Page 71 of The New Year's Party
“It has been. It is,” I say, grateful for just an ounce of understanding.
See? I’m not crazy. Allie gets it. It’s the whole outside perspective thing. It’s the people upstairs who have distorted reality, when everything I did, I did tosavepeople. Burning down the restaurant saved us from a horrible investment. Keeping the fifteen thousand was supposed to save Will fromever giving money to Phelps again. Telling Bennett about the cheating was to save him from the heartbreak of finding out years later that he’d been the stupid one. As for Bunny, Mr. Max had the right to know about her plans to abort; he was the child’s great-grandfather, and our only hope of saving that baby was the power of prayer. Breaking up Doug and Hellie’s marriage was to help Doug lose his enabler, so he could finally have a chance to get clean. And Hellie—she would be free to start again and make better choices. Find a better partner. Someone she could actually become a mother with! Why can’t any of them see that I’m not the bad guy? I’m just the only one who actually cares about a better future for all of us. The rest of them are happy to splash in their pigsty.
Maybe my flaw was trying to show pigs there’s a better world out there.
“Want the last one?” says Allie, gesturing to the final Jell-O shot as she rises and picks up the three empty cups. “I’m going to head back up and maybe go home. It’s been a long night.”
I take the last shot and Allie adds the cup to her crumpled stash. The sugar is helping. I feel more relaxed already. Not as panicky.
“I think I’ll go upstairs too,” I say. I can’t hide here in the basement much longer. I’ll tell Will we have to leave. He won’t object... it’s not like we can stay at Phelps’s house forever... we’ll have to drive home at some point... and I’m pretty sure based on my mental review that his only “evidence” is our daughter’s little story, which means I have nothing to fear.
Ooof. When I try to stand, I’m feeling a little unsteady. It’s the exhaustion of the night. Our normal bedtime is nine thirty, and tonight has beensointense. I sit back down on the couch.
“You okay?” says Allie.
“Fine, I’ll just be another minute.” I wave vaguely at her. She’s young. She probably stays up past midnight all the time. “You... you go ahead.”
“Okay. Well, it was nice meeting you.”
“You too,” I say, leaning my head against the back of the couch. I close my eyes for a second.
I’m not sure how much time has passed when I hear noise on the stairs.
“Huh?” I say out loud, wiping drool from my mouth. My hand feels sluggish and heavy. How long was I asleep? “Who’s there?”
“It’s me,” says a voice.
Chapter 31
Olivia
She stumbled wet and panting out of the field and into the miracle of Phelps’s backyard, her shoes covered in mud, her cheeks stinging with tiny cuts from her flight through the corn stalks. Her nose was dripping, her toes frozen. But she was out.
“God,” she gasped, tilting her head up to the sky. Not a prayer, but something close.
The moon was pale, with clouds like ragged gray tulle blowing over it. The same moon she’d seen from the cornfield. A sky that watched without saving. A point of reference so distant it couldn’t actually help you find your way home.
And yet here she was, by a chance of right and left turns. By coincidence or haphazard choice or divine guidance. Back to where she started, with all the same hurts and baggage—but not the same woman who had entered that cornfield.
There was a light on in the Dog House, but Olivia turned toward the deck and the glowing light of the kitchen. She needed a bathroom.
What time was it? How long had she been lost in the field?
It wasn’t until she was deep in the corn that she realized what she’d done—plunged thoughtlessly, recklessly, into a maze she might never find her way out of. When she finally stopped running and looked up at the sky and thought,Whatam I doing?she realized she actually needed to answer that. Not just for tonight, but for her life.
She stood there for a long time, in the lonely silence, with only the whispering stalks and the cold glow of the moon as company. Something had happened when she shrieked on the deck. A wall had come down, and on the other side, the waiting tidal wave had been too much to handle. A wave of pain and loneliness, a wave made up of all the stories she hadn’t told, and all the people who hadn’t heard them. But now the water was settling, and lo and behold Olivia hadn’t drowned, and things were bobbing to the surface.
Questions.
Was she so afraid to face the truth that, instead, she had kept herself lost for years?
What was the truth worth—not in general, but to her?
Was she brave enough to fight for her story?
Even if no one believed her? Even if she lost everyone in the process?
When she’d seen Bennett and Phelps coming toward her, ambling through the yard looking at something on Bennett’s phone like co-conspirators, like they were on a team and Olivia was left out, that was hard enough. And then, to realize they had talked about her behind her back, decided she was crazy, and nowtheywere going to rewrite the story,herstory—her husband who she trusted, coming in with the “real story,” fully convinced because Phelps got to him first and he was going to believe his oldest friend over Olivia.
