TWELVE

Annaliese sat at the breakfast table with her mother and spooned out the sections of a grapefruit. She was unhappy with the situation of living back at home, but she didn’t let it show on her face. She slid the mask of calm indifference over her face and wore it like it was underwear—the kind of clothing you never forgot to put on because you always put it on first.

She still saw Trip during her classes at university, but it was hard to find other places for her to see him.

Their relationship had turned into the weirdest thing in the world. Instead of sneaking around like teenagers with a secret, they were sneaking around like they were having an affair. Except she was having it with her own husband.

They had a large break in the middle of the day on Tuesdays, so they’d simply go home to his studio apartment to be together for a few hours before the final class of the day began. Her weekends were watched fiercely. She was trotted off to the ballet, the opera, the theater, and anything else her mother could think of to keep her busy.

Her mother was happy during this time. Annaliese could tell, and she tried to appreciate the pleasant aspects of her current situation.

The fact that her biological mother had died and she was trapped in the apartment with her corpse for days was the one thing Annaliese had never been able to forget. She was best at forgetting it when she was with Trip. For one thing, he hadn’t known about the crowning spike of her painful past. For another, he was so dazzling and bright that it was easy for her to forget things that made her unhappy.

Annaliese could not believe it when her mother brought it up in that way, using her trauma to control her. Her mother did it because she was afraid. She was afraid of what would happen to Annaliese if all the boxes weren’t checked... if all the Ts weren’t crossed. She used the only tool she had left to make Annaliese proceed on the only safe path forward. Annaliese understood, but it didn’t make hearing those things any more palatable.

For the first week after Annaliese returned home, she was flung into the nightmare she had so steadily avoided when she was with Trip. He was gone, except when they sat next to each other in class, except in the precious two-hour gap on Tuesdays when he pressed his skin against her and comforted her. He never spoke to her about the things that she neglected to tell him. His consideration meant everything to her. Every time she touched him she compared every square inch of his skin to gold.

But she had to snap out of it. The nightmare was making her lag in her classes. If she lagged in her classes, she’d never get to be with Trip.

At the very least, the little books kept coming. He began writing them again and sliding them into her backpack. Sometimes he prepared more than one a day. He tried to say things that were more meaningful than ‘I love you’ over and over again, but a lot of the time, that was what came out when he started writing.

The third year of university started. She and Trip took all the same classes again, arranging for more than one break a week in the middle of the day. That year she got him on Tuesdays and Fridays.

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Or contrary-wise, he got her on Fridays and Tuesdays.

On Annaliese’s twenty-first birthday, her mother asked her what she would like as a present. She said, “I’d like to go skiing with Trip. Could I do that?”

Her mother sighed. “What would you spend the weekend doing if I forbade it?”

Annaliese went to her room and brought out the gift boxes. By that point, there were ten boxes. Annaliese opened them and showed the tiny bookcases filled with tiny books.

“What is this?” her mother asked curiously. “I didn’t realize you had a hobby like this.”

“I didn’t write them. Trip wrote them. He’s been writing these tiny books for me for years.” Annalese chose one at random and showed her mother how to open it so that it revealed a whole page of writing.

The one she picked was one that was written the autumn before they got married. Her mother read it carefully. “This was written four years ago. How long has Trip been in love with you?”

“I don’t know. Maybe since we were children. He confessed it the first time when we were sixteen and has been standing by my side ever since. You must know that I still see him and he still helps me with my classes.”

“It’s very noble of him to do that when you aren’t sleeping with him,” her mother said flatly.

Annaliese didn’t answer. If her mother wanted to believe that, Annaliese wasn’t going to correct her. She packed up the books and put them away.

Her mother tried to speak to her again. “I have nothing against him. I keep telling you, it isn’t about him. You can marry him when you finish law school if you both still want to.”

For Annaliese, it was like talking to a brick wall.

Annaliese wanted to leave home, she wanted to call it quits, to declare that she loved Trip with all her heart and she had to go to him… except that wasn’t true. If she closed her eyes, she remembered being a child who had just lost her mother and the fear inside her that tainted everything. For the first few years after being adopted, Annaliese would go check to see that her new mother and father hadn’t died in the night. Then she’d curl up on the floor to wait for them to wake up.

As an adult, Annaliese couldn’t imagine the goodness in her mother’s heart to take her into her home.

When Annaliese arrived, she had been swarming with lice, covered in bed bug bites, and caked in filth. Her name had been spelled Annaleeze like her name was a sneeze, and not like she was a precious child with a bright future. Instead, her name was the joke of a teenage drug addict. Her new mother treated her sores and picked her hair clean even though she was a high-power lawyer who had hardly touched a child in her life. She also changed Annaliese’s spelling to something beautiful and the way her new mother said her name made her feel like she was a precious child after all.

She remembered the new mother, so eager to do things right, so eager to spoil her with love and attention. Reading in a rocking chair. Watching cartoons together. Swinging at the park. There was no scraped knee or broken dream that her new mother couldn’t fix with laughter and love.

Trip had been there too, on those Sundays in the library, in the garden, and under the swaying trees. In those days he was a child, not a man who could give her the safety and security an adult could provide. Trip had been there for her when she needed him for the last five years, but her mother had been there since the tragedy and Annaliese couldn’t ignore it.

Not only that but sometimes in the present, she wondered if her mother was well. Her sixty-fifth birthday was coming up and sometimes waves of pain crossed her features like a shroud of pain fell upon her.

Annaliese couldn’t leave her mother, so she made do with Tuesdays and Fridays.