Page 128 of The Cost of Forgetting You

She blinks rapidly like she’s surprised at her own confession. “I’ve been saving up my money. Once I have enough, once I know I can afford to do this and put Tru through college if he wants to go, I’m leaving.” She bites her bottom lip. “You can’t say anything. Truett doesn’t know. Waylon would lose his mind?—”

All that control I’m famous for disappears in a flash. For a moment there is no Kimberly or Waylon. The years that separate us from the kids who wrote those notes on the piano cease to exist. There is only me and my strong, brave Lucy. Only her lips and my desire to taste them.

Only a second chance, and my determination to take it.

My mouth slants over hers, fusing us together. A whimper spills from her lips. She arches into me, her breasts pressing softly into my ribs. Electricity courses through my body, grounding itself in every place Lucy and I touch. I search for more. Need it like I need the very breath in my lungs. My tongue strokes hers. Her teeth drag my lips. It’s bold in all the ways our first kiss wasn’t. Perfect in all the ways that it was.

I find the hem of her shirt and slip beneath it. Her spine, the soft flesh of her sides—I trace it all like a road on an atlas. My fingertips brush the space I vowed years ago to kiss, to rewrite the harshness of her father’s touch, and I outline a heart against her skin. It’s a mark on the map that my lips can later follow, if only I can get this shirt off…

“Mr. Ridgefield?”

The moment fractures. One second she’s everywhere. Everything. The next, we’re five feet apart, staring down one of my students in the doorway.

“Jessica,” I say, my voice a fault line at risk of breaking. “Did you need something?”

Jessica has a thick head of dark brown curls and tawny skin that makes her green eyes pop in contrast. A spitting image of her mother, Angie, who met me once at a school event and asked me out on the spot, despite my very present wedding band. I politely declined. Next thing I knew, Angie was signing her daughter up for band, and herself up to chaperon every competition. Never mind that Jessica absolutely despises playing clarinet. And, subsequently, my class.

So when a smile curves the corner of her mouth, dread spills through me, freezing my organs in place. Jessica pops her lips, rocking back on her heels briefly, and lets her gaze drift slowly from me to Lucy, who I swear is about to faint on the spot.

“You know what?” Jessica says, shrugging. “I forgot what I needed. Oh well. Sorry for interrupting.” Then she pivots on her heel and bolts down the hall, back toward the front of the building where the auditorium is.

“Fuck,” Lucy groans. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

My hand is at my throat. I don’t know how it ended up there. I’m out of my body, somewhere above, looking down on this moment in absolute horror. I’ve risked not only my job but Lucy’s, too. And what about our kids? There’s no chance Truett and Delilah’s friendship comes out of this unscathed.

I turn to Lucy. Her chest is heaving. Panic widens her gaze. I did that. My recklessness did that. It took our first chance from us all those years ago, and now I’ve swept our second right from under our feet.

Damage control. I have to do damage control. I might’ve signed myself up for a one-way ticket to hell, but there’s no way I’m taking Lucy down with me.

I just hope I can make Delilah understand.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Delilah

It takes a lot of coaxing and a healthy dose of sedation, but eventually Dad falls into a restless sleep in his hospital bed. His eyelids flutter with movement. Every once in a while, he moans or mumbles something unintelligible. It’s an improvement, I tell myself, ignoring the tubes and the monitors and the thin, scratchy hospital sheets. At least he’s not afraid anymore.

I fold myself into the recliner in the corner. A kind nurse fixed it up with a plastic pillow and a thin sheet to match Dad’s. It’s no Four Seasons, but it’s comfortable enough. I won’t be sleeping anyway, not after the night we’ve had.

They found a urinary tract infection but are waiting on blood tests to be sure it hasn’t spread to Dad’s kidneys. I fired off a text letting Roberta and Truett know what was happening, and that we’d be staying overnight at a minimum. Roberta responded saying that it wasn’t unusual for dementia patients to get them and to be extra confused as a result. Truett responded with a phone call.

A call I declined the second it appeared. Much as I hate myself for it, I know it’s for the best. Tonight showed us one thing for certain: I cannot let myself get swept up in Truett’s orbit, because it’ll be my dad who suffers if I do.

My head flops against the pillow. Its flimsy plastic cover squeaks in my ear. I swap it for my hand, propping my chin on my palm as I study my father. To be so young, he suddenly looks ancient. A complete stranger with his scraggly beard and graying hair that hangs limply against his sweat-slicked forehead. I want to brush his hair back and thread a dollop of hair cream through it, revealing the tousled starving-artist look he had before I left. My fingers itch to take a straight razor to that beard, like I might shave it off and find the father I once knew hiding beneath, patiently waiting for his chance to say, Gotcha!

A tear rolls down my cheek, dripping from my chin onto the fake leather armrest my elbow is indenting.

This wasn’t supposed to be how it went. I was supposed to come here and find answers that could finally mend my heart. It wasn’t supposed to be broken further. I certainly wasn’t meant to break someone else’s in the process.

As if on cue, my phone lights up on the mobile bedside table. Truett’s name hits me like a bullet aimed by a talented marksman. I blink rapidly, but it only spreads the tears across my vision with added vigor. By the time the phone goes dark, I’m underwater.

Time ticks by, each second punctuated by the clock on the wall by the door. Eventually my shoulders sag and I loose the breath I’d been holding. I grab the foam water cup the nurse left on the table and stand, my sheet pooling at my feet. My phone lights up again, this time with a text. I unlock it with shaky hands, but my heart is still. Braced for the blow it knows is coming.

Truett: I hope you’re getting some much needed rest. I’ll be by in the morning to check on you both. Do you need anything from home?

My teeth scrape over my bottom lip. I debate backing out of the message and powering down my phone when another comes through on the first’s heels.

Truett: You know you have your read receipts on, right?

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