Between Here and Forever - Elizabeth Scott [64]
“Why?” she says. “You want to know why, like it’s just one reason, just one thing?”
“Okay, I’m sure it was complicated, and I didn’t mean—I just want to know what happened. You lived with her, you two were—”
“I can’t talk about this,” Beth says. “I just—I can’t.”
“You mean you won’t.”
“No,” Beth says. “I mean I can’t. I don’t know why she wouldn’t admit we were together. Go ask Claire, always lurking around her hospital room, always hanging around in Tess’s head, always—always there.”
“Claire?”
“What, you’re surprised? You didn’t know?”
“I do, but I don’t exactly know what happened.”
“I don’t either,” Beth says, her voice weary. “All I ever knew is that something happened with Tess and Claire and—well, my guess is Tess freaked out because Claire ran off and had a baby rather than admit she loved Tess and it fucked Tess up. Ask Claire if you want to know. It’s not like—God, it’s not like you haven’t had the chance.”
“But—”
“No,” Beth says. “Two years, okay? I loved Tess so much and she loved me but not enough, never enough, and I finally told her to choose and she just—she shut down, spent the rest of the semester looking through me, and now she’s in the hospital and I won’t ever—” She sniffs once, twice, like she’s struggling not to cry. “I’ve had to let her go and I can’t—don’t call here again.”
And then she hangs up.
“What are you doing?”
I look over my shoulder and see Mom standing in Tess’s doorway, glancing from the computer to the phone in my hand, and then to me. She looks worried but not surprised, and I wonder if she’s trying to figure out why I’m in Tess’s room.
“I was—” I point at Tess’s computer. “I was just looking for something. A file. For school.”
“On Tess’s computer?” Mom says, shaking her head at my transparent lie, and I say, “I just—Tess was—is—” and watch her expression change ever so slightly.
Watch her realize I’ve found out something she already knows.
Mom knows, and I stand up, putting the phone down as I say, “You … why didn’t you tell me about Tess?”
I figure Mom will try to talk her way out of it, say she wanted to wait or something like that. But she doesn’t.
She just says, “It wasn’t my place to tell.”
“Wasn’t your place?” I can hear my voice rising. “All this time I thought Tess—”
“What?” Mom says, eyes narrowing, and I think she actually believes I’m going to judge Tess for who she cared about, that I—
“Hey!” I say. “I’m not—you mean you didn’t tell me because you thought I’d, what? Try to set her on fire? What kind of person do you think I am?”
“Abby,” she says, coming toward me and touching my arm. “I didn’t—”
“You did too.”
“No,” she says softly. “I didn’t. I don’t. I—I just don’t know what you know.”
“How about Tess was in love with Claire, and I’m pretty sure Claire loved her, but it looks like Tess got hurt. And then she met Beth but couldn’t bring herself to admit they were a couple, so—”
“We’d better go downstairs and talk,” Mom says. “There’s … there’s some things your father and I need to tell you.”
“You mean there’s more?” I say, stunned, and Mom nods before turning away. I hear her walking downstairs.
After a moment, I follow.
forty
I figure we’ll sit in the living room stiffly, like we’re strangers, and that Mom and Dad will be nervous, look at each other as they tell me about Tess, using each other’s expressions to figure out what to say and how to say it.
Instead, we sit in the kitchen and eat dinner like we used to. Like we did when Tess was home. Like we did before her accident, back when Mom and Dad wondered out loud about how Tess was doing, gesturing at her empty chair like she was still there as they talked about their days and asked me about mine.
I’m not prepared for this, for how easily my parents start talking about Tess, Dad glancing at Mom as I sit down and nodding once before saying, “I don’t know if Tess would have ever told us anything if I hadn’t walked in on her and Claire when I went to tell them