“Out.” Her arms crossed tighter.
“With that boy?”
“His name is Austin.”
I gave myself a moment before replying, refusing to let myself be pulled into another shouting match with a teenager. “Are you going out with Austin?”
“Maybe.”
“So you’re going out somewhere with someone?” I waited for her to confirm my summation, but her lips stayed sealed. “Do I have that right?”
“Basically, yeah.”
I looked at the tray of cookies clutched in my hands, searching for the right words lumped in between the raisins and oats. “As your parent, do you see how I can’t let you leave with that kind of explanation?”
Andee’s head hung back as she snorted. “And do you see how you can’t just pick and choose when you decide to give a shit and actually parent?”
I knew better than to offer a response to that. “What about staying home with me tonight? Your dad will be home in a few hours, but before he gets here, we can order copious amounts of takeout, put on some pajamas, and be four episodes deep into whatever Netflix series you want when he shows up.” I held up the tray of cookies. “Plus, I made your favorite.”
Andee never glanced at the tray of cookies or gazed in the direction of the flat screen in the living room. She never stopped staring at me. I was good at reading people and situations. As with the verdict in court, I knew my daughter’s before she voiced it.
“What parenting book is it this time?” She shook her head at me as she pulled her hood over her head. “How to Try and Fail to Reconnect with Your Teenage Daughter After Sixteen Years of Not Giving a Fuck?” Andee spun around, powering toward the front door. “Because it’s going to take more than some lame cookies and takeout to make a dent.”
“Andee, wait.” My voice broke as I took a few steps to follow her.
“Just get back to your big important life already and let me get on with my own.” She didn’t break stride when she reached the door, and the way she slammed it seemed to shake the very foundation.
Outside the window, I could make out headlights shining in the driveway. They weren’t the same ones as Austin’s, which gave me a moment of comfort before I considered that there were worse types than boys with haughty eyes and one-tracked minds.
I was responsible for letting some of those individuals slip through the cracks of justice.
Losing.
It had become the theme of my life, the stamp of my existence.
After retrieving the dropped cookies from the carpet, I abandoned the tray on the kitchen counter. Tearing off a chunk of cookie, I popped it in my mouth and chewed absently.
It was dry.
When I started toward the pantry door as my eyes welled, I caught myself. I was tired of retreating into a dark, empty hole. I couldn’t stand the thought of spilling another silent tear in a shadowy tomb, waiting for the Ambien or alcohol to take effect.
Instead of yielding when the invisible hand around my throat tightened, I pushed through it. I fought—the way I did in court—the path that led me to abandoning everything outside of my job.
Retrieving my phone from the counter, I sent a text to Noah.
Still planning on being home around 9?
The typing bubbles appearing so quickly after my message was rare. Noah led a support group in the basement of a Presbyterian church in downtown Seattle on Saturday nights. The meeting ended at seven, but by the time a couple side conversations ran their course and he squeezed in a run after, he didn’t usually make it back to our home, tucked in a tranquil hillside of Sammamish, much before nine.
No. Sorry. Something came up.
More typing bubbles:
It will be late.
And then finally:
Don’t wait up.
My fingers were primed to type in a reply, but my mind couldn’t formulate a response. Okay, have a nice night, Miss you . . . all of the expected responses felt woefully flat and empty.
After slipping my phone into the back pocket of my jeans, I went about cleaning up the kitchen, dumping what was left of the dough and the cookies into the garbage. One by one, I flipped off the lights in each room I passed through, until there was nothing left but harsh patches of light and dark streaming through the windows from the outside lights. I noticed the light inside the backyard shed had been left on, but the rain and dark kept me inside. Noah could turn it off when he got home if he felt so inclined.
When I passed Andee’s room on the second floor, I opened her door halfway, following the same pattern with the rest of the doors I passed in the hall. Noah’s and my room was the last door, sidled beside a display case decorated with family photographs. Like most permanent fixtures in one’s house, I passed by the pictures a dozen times a day without taking notice, but tonight, I took the time to examine them.
Our wedding picture, the barely visible bump hiding beneath the layers of satin. The photos of Andee through the years, great big toothy baby grins shrinking in size every year. The highlights of the rare family vacation, the early years displaying laughter, the more recent years portraying smiles masking the distance broadening between the three of us.
Finally, there were a few pictures of my parents and Noah’s family. His younger sister’s senior photo was propped in the center. Five years separated them, but there was no mistaking their shared blood. Like Noah, the genetic lottery had rained down upon Natalie, both in beauty and brains. Fair, flawless skin, dark hair, light eyes, and a tall frame that commanded a room when she stepped inside. She’d been intent upon getting her PhD like her older brother, though in social work instead of psychology.
She had been one semester from completing her undergrad when she chose to end her life.
Noah had taken the news with equal part shock and acceptance, as though he’d been expecting that call for years. I’d been distracted by a busy toddler and law school, failing to provide emotional support to a grieving spouse. Noah hid his pain well, but I knew it still festered deep inside him, in the fathomless depths he’d never let me come close to exploring.
Reaching for Natalie’s senior photo, I noticed a collection of fingerprints marked the glass. We had a housekeeper who came weekly to keep up with the main household chores, every month seeing to deeper cleaning tasks such as dusting and cleaning mirrors and photos. From the looks of the impressions, Noah had been picking up his sister’s picture daily. I set the photo back, letting the fingerprints be.
Once inside our bedroom, I wandered into the walk-in closet that was as large as the bedroom Noah and I had first shared when we were married. Married couple college housing in downtown Seattle had been hard to find, next to impossible given our limited budget at the time.
We’d gone from digging for loose change to make rent in a four-hundred-square-foot apartment to a slightly more spacious townhouse where we could pay the rent on time after I finished law school, to our first house in Kent—which was a nightmare commute for the both of us—to finally settling in our current home in Sammamish five years ago. It was a sprawling place mixed in with other wealthy families who wanted to partake in the advantages of living close to a big city, while forgoing the drawbacks.
Peeling out of my designer jeans and linen top, I continued stripping until there was nothing left to remove. I made sure not to glance in the general direction of the mirror, desperate to pretend away the pounds and wrinkles that were a result of age and self-loathing.