Five Years Gone, She Walked Back In, So I Walked Out novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Not Her Mother

Poppy is sobbing because her grandmother told her Lorna was meant to be her mother; Stevie takes her upstairs while Sawyer says nothing, and overhears him telling Lorna he looked for her.

I did not answer him.

A small sound came from the stairs, and I turned toward it.

Poppy sat on the fourth step with her knees pulled up inside her green dress. Her face was red and her breath came in hiccups.

I had left her at the table with the cardboard guitar. I had not seen her follow me.

"Baby, what's wrong?"

"Grandma said," she hiccuped. "Grandma said that lady was gonna be my mama."

I went up the stairs two at a time and pulled her into my lap.

She smelled like stage glitter and sweat.

"Grandma said Daddy was s'posed to marry her," Poppy said into my neck. "And then I'd have a different mama. A nicer one."

My mother-in-law stood at the bottom of the stairs with her glass in her hand.

"I only told her the truth," she said. "A child should know where she comes from."

"She comes from me," I said.

"She comes from this family."

I looked at Sawyer.

He had followed me out of the hall. He stood with one hand on the banister, and his face was set hard.

His eyes went to his mother, and then to me.

I waited for him to say her name in that voice he used on the boatyard crew when someone dropped a hull.

"Stevie," he said. "Don't make this worse."

That was all.

Poppy cried harder against my neck.

I stood up with her on my hip and carried her up the stairs.

Behind me, Lorna's soft voice said, "Oh, no. Is she all right? I never wanted to upset anyone."

"Come and sit down, dear," my mother-in-law said. "Stevie is very sensitive."

Our bedroom was at the end of the hall.

I shut the door with my foot and sat on the bed with Poppy until her breathing slowed.

"Is Daddy mad at me?"

"No."

"Is the lady going to live here?"

"I don't know yet."

It was a true answer. I hated it.

I wiped her face with my sleeve and found a clean tissue in the drawer of the nightstand.

On top of the nightstand stood our wedding photograph.

Sawyer in a gray suit, with his hand on my back. Me laughing at something the photographer said. I had always thought he looked happy in it.

I had looked at that picture every night for almost five years.

Now I saw that he was looking at the camera and not at me.

I could not remember the last time he had looked at me the way I thought he was in that picture.

I picked up the frame.

Poppy watched me.

"Mama, why are you putting it away?"

"Because Grandma's guests are going to come up here to look at the house."

I did not believe it as I said it.

I opened the bottom drawer and laid the photograph face down under my winter sweaters.

When I closed the drawer, I stood there with my hand on the wood.

Poppy fell asleep an hour later with her shoes still on.

I sat on the edge of the bed in the dark and listened to the party below me.

The cousins laughed. Dishes clinked.

Something long scraped the stairs as someone carried a suitcase up to the blue room.

Lorna's brother. I knew it by the heavy steps.

I thought about calling my father.

Then I remembered his face in the kitchen doorway, and I did not.

Around eleven the house went quiet.

I took off my earrings and unpinned my hair. I told myself I would sleep, and that in the morning Sawyer would come to me, and we would have a real talk.

I lay down beside Poppy on top of the covers.

The old heating vent in our floor ran down to the study, and everything said in that room came up through it.

I had never listened.

Tonight I heard the study door close.

Then I heard Sawyer's voice, low and rough.

"You look thin."

"I've had a hard few years," Lorna said. Her voice was different now. It had no brightness in it. "I almost didn't come."

"I'm glad you did."

"Are you?"

There was a long pause.

"I looked for you for a year," my husband said. "I drove to every town your brother ever mentioned. I put an ad in three papers. I couldn't understand why you'd just go."

My hand went flat against the quilt.

I had known that he was jilted. Everyone in Port Calder knew it.

I had not known he went looking for her.

I had not known it lasted a year.

I had been married to him for four years and ten months, and he had never once said that to me.

"Sawyer," Lorna whispered. "I'm so sorry."

Something creaked. A chair, or a body leaning forward.

I lay there on my side with my eyes open.

The study door opened again.

One set of footsteps went up the stairs.

They did not come toward our room.

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