“Because our daughter takes after me more than you.”
“Like you would have so easily accepted what was happening!”
Becky shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. I wasn’t there. But I certainly would have been less of a little bugger about it.”
“Yeah, well, not everyone can be so easy-going, Becks.”
“Easy-going, he says! As if I didn’t spend the last five years of our marriage pulling my hair out because the only happiness I got was when he was out of the house!”
“You had no problem living in this house when we were married.”
“It was always more your house than…” Becky glanced at Thelma. “Wait, was this house…”
She shook her head. “We didn’t live in Van Nuys. We were closer to Irvine than anywhere near the Valley.”
“Oh, great, so my ex-husband made me live in Van Nuys just because the real estate was cheaper at the time.”
“Guess how much this house is worth now.” Robbie chuckled in triumph. “Go on.”
“I don’t care, Rob. That’s Megan’s matter.”
The two of them continued to bicker like an old married couple, and for a moment, Thelma indulged in the idea that they werestillmarried and her Robbie was well taken care of in his sickness and health.
Except he had driven this woman, the mother of his child, away. Perhaps Becky wasn’t a perfectly innocent party in the divorce, but Thelma knew what it was like to have the family life stacked against her.She was able to file for divorce. No fault.It blew Thelma’s mind. To have that kind of power…
Eventually, the bickering turned to talking about the cancer, which made Robbie so uncomfortable that Becky demanded to see the hospital paperwork since he couldn’t bring himself to talk about. He ducked back inside his house, leaving the women to themselves.
“I’m so sorry for how he turned out,” Thelma said in a rare moment of addressing the ugly elephant in the room. “He was always a willful boy. Sensitive, but didn’t share much. But I should have been there to help him not be… more like this.”
“Ah, well…” Becky sighed again. “The thing about Rob is that he can be a living canker sore, this is true, but there’s a teddy bear in there. I do think your disappearance did a number on him, but it sounds like it wasn’t your fault at all. I mean… time travel?”
“I know it affected him terribly. That’s why I feel awful. I shouldn’t have gone out that night. I should have run my errands that afternoon like normal. But I was… caught up. In selfishness. Sinful indulgence.”
Becky studied her for a few seconds before offering her observation. “You couldn’t have known. Instead, you became a part of history. Literally.”
“Yes, indeed. And I couldn’t be there for my children. Debbie didn’t get to have a mother to guide her into womanhood, and Robbie probably internalized so much of the stress and grief of the situation. They thought I wasdead,Becky. Or, worse, that I had abandoned them!”
“For what it’s worth, I assumed you were dead.”
Something about such candor made Thelma laugh uncomfortably loudly. As her whole chest shook, all she could think wasI wish I could have known this woman when she was my son’s wife.They probably would have gotten along swimmingly, much to Robbie’s chagrin.He would have loved it.
“It seems that our Robert has been surrounded by strong women his whole life.”
“Well, I don’t know about his stepmother. Apparently, Mary wasn’t that into child-rearing. From both Rob and Deb’s telling, Mary was enamored with Bill, but not so much the children.”
Thelma’s heart sank. “That’s unfortunate for everyone involved.”
“I never met Bill, since he died before I was in the picture, but I’m sure he did his best in the wake of everything.”
“You mean my disappearing and people assuming he did something?”
Becky snorted into her cup. “Uh-huh.”
“What else did he tell you about me?”
“Not much, honestly. Just that you were always perfectly dressed and people liked you.”
That’s my legacy, huh?Well, at least he hadn’t talked about findingLesbians From Outer Spacein her hope chest. At least some things remained sacred around there.
