Rewrite the Stars by Christina Consolino (classic fiction TXT) 📗

the way. That snail—her favorite—ended up everywhere. I was tempted to call her back to us: a little interruption like that diffused the tension, at least a bit. It still hung in the air though.

“Well,” Sadie said. “What should we do? I’m at a loss, Theo. A true loss.”

“That’s a first. I swear you always know what to do, Sadie.”

Sadie’s face blanched, and she blinked her eyes. I scanned her face for a reason behind those actions but saw nothing. She’d always been the voice of reason, the beacon of common sense, the person to find the solution to many of our problems. Why not this time? I still trusted her, or I wouldn’t be living in the same house.

She shook her head. “This time, I don’t. I can keep an eye on them all, talk with them, see how they’re doing but—” A quick lift of her eyebrows and then nothing.

What did “but” mean? Did she want me to do more? Could I do more? Doc had been pleased with my involvement with the kids. Even with my episodes, I always had time for them. I had my own “but” though. That “but” roared to life.

“But what? It’s hard on you? It is, I get it. Because it’s all hard on me too. Fun fact: sometimes I wonder about all this, my life, you, the kids. Sometimes, I wish I hadn’t signed up for the service.” Bits of paint on the swing crumbled away as I gripped the arm with tight fingers. “I wonder about my dad and his propensity for depression and whether I should have gone to Afghanistan. Sometimes, I’d like to go back in time and redo everything. And I mean everything. As much as I love—,” I almost said “you” but pulled the word back, “the kids, I’m not sure I’d help you with that flat tire.”

A fire exploded in my chest. Those words had been unplanned. Did I mean them? The shock, the hurt that crossed Sadie’s face, pained me.

“Mom! I need you!” Delia’s screechy whine filtered through the cracked window. Any more conversation regarding this topic had to wait. Tentatively, I stretched out my hand to Sadie’s and squeezed her fingers before she jerked them away. If I’d learned one thing from Doc, it was I had to try and be present for my family. “This partnership,” Doc had said, “regardless of what it looks like at the present, needs everything you can give to it.” Even if it kills me? I’d thought. On some days, it felt like it might.

 

Chapter 17: Sadie

When I was young, I wouldn’t have won any awards for Most Observant Child. In fact, my mother used to yell at me, “Get your head out from under the pillow, Sadie! What are you, an ostrich? Look what’s right in front of you!” She said it loudly, and often, and even though she had messed up the idiom so completely, her meaning was clear. By the time my college years rolled around, Mom had spoken those same words to me so regularly, I always looked twice at everything, and oftentimes second-guessed myself.

Had I placed my head underneath the pillow once again? How had I not even considered how Theo might feel?

After a long day of work and far too much thinking, I considered texting Andrew and asking him to meet for coffee. The idea of a gentle friend to sit and listen to me, someone nonjudgmental, brought warmth to my soul. But I didn’t have the courage to do so; plus, if I did contact Andrew, my motives would be more spurred on by selfishness than anything else. Instead, I needed to do one of two things: be honest about Andrew or walk away and move forward with my life.

But Theo’s words had shaken me. In his heart, Theo would never trade in Charlie, Lexie, or Delia, or even our love that was; he’d been speaking from a bruised body and soul. No matter how much what he said had hurt me, I understood his stance. His words haunted me, though, as October gave way to November. We filled our lives with maintaining the necessities, both of us avoiding the topic of that conversation or possible therapy for the kids. We’d bring the subject up eventually, but Theo and I each went back to “putting our heads under the pillow,” as Mom would say. What Andrew would do if he were in the same situation niggled the back of my brain, but we hadn’t seen one another for a few weeks, and our texts to each other had dropped, mercifully, to simple hellos from time to time.

But one day in mid-November, I arranged to meet them—Andrew and his two kids—at the small creek that wound through the local arboretum. When they saw us, the three of them raised their arms in unison, hands undulating back and forth, almost as if meeting up occurred every week.

Andrew was a refreshing sight: tall and lean, a broad smile pasted to his face, a look that welcomed me forward to say “good afternoon.” He exuded calm and unfettered joy at the same time, putting me at ease in a way I wasn’t used to. Perhaps Andrew was right, and fate’s hand had brought us together.

Brooke volunteered to take the kids, my three and his two, to the butterfly house. Because it was fall, the house would be closed, but the kids had always enjoyed walking around outside the enclosed space, peering in through the windows and looking at the leftover foliage that had survived the caterpillars’ wrath. And the butterfly house was adjacent to the colossal Steepled Tree, an observation tower rising forty-six feet above a large cluster of conifer trees and one of the kids’ favorite places to visit while at the arboretum.

The children ran off in the direction of the butterfly house, feet scampering, dust and gravel flying, the side of Charlie’s face visible enough to witness an enormous smile