who’d actually answered her phone calls, she’d received the same response—that Heather was grieving and couldn’t talk about it yet. But Merilee was supposed to have been Heather’s friend and had even considered Dan to be her friend, too. She’d found Dan’s lifeless body floating in the lake—maybe she just needed to hear from Heather herself that she didn’t blame Merilee for not getting there sooner to save Dan.
Or didn’t Merilee count because she was too new to what Lindi referred to as Heather’s “posse”? She’d done everything she could think of to reach out to Heather except showing up on her front step, not wanting to intrude on what she imagined to be Heather’s desire for a very private grief. But knocking on their front door was exactly what would happen if Merilee still hadn’t heard from Heather by the end of the week. She’d even bring a casserole. She would have smiled at the thought if her own heart hadn’t been weighed down by the heaviness of her grief for Dan and for his family, and for her own daughter’s misery.
“Wade’s here!” Colin shouted, running toward the drive.
“That’s Mr. Kimball to you, young man,” she said, trying to think of what she was supposed to say to Wade.
“Mr. Kimball’s here!” Colin shouted again, the binoculars bouncing against his skinny chest as he ran to greet their visitor.
Lily wiped her nose on her long sleeve and seemed to perk up at the mention of Wade’s name. Sticking her hand in Merilee’s—something she hadn’t done in a while—she walked with her mom to where Wade was climbing out of his truck.
“Hello, strangers,” he said, but his eyes were on Merilee. “Thought you might have fallen off the edge of the earth because I hadn’t heard from you since the funeral. And either you’ve changed your number or you keep forgetting to return my texts and phone calls.”
“I’m sorry,” Merilee said, feeling chagrined. She’d treated Wade the same way Heather had been treating her, but with a lot less reason. Unless being caught in a lie of omission counted. “It’s... complicated.”
“I’m sure it is,” he said. “Want to talk?” He jerked his head in the direction of the porch swing.
“Ugh. Adults talking.” Colin pressed his palms against the sides of his face like a vise. “I’m going inside to watch TV,” he said as he marched up the porch steps. Merilee knew that he’d already watched his amount of TV for the day, just like he was aware that his mother wouldn’t argue if he watched a little more right now.
Merilee regarded her daughter. “Didn’t Jenna bring you homework from Mrs. Adler? You might as well get it done, because you have no idea what she might bring home for you today.”
“I guess.” She stubbed the toe of her sneaker into the dirt. “And I suppose that I’m still not allowed to read the blog?”
“Absolutely. There’s nothing in it that you need to know about. As soon as everything calms down again, we’ll reevaluate. Until then, the blog is off-limits.”
“Yes, ma’am.” With a heavy frown, Lily let herself into the house, her feet dragging as if she’d just been condemned to seven years of hard labor.
Merilee felt the same way as she headed to the porch and sat down on the swing, bracing herself for Wade’s weight as he sat next to her, keeping a hand’s width distance between them.
“So... ,” he began, giving her the chance to explain herself. When she didn’t say anything, he continued. “Whatever we have between us, whatever you want to call it, doesn’t matter right now. At the very least I thought we were friends. I told you about my rather painful past with Heather, yet you didn’t think you should reciprocate about your own past. Specifically, that you’d been married before Michael.”
“I didn’t think it mattered.”
“So it’s true? You were married? And widowed?”
She couldn’t look in his face, her shame like bile in the back of her throat. “Yes. I was married right out of college.”
He continued to look at her, making it clear that he was expecting her to say more. “What could be so bad about your first marriage that you didn’t think you could tell me?”
She took a deep breath, not sure how much she could tell him. “He drowned. On our honeymoon.”
