Perfect Catch(44)

Chapter Twenty

After three days in the children’s wing of the hospital, the doctors declared Olivia in suitable condition to go home. Kevin, still recovering in the adult ward, would be required to stick around a few days longer. Alice didn’t want to be grateful to Matt for covering Kevin’s hospital bill—she didn’t want to thank him for anything—but as the days added up and the tests and treatments were piled on, she was happy she didn’t have to worry about paying for everything.

Matt didn’t stick around long. He stayed true to his promise and held out until Liv woke up the second time, and remained through a full day, but by the time her second day in the hospital dawned and they moved her into the children’s area, he announced he had to get back to New York.

Mets were playing the Phillies. God forbid he miss it.

In true Matt fashion, he left with a flourish. He went out and got a brand new iPad, loaded it up with games and kid-friendly movies and presented it to Olivia with his apologies.

Poor kid. How was she supposed to treat him like a villain when he kept twisting her little brain up in knots and convincing her he wasn’t such a bad guy? Alice saw the gesture for what it was—a buyoff—but let Olivia brag to all the nurses who came in about the gift her dad had bought her.

“How nice,” the ladies would coo. “He must love you very much.”

Alice kept her mouth shut, at the risk of breaking her jaw from gritting her teeth so hard.

If that was love, she didn’t want to know.

Liv was still playing on the iPad when Alice pulled the Acura into their driveway and killed the engine. It took some maneuvering to get Liv and her bags into the house, especially since the kid wouldn’t put down the gadget or look up from it for more than a couple of seconds.

Inside, the house was dismal and silent. It felt strange not to have Kevin around, even if it was just to snipe at him about his messes. Alice still had no idea how she was going to deal with what he’d done. In the hazy gaps between drug-induced sleep and his painful lucidity he had apologized to her dozens of times. He’d cried and begged for her forgiveness.

And she’d told him everything would be fine. She said she forgave him. Anything to chase those tears back because she didn’t want to be one more thing hurting him right then.

The truth was, forgiveness wasn’t such an easy commodity for her to distribute. He’d done something terrible, and Olivia’s life might have ended in one flash of stupidity.

Alice’s life would have ended too had anything happened to Liv. But at the same time, she would have never recovered if Kevin had been gravely injured either.

She did forgive him, in a sense. But she couldn’t forget what he’d done. It would be impossible to look at him from then on and not be reminded of how close they’d come to losing everything.

Whenever she thought about it, she became angry. Tears had long since stopped falling. Now it was bouts of sheer, blinding rage she fought against. After Matt left, her rage started finding its focus on Kevin. And when Kevin was in too much pain to bear her rage, she focused it on herself.

By the time she got Liv tucked into bed—there were protestations because the sun was still up—and pried the iPad from her hands, the familiar nagging sensation of anger had begun to bubble up inside her again.

What was Matt thinking, getting a nine-year-old such an ostentatious gift? Clearly he was overcompensating for what a dismal father he’d been and continued to be, but now Alice looked like the cheapskate parent.

She was pissed at Matt for being…well, for being Matt. And she was mad at Kevin because he was so mired down in his own hopelessness he’d forgotten how to behave like a human. In turn, he was starting to drag her down too. The honest truth of it was Alice was terrified if she didn’t find something to buoy her to the surface, she was going to sink to the bottom, and soon she wouldn’t know how to find the easy joy in life the way she once had.

Sitting down at the table, she stared at the empty space of her kitchen, motes of dust floating in the air to remind her how long it had been since the house had had a proper cleaning. There were still dishes in the sink from days earlier, with a crust of food on them that would need a lot of elbow grease to scrub clean.

For a good ten minutes she sat motionless, assessing the damage her absence had done. A mental list of calls piled up in her mind, and the menial household chores she and Kevin typically split up that would now need to be done by her alone. Even basic things like taking the garbage out—easy stuff she tended to make Olivia do—would fall to her for the time being.

When the list got so long it defied mental tabulation, Alice stared at the fridge. Inside was a half-full bottle of cabernet that was practically beckoning to her. She could let herself have some. Sit at the table and drink the remainder, and send herself to bed in a half-woozy state. She’d surely wake with a nasty wine hangover, but maybe it would be worth it to have a nice feeling of fluttery nothingness for a few hours.