“I know,” she said, her voice going soft. “It’s just…you were always right down the street, and now you’re like three hours away if I break laws, and I hate that.” He heard the hesitation and fear in her tone. “What if something does happen and all of us are too far to get to you in time.”
“You want me to get life alert?” he pressed, and she smacked him in the side.
“Oh my god, stop. I just mean, you’re all the way out here on your own, okay? And you refuse to hire a driver, and you don’t actually know anyone. I hate that you felt like you had to put this many miles between us.”
“Not between me and you,” he told her. He touched the edge of her arm, then followed the path to her face and cupped her cheek against his hand. His visual memory was strange and abstract. After the stroke, the doctors had told him it would be one of the first things to go as he aged into his blindness, and they hadn’t been wrong.
But he still experienced her growing up. The way her voice changed, how far he had to reach down for her hand, the way her cheeks had gone from round and chubby to slender and sharp, just like her mother’s. He didn’t need to see her to know that he’d raised a beautiful, strong woman. And in many ways, she was the product of Jacqueline’s conditioning, but she was tougher than most people gave her credit for.
And she was trying.
“I have a grocery delivery coming today,” he told her and offered a smile. “I have that fancy new app your brother sent me that lets me call someone, and they can use my phone camera to see what things are. I have my label maker with plenty of refill rolls and my Penfriend. I have all my gadgets and…”
“I’m sorry,” she interrupted, and her hands curled around his wrists, squeezing. “I know I’m being a pain in the ass. But with the divorce, and you moving, and even Ilan quitting his job, it feels like the floor just fell out from under me.”
Fredric’s brows dipped. “Ilan quit his job? Did something happen?” Ilan loved being a doctor—it was the one thing he took pride in. Fredric remembered going to his graduation the day he finished medical school. He remembered the way the man’s hands shook as Fredric took him in a hug and the quiet note of both fear and hope, because he’d done something he had always doubted he would be able to accomplish.
“I guess he’s moving his practice?” Corinne said, and Fredric let out a sigh of relief.
“So, he’s not giving up his profession.”
“Not that I’m aware of.” She stepped away from Fredric, and after a beat, he heard the sound of the waterspout on the fridge filling her glass. She took a drink, and then set it down on the counter with a gentle click of glass on granite. “He posted about it on Facebook. He and I haven’t talked much since Christmas.”
Christmas—the first one without Jacqueline, the start to his new life as they gathered at Julian’s house and gave him the courage to go after the one person that really mattered in his life. He’d ridden back home with Ilan, and he couldn’t deny there had been a sort of sadness in Ilan’s voice, but Fredric was still reeling from his son moving, and he hadn’t asked.
He wondered if he’d done the man a disservice by not keeping in touch, because Ilan was like family—and Fredric was trying his damndest to stop letting these people down. “I should call him,” he said, and he heard Corinne scoff.
“Not like he ever picks up the damn phone anyway. And I’m sure he’s fine. I mean, he seemed kind of excited about it. He’s gonna start practicing somewhere else, and his house sold after like three days on the market.” Corrine paused. “Asshole.”
Fredric laughed, then drained the water from his glass and felt behind him until his fingers touched the stool. It felt good to sit—he’d been on his feet setting up his place and spending time making it feel like his rather than an empty shell of what he’d left behind.
Every second of his day in his old home had catered to his ex-wife. The single rule that nothing be moved had been followed, but he had no fingerprint in the place he’d lived for nearly all of his adult life. And he felt that in the way his throat went dry and his eyes went hot when he was setting up his bookshelves in the living room.
He kept listening for the click of high heels on the floor, the soft breath before the tirade. He braced himself to be berated and shamed for the choices he made—for taking up space. And those moments never came, because they were over, and he wasn’t quite sure how to accept that.
The first night in his own bed, he was lonely. And it was absurd, because he and Jacqueline hadn’t shared a bed in more years than he wanted to count, but there was something about knowing she was a few doors down from him that made the silence bearable. And then he hated himself for missing her, because she’d been the mother of his children but also a source of misery that went so deep, he had no words to describe it.
Abuse, Julian had called it, and Fredric’s first response was to deny it, but he was too old and too educated to make himself say the lie aloud. He knew what Jacqueline had done. To him. To their children. Reality was bitter—the sort of bitter that made his mouth dry and teeth ache.
“How are you sleeping?” Corinne asked, and Fredric wondered if the insomnia was obvious.
He pressed his fingers just under his eyes, but he couldn’t really tell if he was more puffy than usual. There were new wrinkles, but he was getting used to that more and more. “I have my pills,” he told her. And he did, but he wanted to develop his new normal before falling back into old habits. “It’s going to be an adjustment, and that’s okay. I really want you to stop worrying so much.”
She sighed, sounding put-upon, and he loved her for it. “Are you at least going to try to make friends in this random early retirement life?”
Fredric laughed, and he heard the sound of the dog door a few seconds before Bastian leaned into him. He reached down and gave the dog’s cheeks a scritch. “I’ve already started. My neighbor and her partner invited me over for dinner.”
“Why?” Corinne asked, her voice sharp.
Fredric couldn’t help but wonder if any of them would grow out of the fear that everyone wanted something for a reason. That everything was a manipulation, a method of control. “I think she’s trying to be nice,” he offered. “She’s younger, really sweet. Bas loved her.”
“You have to stop using your dog as your baseline for trust,” Corinne complained.
Fredric leaned all the way forward and buried his face in the fur on Sebastian’s head. “I will once he stops leading me in the right direction.”
Corinne didn’t stay much longer after that, and he was grateful for it. He missed his family like they were pieces of him he had to carve away, but he knew he couldn’t do this with them under-foot. Jacqueline was waiting for him to fail—would be waiting for him to fail, even as she stepped into a new marriage and new life.
And maybe it would bring her some relief, in the end. She had looked at him like a burden—every accommodation, every visible aid that Fredric needed that told the world he was blind had been a reminder that nothing she’d wanted from her life and marriage had gone to plan.