Page 67 of Good Guy Gabe

What a joke.

“I was new in town,” Keira calls after me. “My mom had just abandoned me. My dad was an alcoholic, couldn’t keep a job. I lost my chance at gymnastics and had to do cheerleading, and I was miserable. I only had a couple of friends. And then your hus—him, he killed one of them.”

I stop at that, tilt my head up to the sky, let the snow fall on my face. My lips, my nose, even my eyes. It is unending. Maybe Rachel is right and I do need to leave Wilmington. “Danielle Marsh.”

The girl who my husband killed ten feet below me on a Tuesday afternoon while I was distracting myself reading one of Aiden’s books when I was supposed to be organizing the changing table.

“Mikayla Behrensen, actually. You wouldn’t know about her. She never came forward. Her parents were fundamentalists. They were top-notch victim blamers, no matter the crime. I knew something was wrong, but she wouldn’t talk to me, either. When I pushed, she withdrew from me completely. And then she transferred to a private school. Two months later, her mom called me, told me she died. An accident, she said, but then it turned out she overdosed on her prescription meds. She killed h—are you okay?”

“Yup.” Not even a little bit. Brian destroyed lives. It’s one of those things that lurks forever in the back of my thoughts. When it’s right in my face like this? When I have to see this woman who doesn’t know me but hates me because Brian drove her friend to overdose? When I know there’s nothing I can do to amend thisbecause the people who really need to deal with this are both long gone and we’re stuck holding the pieces?

It sucks.

So I’m squatting on my front lawn in a pile of trash, with my forehead on the hands draped over my knees. I guess I get why Keira can tell I’m not okay.

“And now I’m scared I’m going to lose Gabe.”

I close my eyes and breathe in this little space I’ve made for myself. This space that’s just me and the stupid bloating that my baby’s hiding under, the only safe space I really have anymore. I stare at the pooch in the winter coat that isn’t even bloating, just bunched up fabric, and I think about why Keira hates me. By the time I say, “And that’s going to be my fault, too,” I’m angry all over again.

Stupid, asshole Gabe. Stupid, asshole men. They’re all awful, and they’re always going to take advantage of me in some horrible way.

“No, of course not! God, I mean it, Joss,I’m sorry. You brought up all these horrible memories for me, and I got all caught up in it, and I . . . dammit. I was the one who superglued your locks. I’m sorry for that, too.”

I pop upright, terrified that I’m going to have to have a locksmith come out and break into my own house again. But I’m two steps forward, brushing past Keira, when it hits me that I’ve already been in the shop and the barn today. No one’s tampered with my locks. Not in probably five years.

I laugh incredulously as it clicks what she means. “You mean back then, when you were a kid?”

“I was eighteen. And a bitch. And when you popped up at that fundraiser, with Gabe of all people, it sent my head right back here, dripping superglue into the locks, because all anyone could talk about was how you kept this great big house while all those girls were falling apart.”

I’m as acutely aware as anyone that this house should have been torn down, the earth salted. But I couldn’t afford that, so I remade it into something happy and peaceful and safe. “It wouldn’t have healed them. Nothing would have.”

“I know. I see that now, and how you couldn’t have known what was happening. Gabe loves you so much, and I can’t think of another man who is as good a judge of character as he is.”

“Wow. Okay. Not to call you out or anything, but you have no idea what he really is.”

“I know what he did. The lie.”

I struggle to keep myself from scrubbing my face with my gloved hands that have been all over the trash. It shouldn’t be difficult to resist, but my mind is completely blown by this. Why would he tell people what he did? “Why are you here right now? Why is—what—I don’t understand what this is.”

Keira nods for too long before saying, “Right, yeah. This does seem crazy. I’m sorry I didn’t welcome you like I should have and like you deserved. Everything’s a mess, and a lot of that is my fault.”

“Didyoutell him to lie to me to get me pregnant?”

At that, Keira looks flustered, and I finally feel like she’s realizing how uncomfortable she’s making me. “No, but . . . but he loves you, and I promise I get where you’re coming from. This might come as a surprise to you, but Evan has done many incredibly stupid and irresponsible things.”

“It, uhhh, it doesn’t, actually.”

“Right, he’s an idiot. I love him to death, but . . .” She shakes her head. “Evan specifically asked me not to come here when he told me what happened, but I couldn’t help it. And I’m not telling you to be okay with what Gabe did or automatically forgive and forget. I’m asking you to not force him out entirely. Give him that little bit of peace of mind that he’s being a good dad and taking care of what’s his.”

“Counterpoint: he’s not a good dad, and I’m not his.”

“But you miss him terribly.”

I cross my arms over my chest and purse my lips. I don’t appreciate getting read by someone who doesn’t know me, because by her own admittance, she shunned me when I didn’t deserve it.

“You’re crazy about him. I can tell. I could that night at the fundraiser. I wasn’t just protecting Gabe, I was trying to hurt you the way I told myself you hurt me. So I’m coming to you as a person who was awful to you and praying that you’ll see it in your heart to forgive me enough to at least help my friend—” She sighs and shakes her head again. When she looks at me, her eyes are misty. “I just realized how terribly inappropriate it is of me to be here. I’m so sorry.”

With that admission, it seems like she should quietly but rapidly leave. Instead, she takes up Rachel’s rake and coaxes the receipt sludge into the bag. Deciding I don’t have the mental fortitude for this, I kneel down next to Shelby and help her stack her little snowballs. She gives me a big, toothy grin and then erupts in giggles when I say, “Boop!” and poke the stack, letting it fall in her lap.

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