I wiped my chin. I didn’t let go of his hand.
Over the fence, I could see the lights on in Vanessa’s kitchen. And through the window, two women sitting at the kitchen table. Vanessa and Rachel. A five-year-old girl was asleep on the couch behind them.
They were laughing about something. Leaning toward each other over the table.
Two women who’d been left. Who’d been told they should have seen it coming. Who’d been made to feel old and boring and replaceable.
Sitting at a kitchen table with a pie between them.
Not fighting. Not competing. Just there. For each other.
I squeezed Irvin’s hand.
“You know what the lesson was?” I said. “The one I wanted to teach her?”
“What?”
“That we don’t have to be each other’s enemies,” I said. “Nobody ever told her that. Nobody ever told me either. I had to figure it out in my kitchen, crying on the floor, scraping her cookies into the garbage.”
