Better Off Alone

Chapter 3

(Rebecca's POV)

I pay for everything. Carry the bags to the car. And drive back with the windows down and the radio off, with just the sound of the wind.

I pull into the driveway. Pop the trunk.

Then I hear it.

Music. Coming from inside. Loud, tinny birthday music — the kind that plays from those cheap Bluetooth speakers Sean always nags me about because he can't be bothered to buy the good ones.

They're home.

I grab the grocery bags and walk to the front door. It's open a crack. The music is louder now. I hear voices. Laughing. Jack laughing — that high, breathless giggle that means someone is tickling him or chasing him or swinging him by the arms.

I push the door open with my hip and step inside.

And stop.

The living room is full of people I half-recognize—Sean's golf buddies, their wives, a few kids from Jack's school.

Ivy is there. Joanna is there. Alexander is standing near the window with a glass of something. The nanny, Nancy, is cutting a cake in the kitchen.

And in the center of it all is Jack, sitting on a woman's lap.

She's standing right where I should be. Next to Sean, on the only chair, in the center of the room beneath Jack's painting like the painting was made for her.

She's leaning forward, her chin on his shoulder, her arms wrapped around his waist.

Hannah.

I know her name the way you know a bruise. Sean's college friend. His confidante. The woman whose calls he always picks up, whose opinions he always values, whose career in robotics he always talks about with a warmth he's never once pointed in my direction. She's brilliant, he told his mother once, right in front of me, like I was furniture. She's doing incredible things in the field.

Jack's face is lit up like I haven't seen in months. He's bouncing on her lap, pointing at the candles on the cake, counting them out loud. "One, two, three, four, five! Five candles!"

Hannah laughs. "Make a wish, little man."

Jack squeezes his eyes shut. His fists ball up tight. Then he opens them and says — loud, clear, the way kids say things when they want the whole room to hear —

"I wish Aunt Hannah can celebrate my birthday with me every year!"

The room goes aww. Sean—my husband, my legal husband—puts his hand on Hannah's shoulder. His eyes crinkle at the corners and his mouth curves up as he looks at Jack and Hannah with an expression I have never seen before. Soft, warm, open.

Like a man looking at his family.

Something caves in my chest.

I take a step back, then two. My shoe catches on the rug and the grocery bag on my left hip tears at the bottom, and a lemon rolls out across the floor, slow and bright, bumping against the wall. Nobody hears it. Nobody notices me.

I am invisible in my own home.

As I back out of the door, my eye catches on the painting again. Then shifts on Hannah.

Purple.

She's wearing a purple dress.

The woman Jack drew — the one he put at the center of his family, the one he drew hearts around — was never me.

It was Hannah.

I set the bags on the porch. I take out my phone. My hands are not shaking. I won't let them shake.

I call Sean.

Through the cracked door, I hear his phone buzz. I watch him pull it out, glance at the screen, and I see the exact half-second of hesitation. Then he picks up.

"Rebecca." He says my name the way you spit out something unpleasant stuck in your throat. "What is it?"

"How's the party?" My voice comes out fine. Normal. I'm good at this. "Is Jack having fun?"

"Yes, everything's fine. He liked your gift."

I look through the crack. From here I can see the corner of the living room. My gift — the robot-building kit I spent three hours creating from scratch, with Jack's name engraved on the box —is sitting in the far corner of the room, behind a potted plant, still in its wrapping paper. The ribbon isn't even untied.

Jack is holding a different gift. A stuffed wolf with a purple bow around its neck, clutching it tight against his chest with both arms like it's alive. Something cheap bought off at a dollar market, but he won't put it down, because it’s Hannah’s gift.

"That's good," I say. "Tell him Mommy says happy birthday."

"I will. Listen, we're about to blow out the candles, so—"

"Go ahead."

He's already pulling the phone away when I say that last part. I don't know if he hears me. I don't think it matters.

The line goes dead.

I see Sean put his phone in his pocket. He doesn't tell Jack that Mommy called. He leans down and lights the candles, and Hannah helps Jack lean forward, and everyone sings, and Jack blows, and the room erupts in clapping.

I stand on the porch with a torn grocery bag. And the scene hits me so hard my breath catches in my throat.

My six-year-old son drew a picture of his family.

He drew his father, himself, and the woman he wishes were his mother.

He hung it in the center of the room where everyone would see. He told me not to come. He's enough. Not because he didn't want to trouble me with the flight. But because he wanted to celebrate with her. Because in the picture in my son's head, the picture of what family looks like, I'm not even a smudge in the background.

I pick up the lemon. I put it back in the bag with the penne and the basil and the butter that's gone completely soft now, ruined, and I carry it all with me. The music from the house leaks out, faint, happy.

I don't cry. Something settles inside me. Something quiet and final, like a door swinging shut in a room nobody uses anymore.

I walk out of the driveway. Don't take the car. Don't look back at the house. If I look back, I'll see the warm glow through the windows and the shadows of people dancing, and I'm just so tired right now.

So tired of giving, giving, and giving.

Something between a laugh and a sob comes out of my mouth, ugly and raw.

And I think — for the first time, not as a fantasy, not as a threat I'd never follow through on, but as a real, solid, heavy thing sitting in my lap like a stone —

I think I'm done.