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She’s only here because of Betsy.
Carla lay straight-backed in the dark. Three am. She’d woken bolt awake an hour ago. Eyes open, brain racing. She didn’t move a muscle. The blanket was warm and soft. On another night, she might have snuggled back down into the covers. Rolled over, flipped her pillow seeking the cold side. She’d had so many hours over the years, awake, her mind rolling, plans and worries, the Factory, Peter, a hundred other crises that had come to naught or maybe all.
She’s only here because of Betsy.
Lisa grumbled softly beside her. Small spoon at her side. Her warm back pressed against Carla’s side. She was not used to this, wondered if she ever would be. Such a big bed yet never out of reach. Lisa’s hand reached back, fumbling half in the air, and closed on her wrist before sliding to entwine their fingers. Lisa mumbled something that sounded vaguely like better, and slid back into deep sleep. Claimed, Carla closed her eyes and tried to summon sleep.
She’s only here because of Betsy.
Becky. Her eyes twitched open again. Freckled, ginger, the face peering out from the photos she’d tried to ignore for a year. Just when the three of them had learned to live, to grow, around it. The ghost walked through their front door, and planted herself at their island. Seeping into all the spaces they had clawed out for themselves, sucking the oxygen from the room every time she walked in.
She’s only here because of Betsy.
Betsy loved her. Hated her. Drawn inextricably toward her. Making up for lost time she said, but more than that. Grasping. Clinging. Pushing. Everything she’d always done to Lisa but all at once, magnified as if four years could be repaid in four weeks. And Lisa standing right there, bewildered.
Whatever Becky might imagine, she knew Lisa was unwavering. After the years of misery, Lisa was not about to be swayed. She’d been a widow. Had Becky stayed dead, Carla knew, she would have always inhabited a part of Lisa’s heart untouchable by any other love.
She and Lisa had made their life together around the scattered scars – of Becky, of Liam, of Haley and Johnny and everyone else who held a piece of each of them. Carla smiled at the thought. The benefit of age was knowing her heart expanded when ripped in two. And the mended places were tender enough to have grown this new, and definitely unexpected, love.
But Becky wasn’t dead and the woman Lisa had been, had become these last four years, was suddenly without sure footing. Carla knew as much as she could know anything, that Lisa’s future wasn’t Becky. She just wasn’t sure anymore that it was her.
She’s only here because of Betsy.
The first time she had seen Lisa cry, she’d been crying over Betsy. She’d shocked herself, pulling open the car door and sliding in. But it had seemed almost like the woman was foundering, slipping below the surface. She could not just stand there and watch a woman drown in her own tears. So she’d opened the door and blindly thrown a lifeline.
Because of Betsy.