Shelby turned her head, giving me a great shot of her side profile, and gave me a look that made me laugh.
“I had to fend her off with a stick,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because she was mean. She was mean to Dusty. Mean to you. She would have eaten you alive. You didn’t see that in people back then. You didn’t want to see it. You only saw the good things, but a girl like her would have crushed you. So Dusty and I kept her away.”
“Crushed me? Wasn’t she a cheerleader? I could have taken her.”
“I just wonder if it would have been like that if I had stuck around.”
For a brief second, I imagined my life if Shelby hadn’t ever left Eugene. Would she have liked Miranda? I almost snorted at the thought. No. She most definitely wouldnothave liked her, and she wouldn’t have been shy about letting me know. But I also knew that I wouldn’t have been in the frame of mind to let Shelby tell me anything.
“So…you got married…” she prompted, waiting for me to fill in the rest of the story.
“We got married. A few months later, she was pregnant.”
“How’d that go over?”
I tried to put into words the emotions suddenly coursing through me right now. “Well, she’d been getting restless. Bored, I think. The wedding was old news. She was off the market. So I think the pregnancy was exciting to her at first. It put her back in first place with all her friends. I remember her acting really happy, which I thought was a good thing. The baby thing was another exciting development she could shout about. But it always felt like theideaof it was more exciting than anything else, but I kept talking myself out of thoughts like that. I had to be wrong. But obviously, I wasn’t.”
Suddenly, this whole conversation exhausted me, and I attempted to speed things up.
“Then we had the baby. She got lots of attention that first year. Acted like the perfect mom. Got after me about everything. Then her social life tanked. She got restless and, from what I can tell, carefully began making her exit plan over the next couple of years.”
“Where is she now?”
“Paris, last I heard. I came home from work one day and found her bags all packed, and she told me she was leaving.”
It had been a long time since I’d allowed myself to think about that day, but I couldn’t stop the memories from infiltrating my thoughts. Miranda had been impatient to leave by the time I arrived home that day. Adventure awaited her in the form of a backpacking trip through Europe with some of her online friends she’d met from who knows where.
“What did she say?” Shelby asked.
I breathed out a laugh that had no trace of humor. Miranda’s words had been full of self-righteous indignation that stillburned me up inside. “She said a lot of things. She had to live her life. She was dying here. She got married too young. She tried too hard to fit the expectations of me and everyone else in her life. She wasn’t meant for this life. She wasn’t fit to be a mom. Or a wife. Sophie would be better off without her. And my personal favorite: maybe one day, Sophie would see her on a runway in Paris and be proud of her.”
Shelby gasped, holding a hand over her mouth.
There wasn’t much more I could tell Shelby. I’d probably said enough. The gutted and empty feeling of that day settled over me once again.
Our house hadn’t been much of a home for a while, but even with that knowledge, it was a devastating blow. Miranda had been planning it all for a long time. I listened to all her excuses, and I didn’t say a word. I didn’t fight her on anything. She was already gone. I was terrified that if I opened my mouth, the only thing that would come out would be tears, and I wouldn’t give that to her.
Sophie was watching cartoons on TV when the woman who gave her life kissed the back of her head, raised her chin, and, with a defiant glance at me, stepped out of our home forever.
Miranda had taken the most important things in her possession that could fit in four bags of luggage and a couple of boxes. She took her designer clothes and jewelry. The cashmere sweaters and shoes, and boots made by Italian names I couldn’t pronounce. Our meager savings was wiped clean—her payout for childcare the past three years, she’d told me, reducing her daughter to a few paychecks. Among the things left behind were the photos of our time together. Our wedding album sat collecting dust. Every picture of our daughter was still in its place. The photo album of Sophie’s first year still sat on the coffee table in the living room. She never bothered to documentmuch beyond that. I’m now wishing I had thought more about pictures.
But then again…did I want Sophie to remember? Though she wouldn’t remember that particular moment, the events of that day would be a branding iron on her innocent life. A burn that would scar her for eternity. I knew all too well the pain of a selfish parent, and I almost couldn’t breathe at the thought of bringing this to her. And I did bring it to her.
Mychoices brought this to her. We would forever be broken. I had been chasing a dream all along, but the perfect family was never in the cards for me. I just found out too late. And now, not only at the cost of me but at the cost of Sophie.
We rode on for a while in silence. For once, Shelby didn’t press me any further, and I could only be grateful.
21
SHELBY
We arrivedat the camp an hour before sunset. With the exception of Jake and little Carter, who bounced around with no ill effect, Tom and I needed to work out the saddle-sore muscles in our legs. So we opted for a short hike to an overlook to see the valley, of which I took approximately thirty-five thousand pictures.
We even saw a family of mountain goats climbing the cliffs—my finger at the ready on the camera trigger. There was something that sparked my soul alive on this trip. Maybe it was a dad and his adorable son who constantly made us laugh. Maybe it was the smell of the pines.