Because I was a lesbian, she finished silently and marveled again at how this one truth had triggered an avalanche of understanding.
“I’m glad. I’d never wish that feeling on anyone, least of all you.”
Anne had a sudden flash of insight. “Is this related to you not wanting, ah, your turn? When we were in that motel room?”
“Yes.” Now Sadie’s voice was mostly steady. “When you put your hands on my waist, it felt like euphoria and dread allscribbled together. Like your touch knew how to call out my deepest needs and my sharpest fears at the exact same time. I know you’re not Fred; Iknow. But, Anne, I’ve watched you punish yourself for years.”
“What?” Anne wasn’t following Sadie’s logic. “I don’t understand.”
“You look at your body with so much viciousness,” Sadie said softly. “And even after Joshua Tree, I couldn’t fully understand how you used those same eyes to see me andmybody with desire. It didn’t make sense. How could you be attracted to me when you’ve spent your life doing everything possible not to look like me? So I wondered—I wondered if there was a part of you, even a small part, that saw me the same way you see yourself. And maybe that part didn’t want me.” She took a breath. “Like Fred didn’t want me.”
“Oh,Sadie.” Anne felt stunned. She’d never said or even thought one negative word about Sadie’s body—she adored Sadie’s hourglass shape, its gorgeous generosity, had tried for years not to let her gaze linger—but she hadn’t ever considered how her own self-flagellation might make Sadie feel by comparison. “There’s nothing wrong with your body at all. It’s beautiful.”
“Of course it is.” Sadie said it matter-of-factly. “But I couldn’t be entirely sure you knew it, too. Do you remember that woman at Purple Poppy? Your former friend? I got rattled when she made those snide comments.”
“Yes. Brenda.”
“I don’t give a damn what a stranger thinks about me,” Sadie said firmly. “What upset me that day was that I wondered, just for a second, if deep down you agreed with her.”
There was shame you didn’t deserve to feel, and shame you did. This was the latter. “Never. How I think about how myself and how I think about you—it’s not the same, honey. Not at all. Ipromise. Please know that I’m so much harder on myself than I am on anyone else.”
“I do know that.” Sadie’s voice was gentle. “You know, my beloved, you’ve never done anything so terrible that you deserve your own cruelty.”
Sudden tears pricked at Anne’s eyes. “Just know that I’m very attracted to you,” she said a little shakily. “Very. Exactly the way you are.”
“That feels good to hear.” A little quiver in Sadie’s inhale.
Hearwasn’t the same thing asbelieve. With a lump in her throat, Anne thought back to her conversation with Brooke and the question her youngest daughter had blurted out once she’d accepted her mother’s truth.Is this why you were always so sad?She’d never imagined that her children were impacted by what Anne believed had been her own private pain.
She’d never imagined that the cruelty she directed inward could hurt Sadie either.
“I’ll show you how sincere I am,” Anne said hoarsely, with every scrap of honesty she could muster. “I’ll show you with my eyes and my hands and my mouth and my voice. I’ll show you for the rest of my life, until I’ve erased every bit of your doubt. I’ve spent sixty years lying to myself, Sadie. Believe me when I say that I’m done avoiding the truth. With anyone. But especially with you.”
For a long moment, silence. Then Sadie’s soft, long exhale, as though she were letting out a breath she’d been holding the entire week.
“I meant everything I said in that email,” Sadie whispered. “Here’s all of me, Anne. I trust you. I do.”
Sadie’s words in her love letter, still on Anne’s laptop screen.You say to your beloved: In opening myself to you I’m giving you the chance to hurt me horribly. But you say, too: The joy you give me is worth any devastation.
A gift. Anne closed her eyes briefly as she received it, and her heart cramped, a sudden spasm of unbearable joy. Not breaking, but a kind of fracture just the same. Like the muscle had shuddered into something open.
“Do you know,” she managed, “somehow, when I wasn’t paying attention, being with you became the thing I need most in the world?”
“I need it more than anything, too. It feels like the night before my birthday when I was a kid. Look, if I pull on the moon, do you think it’ll set faster?”
Anne laughed, sniffling a little, and wiped her cheek. “The sooner I get to see you, the better.”
“Yes,” Sadie said, and there was so much need in her voice that Anne felt a little dizzy. “I’m starving for you.”
“We’ll have plenty of time once they all go home.” Anne hesitated. “I can—I want to kiss you again. If you’d like.”
“I’d like a lot more than that.”
Instantly, heat rushed back into Anne’s face. Other parts, too. “What are you saying? You don’t need more space?”
“I’vehadspace,” Sadie exclaimed, “sixdaysof space, five nights of lying in bed and not being able to sleep because I can’t stop thinking about you. Last night, I was so sleep deprived I convinced myself you’d changed your mind while I’ve been away, that you didn’t want a life with me anymore. I lay awake at two in the morning, and I could just see, clear as cleaned windows, how it would all unspool from there. You’d walk away from me and right into the toned arms of Josephine.”
“Josephine?” Anne managed.