This Secret Thing, стр. 56

But Casey was alone, sleeping on her stomach just like when she was a baby. The doctors had strongly admonished Bess to put her baby on her back to sleep, but Casey knew what she wanted. She would fuss until Bess put her on her stomach, going against her better judgment in order to make Casey happy, not knowing it would become a metaphor for parenting. She stood and listened to Casey breathe, not daring to move any closer lest Casey wake up and find her there, watching her. In high school Casey had dubbed her “Stalker Mom,” a play on the term soccer mom. Eventually even Steve had started calling her that. Bess didn’t appreciate the negative connotation for what she felt was just involved parenting. She didn’t know why her family couldn’t see her concern for what it was: love.

She backed out of the room and quietly closed the door behind her, moving next to Nicole’s room. Nicole slept curled up on her side in the fetal position in her daybed. As a baby Nicole had slept in whatever position Bess had put her in, an easy baby. She’d been an easy kid, too. So her recent transformation into a demanding, sneaky, rude teenager had come as a shock to Bess. It felt like a betrayal. Her darling baby had turned into a stranger recently, talking and acting like someone she didn’t know. She stood in the doorway and recalled Nicole’s unacceptably harsh words to poor Violet Ramsey. She should’ve punished her, taken something away or grounded her. But the truth was, after Violet had left, she’d been too distracted and exhausted to deal with it. Nicole’s recriminations were always epic. To punish Nicole was to punish herself.

She closed Nicole’s door, but instead of returning to her bed, she decided to go downstairs to get a glass of water. As she took the stairs, her white nightgown flowed behind her, and she wondered if she looked like a ghost haunting her own house. If she was gone, she wondered, would they miss her? Sure, they’d miss the meals and the house management and the endless chauffeuring, but would they miss her? She thought of Norah telling her all those years ago that she should leave Steve. “I can’t do that to my children,” she’d replied. But since then, she’d often wondered if staying had even mattered to them the way she’d thought it would. She often wondered if she should’ve been more selfish. The more time went by, the more she had to admit that Norah had been on to something. And she had just been too scared to upend her careful existence.

In the kitchen she filled a water glass and thirstily drank it down. Then refilled it and drank a second glass. She put the glass down and looked out the window over the kitchen sink at the moon in a starless sky. He was out there right now, just feet away. She’d worried he was dead, but he wasn’t. If she was brave, she would go to him right now. She would wake him and ask him why he had never called her back. She’d tell him how worried she’d been.

And in telling him that, she would be admitting that this was more than her helping him get back on his feet; this was more than a simple good deed. It didn’t make sense: that she’d developed real, actual feelings for him of all people. Why not a father at the school? Why not a neighbor? Why not her self-defense instructor? These were likely suspects. Jason wasn’t. Why—and how—had she come to care about this man who may or may not be telling her the truth about who he was, this man who she knew next to nothing about save what he’d told her? He could be anyone. But he wasn’t anyone. Not anymore. Not to her.

Quietly, she unlatched the sliding glass door and slipped out of the house, telling herself she was just going to breathe in the cool night air for a moment. And she did. Then the moment stretched long, and longer, until she couldn’t deny the pull inside her. It drew her to the shed, and she let it. She’d been unselfish for so long. For one night, for one suspended period of time, she could be selfish; she could do something that was just for her and not think about the people inside her house sleeping unaware.

She opened the shed door, thinking that the noise would awaken him. But he slept on. The moonlight illuminated the room so that she could see him well enough. She stood watching his motionless form lying there on the pallet on the floor, flat on his back, his chin pointed to the ceiling, his breathing even and deep. Without thinking much about it, she moved closer to him, dropped to her hands and knees, and crawled up beside him, forming her body to his, smelling the earthy, outdoor smell of him. He reminded her of her garden—of dirt and weeds and roots. Perhaps that was why she had come to care about him. He reminded her of the thing that was most familiar, most natural, to her.

He stirred, then startled, pulling away from her with panic on his face. “What the hell?” he yelled.

“Shhh,” she said, scooting backward, away from him. “It’s just me. It’s just me.” She looked to make sure she’d closed the door, fearing his outburst had somehow woken her family.

He lowered his voice and pulled the blanket closer to his chest, like a modest woman, exposed. “What are you doing in here?” he asked.

It was a fair question. One she didn’t have an answer to. “I don’t know,” she admitted. She thought about it. “I had a bad dream,” she said, which sounded silly and childish.

He gave her a bemused grin and settled back