“...the companions of our childhood always possess a certain power over our minds which hardly any later friend can obtain.”
—Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Louisville, Kentucky, 2015
All Allison wanted was for this conversation to be over. That and she hoped the heavy gray clouds would part and the sun would appear. It could go either way today—sun or rain. She stood at the kitchen window, peeling old white paint off the sill as she waited for the Kentucky sky to make up its mind. Meanwhile, sitting behind her at the table, her lover, Cooper McQueen, gently ruined her life.
Then, a small mercy—the clouds split wide open. The sun shone bright enough to momentarily blind her. She exhaled in her relief. Allison had always loved the rain. She could forgive McQueen for leaving. She would never forgive him if he’d ruined the rain for her.
“She’s pregnant,” McQueen said. “She’s due in April.”
“You’re happy about it,” Allison said, working another strip of paint off the edge of the frame. She felt a silly sort of triumph when it came off in one long white ribbon.
“Cricket,” he said softly, apologetically. “Look at me.”
Allison wanted to walk out right then, walk out and never look back. She should have, she knew. Instead, she turned around and faced him. He’d just ended it and here she was, still obeying his every command.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“It’s all right, McQueen,” she said, shrugging. “We knew this would happen eventually. Not you getting some strange woman you picked up in a bar pregnant, I mean. But...”
“But...” He sat back in the chair.
“You are happy about it, though, aren’t you?” she asked. “You can be honest with me. I’d appreciate it.”
She was lying. She was lying through her teeth. She didn’t want him to be honest with her. She wanted him to lie to her, lie as hard as she was lying to him. She wanted him to tell her he wasn’t happy about it at all, that he didn’t want to end it, that his hand had been forced, that if given the choice he’d throw caution to the wind and marry Allison tomorrow, even if it did cause a scandal, even if it meant his kids might never speak to him again...
“Yes,” he said. “I’m happy about it.”
“I’m happy for you, too, then.”
Another lie.
Allison had sensed that morning that today was going to be the day. Instead of calling her to let her know when he’d drop by—for sex, of course, there was no other reason he ever called her—he’d called instead to tell her he had some mail of hers he was bringing over and a pair of earrings he’d found in his bathroom drawer.
“She has her own money. She’s thirty-seven. A little bit more age-appropriate than you,” he said. A joke. He was trying to make her laugh and, damn him, it worked. But it was a very small laugh. Her lover—or, she supposed, ex-lover—was Cooper McQueen, who was very possibly a billionaire if one got creative enough with the accounting. He was also forty-five to her twenty-five. She’d been his mistress for six years, although she’d known him for seven. The worst part of it all was what a cliché the whole tawdry thing was. At eighteen she’d gotten a job working for McQueen as his daughter Emmy’s weekend babysitter.
“Congratulations,” Allison said. He was trying to spare her pain by not admitting how thrilled he was to have child number three on the way. He and his wife had divorced after two kids, and he’d