Page 93 of That Reilly Boy
When I finally pull into the driveway, Penny perks up. She’s accepted the new routine—four days with me in Boston, and then three days with Cara and me in Sumac Falls. As soon as I get her out of her seat, she finds a patch of grass within the glow of the porch light because it’s dark and if she pees now, she won’t have to come back outside.
The house is quiet when we go inside, but the lights are on. I don’t call out for Cara in case she’s already gone to bed, and instead let Penny go hunting for her.
When I reach the kitchen, Cara’s sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of an open cabinet, surrounded by a mountain of plastic bowls and lids, with my dog on her lap. Penny’s licking her hand with enthusiasm, while Cara uses her free hand to stroke her head.
“I missed you, too,” she was murmuring. “The house is lonely without you here.”
I wish she was talking to me instead of to Penny, but she hasn’t even looked in my direction. “Planning on having a lot of leftovers?”
Cara chuckles and finally looks up at me, her eyes crinkling at the corners. “I got bored and decided to tackle the Tupperware cabinet. Strangely enough, there’s no actual Tupperware in here, but there are approximately six hundred empty butter containers. Some of them even have lids.”
“Yeah, while I was finding creative ways to rearrange the kitchen, I opened that cabinet. Then, after shoving in the lids that fell out, I closed it very quickly and swore to never open it again.”
“I’m taking it all to recycling. We’ve been using the same two or three glass storage bowls for the last I don’t know how many years because they’re microwave safe. But how was your week?”
“Good.” After sniffing around the bowls long enough to determine there was no food in them, Penny has gone to make sure nobody disturbed her bed, so I put out a hand to help Cara up. “Busy, actually, which is part of why I’m late. Did you already eat?”
“Yes. Did you?”
“I grabbed something on the road.”
I hate this stilted, awkward conversation. I want to walk through that door and have Cara throw herself in my arms so I can give her a proper kiss hello. But that’s how a real wife greets her real husband who’s been away.
And this isn’t real. Now, when we’re behind closed doors, we’re just roommates with a common objective. And not once has she given me the impression she’d like me back in her bed.
Bad idea or not, I’d be there in a heartbeat.
“I ran into Emily at the market,” she’s saying as she nests bowls so they’ll fit in the box for recycling. “We’re invited over for a cookout Saturday afternoon. I should have asked you first, but there was no good way to get out of it in the moment.”
“I like cookouts,” I tell her. “I don’t get invited to a lot of those in Boston.”
“They have barbecue grills in Boston.”
“I didn’t say they don’t have cookouts. I said I don’t get invited to them.” She pauses in her task long enough to roll her eyes at me, making me laugh. “We’ll have fun Saturday.”
I’m already looking forward to it, actually, because it means, for several hours, Cara and I will be a loving couple again. I don’t even care that she’s pretending. I just want to feel like it’s real for a little while longer.
After we’ve finished filling the box of plastic for recycling, Cara gives Penny a good belly rub and announces she’s going to bed and she’ll see me in the morning. It hurts to watch her go up the stairs alone, leaving me to watch TV or lock up or whatever I care to do, but it’s the deal I made.
Friday and Saturday morning aren’t fun at all. Cara seems hell-bent on getting rid of a lot of the obvious junk, cutting down on the amount of belongings Gin will have to make decisions about, and I mostly fetch and carry boxes and bags.
“Has Gin been coming by during the week to go through stuff?” I ask when we’re taking a break after dealing with a box of Halloween decorations that might have been older than me.
Cara’s lips tighten for a moment. “Not yet, really. She’s settling into her new house. But she’s happy and she loves it, which is the important thing.”
In other words, Gin made a new life for herself and, in typical fashion, hasn’t even looked back to see how her daughter’s faring. If the house didn’t have historical value, I’d do us all a favor and burn it all to the ground while Cara’s at work.
By the time we leave for the Pearson house, I’m more than ready to step out of the Gamble mess for a while. When I offered to pay a professional and Cara refused because it all belongs to her mother, I was relieved. The longer this takes, the longer she and I stay married. But I’m starting to have regrets because it’s too much of a workload for Cara.
When we arrive and I take Penny out of her booster, she’s low-key annoyed with me because I moved her to the backseat again and she runs straight to Cara. It doesn’t seem to matter to my dog that Cara’s the reason she lost riding shotgun. She just knows I’m the one who actually moved the seat.
She’s also not thrilled about being in yet another new place, so she sits down and refuses to move. I have to scoop her up and then, with one arm cradling my stubborn dog and the other around Cara’s waist, we head around the house to the backyard.
“It’s the Reillys!” Bob hollers when he sees us.
“Or the Reilly-Gambles,” Emily says, making her way across the grass to greet us. “Or the Gamble-Reillys. Or the Gamble and the Reilly. I’m not sure where you landed on that. Oh, who is this?”
“This is Penelope Louise, but we call her Penny.” Because she’s tucked safely in my arm, Penny begrudgingly accepts Emily rubbing between her ears and babbling baby talk at her.
