My laughter isn’t from joy or even amusement. It’s more from a disbelief that this conversation is actually happening.
“I mean it,” she insists. “This conversation should’ve happened a long time ago and I was too self-absorbed to see it.”
“So, you woke up this morning and realized what an asshole you’ve been to me? And you grew a conscience? Why is that hard to believe?”
“Because that’s not the way it happened,” she counters. “I’ll be honest, as terrible as this is going to sound, but the day I realized it—got an inkling of it—was the day I got married and you weren’t there.”
“Can you blame me? You were marrying the man I thought I would be marrying.”
“No, I don’t blame you,” she scoffs. “And I’m not sorry I married Eric because I believe he’s my soul mate. But I am sorry it hurt you and I want you to know, as unbelievable as this sounds, we didn’t get together until you were broken up.”
I had an entire little speech planned for this moment, one I didn’t think would ever come to fruition. It consisted of a bunch of name calling and fact pointing and trying to humiliate her to a level from which she would never recover.
Now that the moment is here, none of it will come to mind. All I can think is thank God. Thank God that prayer went unanswered. Praise Jesus that Eric didn’t ask to marry me. Where would that have landed me?
Glancing down at my shirt still wearing the signs of the flour from earlier, I feel a peace settle over me.
“You know what?” I ask, swallowing hard. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter, Mariah.”
“It doesn’t.” I wait for regret to hit me. “It doesn’t. Eric and I not being together was the best thing that ever happened to me in retrospect.”
“You really like Lance, huh?” she asks softly.
“Yeah,” I grin. “I do.”
The line rustles as she moves on the other end. “He seems like a great catch.”
“I haven’t quite caught him yet,” I laugh, the words coming easier now that I’m on my turf. “But I wasn’t really trying either.”
“That’s funny. I want you to catch him if you want to catch him. I want you to be happy.”
“I want to be happy too.”
I look at the tray of empty cupcakes from today. Lance makes me happy and I think I make him happy. But if I do, why does he still have the app updating on his phone?
I didn’t mean to see it and I almost wish I hadn’t. It’s just enough to make my anxiety need a shot of whiskey to settle. It’s probably nothing and he has every right to use the app. I just wish I knew for my own good.
My next statement is on the tip of my tongue and I try to taste it, work it around, before I say it. “I want you to be happy too, Chrissy.”
“I am,” she whispers. “I carry this burden around every day and I don’t expect you to forgive me for being so awful to you. I just hope maybe one day we can start all over or start as the grown-ups we are now.”
“Can I ask you something?” I ask, heading back into the kitchen. “Why were you so awful to me? Why did you always try to trump everything that meant anything to me?”
The line quiets as I get out plates and dip out some stir fry. I think she might’ve hung up when she finally speaks again.
“My room was by Mom and Dad’s,” she says, so softly I almost don’t hear her. “I used to listen to them fight. Dad used to tell her he was leaving and they’d fight about us and he’d always say he was taking you. That you were the only one of us who had any sense.”
My jaw drags the ground at her confession. Is that true?
“I was jealous,” she says crisply. “He wrote off everything I liked as frivolous. He praised your grades. He loved your paintings and thought you were the next Monet and I couldn’t do anything to get his attention.”
“So you were a jerk to me?”
“I’m sorry, Mariah.” She hesitates. “When I had Betsy, one of the first things I noticed about her was her birthmark. It felt like the universe was mocking me, that I was so horrible my sister wouldn’t even be there with me. And then I imagined having another daughter and having one of them treat the other the way I treated you and I think I cried for two days.”
“Probably post-partum,” I say, taking a bite of chicken.
I hear Betsy cry in the background. Chrissy coos to her as the phone gets jolted all around. “Eric! Are you in here? Can you help me for a minute?”