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“Good.”
“But,” Beanie said, “if Iwereorchestrating your life—”
“I liked it when you said you weren’t. I was planning on a topic change.” Wil said this in the deadpan tone she used when she wanted her mother to know she wasn’t ready to have a difficult conversation, and especially to let her know she wasn’t ready to talk about her dad.
But it sounded wrong to Wil, and she wondered if maybe shewasready to talk about her dad with her mother. Didn’t she owe Beanie that conversation? Wasn’t it years overdue? Wasn’t it about time that Wil found a way to offer her mom more of herself than just the results of a long-delayed genetic test?
Beanie rolled her eyes, because she couldn’t read Wil’s mind or hear her thoughts. “If I were, I’d have a lot of questions, also, about Katie.”
It felt like the rocker was sinking into the floor. Wil gripped the armrests tight. “What kind of questions?”
“Do you want me to ask them? Because I will. I will ask them and ask them.”
Wil had not seen this Beanie in a while. It suddenly occurred to her that her motherhadbeen very fluffy and nurturing for a very long time, probably at least in part because of the resources she’d had to use to be such an amazing caregiver for Wil’s dad at the end, and then to weather the worst part of her grief.
Wil knew that the last couple of years had been better for her mom. She’d felt it. She’d seen it in Beanie’s face—an ease in the way she joked—and, right around the same time, Wil had been having coffee with one of her buddies at work who told her that she’d heard that it took roughly five years after a loss before most people started to feel like they could survive a new normal.
So this was Beanie in her full powers. This was the Beanie who’d told Wil to stop whining about calculus and to try things and, when Wil made fun of a cheerleader, had ordered her to try out for cheerleading. This Beanie had directed a pain-in-the-ass, bossy, loudmouthed kid who got suspended from preschool into a valedictorian with a full ride to Michigan.
Wil felt a little caught out.
But not as caught out as she might have felt a week ago. Which meant Beanie was right about Wil talking to Katie and to the lawyers and, as Katie had said, maybe about everything.
“You have been talking to Diana,” Wil tried, as a side door into whatever this conversation was going to be.
“Diana Price has been my best friend for my entire life. I would die for that woman. I would bury a body for that woman myself and use the trunk of my car to transport it. We’ve gotten each other through some things you can’t imagine, but you’ll understand someday. Of course we talk. We talk every day. And we definitely talk about our daughters.” Beanie crossed her arms. “And what they’re up to.”
Oops.Wil made herself hold steady. The rocking chair wasn’t sinking. She didn’t have to get away. She relaxed her grip on the chair’s arms. “Okay. Go ahead and ask me about it.”
“I will. First question, what happened between you and Katie in high school?”
Beanie Greene was worse than a lawyer, because she was the person who kept lawyers from making fools of themselves. Having a mom who was a paralegal meant that Wil could never get away with anything.
“Technically, nothing.”
“That ‘technically’ is doing a lot of work there.”
Beanie’s raised eyebrows made Wil want to rub her chest with the flat of her hand and reconsider a lot of the decisions she’d madesince she polished off the last of Diana’s delicious rolls at the holiday party. Katie’s recap of talking to Diana had given Wil a preview of this conversation, but it hadn’t prepared her to feel this shaky. This vulnerable.
But that just meant Wil had decided it was okay to be vulnerable with Katie Price and no one else. Not even her mother, who was her best friend.
She suddenly felt over it. Over protecting herself, or her dad’s memory, or her life, from risk and the truth.
“I’m sorry,” she started. “I’m not apologizing for being flip, I never will. I’m apologizing for not being honest, which I usually think I’m pretty good at.” Wil took a deep breath. “Nothing did happen between Katie and me in high school, at least nothing romantic. Nothing physical. But I do think that I loved her. Both of us had been around each other our whole lives, obviously, but I think… I think we needed such incredibly different things to grow up, we didn’t really notice each other. Does that make sense?”
Beanie nodded. Wil had to look away from her, because her intensity was too much.
“But something clicked at the very tail end of high school, which apparently everyone in fucking Green Bay noticed. The only thingwenoticed was that we wanted to spend all of our time together.” Wil felt her heart release like a wet knot from rope, and then, with that truth confessed to Beanie, feelings she hadn’t known she was holding were released, too.
“You didn’t know?” Beanie’s eyebrows had drawn together, betraying her surprise.
She’dknown. She’d known all this time, and Wil hadn’t, and they’d never talked about it.
Wil shook her head. “Only in retrospect, and only really whenKatie told me that, in retrospect, she realizedshehad been in love withme.”
Beanie looked toward the lamp, and Wil caught her wiping a tear off her face.
“Mom. What is it?”