Flying Read online

  She waited for him to hang up on her for that one, but Matthew only made a low, disgusted noise. “Nice.”

  Stella gritted her teeth. “I needed you. I wouldn’t have called otherwise.”

  “I was busy, I’m sorry. I had the girls—”

  “And Caroline,” she said with a snarky laugh. “Don’t forget her. And I certainly wouldn’t know about busy, would I?”

  “You don’t get it,” Matthew said sharply. “You have one kid, and he’s a lot older. It’s a lot more complicated with two.”

  For a moment, the sheer arrogance and insult of what he’d said to her didn’t fully sink in. Stella pulled the phone from her ear to look at it before pressing it back to her head. She blinked rapidly, trying to form the right words, trying not to let her emotions run away with her. Trying not to simply lose her shit all over him.

  She failed.

  “I know what it’s like to have two children, Matthew. I know how hard it can be with two little ones, close in age. I know how complicated it is.”

  “Stella, oh, God. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  “I found his blanky in Tristan’s room,” Stella said in a low, numbed voice. “I was worried he’d taken up smoking, but instead I found out he’s been taking things from Gage’s room. I can’t go in that room, Matthew. Do you understand that? Do you understand what it’s like to walk past that closed door and be unable to open it because I cannot face the thought of packing away all his things? It’s been over ten years, and I can’t open that door because I’m somehow terrified that it will let out the smell of him. That everything will be gone. I can’t open the door, I can’t pack away his clothes and toys and furniture and make that room empty. And, yes, I know what fuckery that is. I know it’s not healthy. And I still can’t make myself do it, Matthew, because once I open that room I will have to let him go, and I can’t bear the thought of losing him all over again. So don’t you dare tell me smugly how I don’t understand what it’s like to deal with two. Don’t you dare whine to me about how anxious and stressful it is to deal with a hundred-degree fever. When you’ve held your child in your arms and prayed not for him to heal, but for him to finally just die so that he won’t hurt anymore...then maybe you’ll have one small, infinitesimal inkling of what it was like for me, and why I needed you last night. But you weren’t here. You are never here. I come to you, and you don’t ever come to me. I am there for every bitch and moan and hand-wringing emotional breakdown you ever have. And you were not there for me for one. Fucking. Night.”

  This time, when she disconnected, Matthew didn’t call back.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Stella and Tristan weren’t completely estranged. She spoke with him on the phone or texted him. Once or twice a week she picked him up after school and took him to dinner before dropping him off at Jeff’s, but Tristan would not come home, and Stella didn’t ask him to.

  “He’s welcome here, you know that,” Cynthia told her on the phone. “I don’t know what happened, but...”

  This was the woman who opened her house to Stella’s son. The one who’d end up doing his laundry and making sure he got up for school, who would feed him and be there when he got home, because surely Jeff would not. “He likes his dad better.”

  Cynthia laughed softly. “I don’t know about that. Things will work out, Stella. I’m sure.”

  Stella wasn’t so convinced.

  The balance had shifted—where once Tristan’s home had been with Stella and he “visited” Jeff, now it was the opposite. It ate away at her, day after day. The gallons of milk in the fridge she kept buying automatically and had to toss because nobody drank them, the regular supply of hot water, the small extras in her bank account at the end of the month that normally would’ve gone to dinners out or Tristan’s spending cash. The silence. Everything she’d once imagined she’d adore once her son went off to college had now become her reality, and Stella far from loved it.

  It might’ve been easier if she had something to distract her, but that would’ve meant contacting Matthew and she was done with that. Maybe, she thought as she let herself into the dark kitchen and tossed her keys and coat onto the table, he was just as relieved to be done with her as she kept trying to convince herself she was.

  The trouble was, everything reminded her of him. She couldn’t share the funny joke she’d heard, or the new song she loved and played on repeat, or send him pictures of her food. Without Matthew, there was a giant gaping hole she kept falling into whenever she tried moving forward.

  Missing Tristan was different. She’d always known someday her son would move out and away; she hadn’t thought it would be so soon, or on such magnificently bad terms. But no matter how angry they’d been at each other, there was nothing that couldn’t be undone. Tristan would always be her boy.

  She waited for the urge to fly to hit her, but it didn’t.

  Another week passed, and one night in the shower, washing herself, Stella cupped her breasts in her hands and thumbed the nipples tight, waiting for arousal to find her. She slipped her fingers between her legs and sought the same thing, but all she found was numbness and disinterest.

  Another week.

  Another.

  The days got longer. The sun hotter. Her flowers bloomed, but Stella wilted.

  She unfriended Matthew on Connex. Deleted his number from her phone. There was nothing she could do about the message application but block him, and that felt unnecessarily antagonistic and stupid, especially since he wasn’t bothering to message her in the first place.

  He’d made her nothing, so she made him a stranger.

  She moved through her days without much drama. Work. Chores. She took Tristan to dinner or to the movies or shopping the few times she could convince him to let her. She still did not ask him to move home.

  She was alone, and it was more terrible than she’d ever imagined it to be, and yet there was a kind of pleasure in that pain of her solitude. Clarity in her thinking. Or maybe, Stella thought as she slipped into bed without a word from her son or her lover or anyone else, she was just numb.

  * * *

  She is still drunk and reeling when they wheel her into the E.R., but even without the liquor in her blood, Stella knows she would’ve been blurry and blinded by what happened. Blood has run into her eyes, and though she knows she’s crying harder than she ever has cried in her life, her vision will not clear. There’s pain, but it’s faint and far away, sectioned in parts of her body that no longer seem to even belong to her. She can’t feel her legs, and something in her brain tells her that’s probably a good thing.

  Stella’s throat is raw from screaming, but she reaches for Jeff. For Tristan. For Gage. Her boys were in the backseat. Jeff, driving. She remembers this but can’t make sense of it.

  “Ma’am. Do you know where you are?” Someone shines a light into her eyes; if she weren’t blinded already, she would have recoiled from the glare. “Do you know your name?”

  “Stella Andrews.” No. That is her maiden name, but she can’t remember what she should’ve said. “I think I was in an accident.”

  “Yes, ma’am. You were in a car accident. We’re taking you back now. Try not to struggle—”

  “My boys,” she cries. “Where are my boys?”

  “Your husband is already in an examination room.” It’s a man’s voice, rough but kind, and his hands are also rough but kind as they push her back onto the gurney or whatever it is.

  Stella can’t see, and the sounds are echoing and wavering. Her hands paddle at the air, struggling. Someone holds her down. The taste of eggnog coats her tongue, along with the taste of blood. She’s going to be sick. She’s going to pass out. The world spins, and Stella screams when someone straightens her legs and the pain is thick and wild and terrifying.

  “Whe