Karin Slaughter - Faithless

Tessa walked to the refrigerator and took out a tub of ice cream, returning to the original subject. “You have to let this go, Sara. Jeffrey did what he did, and nothing’s going to change that. Either he’s back in your life or he’s not, but you can’t keep yo-yoing him back and forth.” She pried off the top to the ice cream. “You want some?”

“I shouldn’t,” Sara told her, holding out her plate.

“I’ve always been the cheater, not the cheatee,” Tessa pointed out, taking two spoons from the drawer, closing it with her hip. “ Devon just left. He didn’t cheat. At least I don’t think he cheated.” She dropped several spoonfuls of Blue Bell onto Sara’s plate. “Maybe he cheated.”

Sara held her other hand under the paper plate so that it wouldn’t fold from the weight. “I don’t think so.”

“No,” she agreed. “He barely had time for me, let alone another woman. Did I tell you about the time he fell asleep right in the middle of it?” Sara nodded. “Jesus, how do people stay interested in each other for fifty years?”

Sara shrugged. She was hardly an expert.

“God, but he was good in bed when he was awake.” Tessa sighed, holding the spoon in her mouth. “That’s one thing you have to keep in mind with Jeffrey. Never underestimate the value of sexual chemistry.” She scooped more ice cream onto Sara’s plate. “ Devon was bored with me.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“I mean it,” she said. “He was bored. He didn’t want to do things anymore.”

“Like go out?”

“Like, the only way I could get him to go down on me was put a television on my stomach and wire the remote control to my-”

“Tess!”

She chuckled, taking a big bite of ice cream. Sara could remember the last time they’d eaten ice cream together. The day that Tessa had been attacked, they had gone to the Dairy Queen for milk shakes. Two hours later, Tessa was lying on the ground with her head split open, her child dead inside of her.

Tessa braced her hands on the counter and squeezed her eyes shut. Sara bolted from her chair, alarmed, until Tessa explained, “Ice cream headache.”

“I’ll get you some water.”

“I got it.” She put her head under the kitchen faucet and took a swig. She wiped her mouth, asking, “Yeesh, why does that happen?”

“The trigeminal nerve in the-”

Tessa cut her off with a look. “You don’t have to answer every question, Sara.”

Sara took this as a rebuke, and looked down at her plate.

Tessa took a less generous bite of ice cream before going back to the subject of Devon. “I just miss him.”

“I know, sweetie.”

There was nothing more to say on the matter. In Sara’s opinion, Devon had shown his true colors at the end, slinking out when things got tough. Her sister was well rid of him, though Sara understood that was hard for Tessa to grasp at this point. For Sara’s part, the one time she had seen Devon downtown, she had crossed the street so that she would not have to pass him on the sidewalk. Jeffrey had been with her, and she had practically ripped his arm off in order to keep him from going over and saying something to the other man.

Out of the blue, Tessa said, “I’m not going to have sex anymore.”

Sara barked out a laugh.

“I’m serious.”

“Why?”

“Do you have any Cheetos?”

Sara went to the cabinet to fetch the bag. She tried to tread cautiously when she asked, “Is it this new church?”

“No.” Tessa took the bag. “Maybe.” She used her teeth to open the package. “It’s just that what I’ve been doing so far isn’t working. I’d be pretty stupid to keep on doing it.”

“What isn’t working?”

Tessa just shook her head. “Everything.” She offered the bag of Cheetos to Sara, but she refused, instead tugging open the zipper of her skirt so she could breathe.

Tessa asked, “Has anyone told you why Bella is here?”

“I was hoping you’d know.”

“They won’t tell me anything. Every time I walk into the room, they stop talking. I’m like a walking mute button.”

“Me, too,” Sara realized.

“Will you do me a favor?” Tessa asked.

“Of course,” Sara offered, noting the change in Tessa’s tone.

“Come to church with me Wednesday night.”

Sara felt like a fish that had just been thrown from its tank, her mouth gaping open as she tried to think of an excuse.

“It’s not even church,” Tessa said. “It’s more like a fellowship meeting. Just people hanging around, talking. They’ve even got honey buns.”

“Tess…”

“I know you don’t want to go, but I want you there.” Tessa shrugged. “Do it for me.”

This had been Cathy’s device for guilting her two daughters into attending Easter and Christmas services for the last twenty years.

“Tessie,” Sara began, “you know I don’t believe-”

“I’m not sure I do, either,” Tessa interrupted. “But it feels good to be there.”

Sara stood to put the roast in the refrigerator.

“I met Thomas in physical therapy a few months ago.”

“Who’s Thomas?”

“He’s kind of the leader of the church,” Tessa answered. “He had a stroke a while back. It was pretty bad. He’s really hard to understand, but there’s this way he has of talking to you without saying a word.”

The dishwasher had clean dishes from several days ago, and Sara started to empty it just to give herself something to do.

“It was weird,” Tessa continued. “I was doing my stupid motor exercises, putting the pegs in the right holes, when I felt like someone was staring at me, and I looked up and it was this old guy in a wheelchair. He called me Cathy.”

“Cathy?” Sara repeated.

“Yeah, he knows Mama.”

“How does he know Mama?” Sara asked, certain that she knew all her mother’s friends.

“I don’t know.”

“Did you ask her?”

“I tried to, but she was busy.”

Sara closed the dishwasher and leaned against the counter. “What happened then?”

“He asked if I wanted to come to church.” Tessa paused a beat. “Being up there in physical therapy, seeing all these people who are so much worse off than I am…” She shrugged. “It really put things into perspective, you know? Like how much I’ve been wasting my life.”

“You haven’t been wasting your life.”

“I’m thirty-four years old and I still live with my parents.”

“Over the garage.”

Tessa sighed. “I just think what happened to me shouldn’t go to waste.”

“It shouldn’t have happened at all.”

“I was lying in that hospital bed feeling so sorry for myself, so pissed at the world for what happened. And then it hit me. I’ve been selfish all my life.”

“You have not.”

“Yes I have. Even you said that.”

Sara had never regretted her words so much in her life. “I was angry with you, Tess.”

“You know what? It’s like when people are drunk and they say they didn’t mean to say something and you should just excuse them and forget it because they’d been drinking.” She explained, “Alcohol lowers your inhibitions. It doesn’t make you pull lies out of your ass. You got angry with me and said what you were thinking in your head.”

“I didn’t,” Sara tried to assure her, but even to her own ears, the defense fell flat.

“I almost died, and for what? What have I done with my life?” Her hands were clenched in fists. Again, she shifted her focus. “If you died, what’s the one thing you would regret not doing?”

Instantly, Sara thought but did not say, “Having a child.”

Tessa read her expression. “You could always adopt.”

Sara shrugged. She could not answer.