Part 3
Valerie did not sleep well that night. She kept hearing Carol’s voice, not because it was unfamiliar, but because it was not. It moved through the apartment with the same confidence Valerie’s own voice had used for years when she called Mia and asked whether stage makeup was really necessary, whether dancers had retirement plans, whether any decent man wanted a wife who came home after midnight smelling like hairspray and sweat.
By morning, she had convinced herself the comparison was unfair. Mia was not Megan. Valerie was not Carol. Worrying about a daughter was not the same as dismantling her.
Still, when Mia called Sunday afternoon, Valerie let it go to voicemail.
That became the rhythm of her new life: weekday shifts at the old movie theater on North Clark, where she tore tickets, wiped counters, and learned that teenagers were less frightening when you could confiscate outside snacks; evenings at home with microwave dinners she pretended were temporary; Saturday mornings in Megan’s kitchen with a legal pad, a speakerphone, and a woman’s voice that could reduce Megan to silence from two hundred miles away.
The movie theater paid badly but honestly. Valerie liked the dark corridors and the velvet ropes, the smell of popcorn, the elderly couples who came to matinees and thanked her as if she had personally arranged the film. Her manager, a twenty-six-year-old named Trevor, spoke to her with such exaggerated respect that she suspected he thought she might break.
She did not break.
Megan, meanwhile, began changing in increments so small Valerie almost missed them. She stopped answering every text immediately. She bought a dress she liked without sending Carol a picture first. She went on a second date with a man named Mark who taught high school history and had kind eyes in photographs. She also still ate too fast when she was anxious, still vanished to the bathroom after meals often enough that Valerie finally set down her tea one Saturday and said, “You need to talk to your doctor about that.”
Megan froze.
“I have a therapist.”
“A therapist is not a doctor.”
“It’s embarrassing.”
“Lots of medical things are embarrassing. That is why gowns open in the back.”
Megan barked a laugh, then cried into a napkin for reasons neither of them named.
Valerie did not pretend to cure her. She did not know how. She only sat nearby while Megan made the appointment, and when Megan’s hands shook too badly to type, Valerie read the office number aloud from the website. After that, they did not discuss it unless Megan chose to, and oddly, that silence did more for their trust than any advice Valerie had given.
One rainy Saturday in April, Carol canceled their weekly call because a neighbor had invited her to a church rummage sale. Megan looked so relieved she seemed ashamed of it. She made tea anyway, and they sat at the kitchen table while rain threaded down the window glass.
“You ever think your husband did you a favor?” Megan asked.
Valerie nearly choked. “No.”
“I don’t mean the cheating. That was garbage. I mean leaving. Maybe you were stuck.”
“I had a home.”
“You had a job you weren’t paid for.”
Valerie looked toward the living room, where a throw blanket had slid halfway off the couch. Six weeks earlier, she would have stood to fold it. Now she let it lie.
“I was good at it,” she said.
“I believe you.”
The simple answer disarmed her.
Valerie told Megan about Alan then, not the polished version she gave acquaintances, but the smaller, uglier facts. How Linda had once cut her hair badly and Valerie had disliked her on principle. How Alan had cried while packing his sweaters, which annoyed Valerie more than if he had been cruel. How she missed the sound of him clearing his throat in the morning even though she did not particularly miss his opinions.
Megan listened without interrupting. When Valerie admitted she sometimes imagined Linda in the cabin garden, kneeling among tomato plants in that ridiculous floral dress, Megan laughed so hard she had to wipe her eyes.
“Tell Carol that next time she hates my job,” she said. “At least I didn’t run off with a married man in a peony tarp.”
Valerie tried not to smile and failed.
Eventually Megan asked about Mia. Valerie gave the usual answer: Las Vegas, dancer, busy schedule, very independent. Megan tilted her head.
“You say dancer like other people say felony.”
“I do not.”
“You do.”
Valerie looked into her tea. “I spent years giving her every opportunity.”
“And she used them.”
“To dance half-naked.”
“To dance professionally. Those are different sentences.”
Valerie had a sharp reply ready. She always had one. But it came slowly now, and by the time it reached her tongue, she no longer wanted it.
The rain thickened. Megan reached across the table for a tin of cookies, and as she did, her elbow brushed Valerie’s purse from the chair. The clasp popped open. A folded grocery list slipped out, along with a small photograph Valerie had been carrying for reasons she refused to examine.
Megan bent to pick it up.
Valerie moved too late.
The photograph was old, the color faded toward amber. Two young women stood on a porch in summer dresses, their arms thrown around each other, laughing at someone outside the frame. One was Valerie at twenty-two, narrow-waisted and unsmiling only because she had been caught between laughs. The other was Diane, her younger sister, all dimples and bright eyes.
The right side of the picture had been cut away with scissors.
Megan turned it over. There was handwriting on the back.
Val, Diane, Jack — June 1984.
Megan’s thumb moved over the missing edge.
“Who’s Jack?” she asked.
Valerie held out her hand. “Give it back.”
Megan did not argue. She returned the photograph carefully, as if it might crumble.
Valerie put it into her purse and snapped the clasp. Her heart had begun to beat in a foolish, youthful way she despised. The room seemed smaller than it had a minute before, full of cinnamon tea, rain, and a name she had not heard aloud in years. Megan watched her across the table. “Valerie,” she said softly, “who did you cut out of that picture…”
To read the rest of the story – CLICK the NEXT button 👇👇👇