What was left of them after the pickling, anyway.
“I want to talk.”
“OK.”
“I can’t talk like this. You have to let me go.”
He squeezed me tighter. “Never.”
I pushed him away and moved a step back. The room spun a little. “Don’t say things like that.”
He looked confused. “Things like what?”
“Things like never, when it comes to letting me go. You don’t mean them. You’re a liar.”
He glanced at my wine glass. “Are you drunk?”
“No,” I said, although it was obvious I was.
Charlie narrowed his eyes. “Erin, what is this about?”
“This is about you making a fool of me.”
“And how did I do that?”
“You have a daughter!” I burst out. “A daughter! And you said nothing to me about her, not for months! And you know I kill plants!”
Charlie’s mouth hung open for a second. “What?”
“And an ex-wife too! How could you think I wouldn’t find out, Charlie?”
He shook his head slightly. “Where is this coming from?”
“Do you deny it?”
“No,” he said carefully. “But I don’t like the way you’re attacking me with it.”
I coughed and sputtered. “You don’t like it? You don’t like it? You’re a piece of work, Charlie Dwyer. You march in here, with your badge and your drill and your hard wood, and you lie to me and seduce me and get me to fall for you, and now you don’t like it that I found out the truth?”
“Seduce you! Erin, what the hell? This isn’t like you at all.”
It wasn’t, but it felt sort of good to just let fly whatever I felt like saying. “Just be honest for once,” I snapped. “Do you or do you not have a daughter? Were you or were you not married to her mother?” Against all odds, that little piece of me prayed he’d say this was all a misunderstanding.
He hesitated too long.
“Answer me!” I yelled.
“I don’t see why I should,” he yelled back. “You’re just going to stand there and judge me like I knew you would.”
I shrank back. “Judge you! Is that what you think this is? I’m judging you for having a child? For being married and divorced?” But I was drunk, so it came out more like juszhingoo than judging you.
“For making mistakes! For being less than perfect, which we both know you are. You’ve never done one thing wrong in your life, Miss Perfecty Perfect Homecoming Queen with her clean floors and her ABC spice rack and her fake scented Christmas tree that doesn’t drop any needles. We can’t all be as perfect as you are, you know.”
“Fuck you!” I shook my finger in his face. “I did make a mistake, and that was letting you into my life. You had every opportunity to tell me the truth, and you didn’t. You lied to me.”
“I didn’t lie to you!” Charlie’s blue eyes blazed. “I chose not to share something with you at this point in our relationship. It’s my personal life, and I get to choose when I share things!”
“It’s not a fucking thing, Charlie! It’s who you are—you’re a father!” Why couldn’t he see that having a child wasn’t something you got to choose to share or not share, like an aversion to cilantro or an affinity for hot chocolate? It was an essential part of his identity. “I feel like I don’t even know you at all, like I never have.”
Charlie inhaled and exhaled, and I could see him trying to keep his temper in check. “I told you right from the start there were things in my past I wasn’t proud of.”
“You could have been a little more specific,” I spat. My lips were so numb, I garbled the word specific.
“I also warned you not to get attached, didn’t I? I told you that I mess up every good thing in my life.”
“Well, congratulations! You were right.”
We stood seething at each other for a moment.
“So that’s it, then. You’re ending this?”
“That’s all you have to say?” I shrieked. “No real explanation? No actual reason why you’ve been lying to me? Don’t you think you owe me the truth?”
Charlie seemed to struggle with the answer. Finally he stood taller, chest rising. “I told you the truth, and you didn’t believe me.”
“Ha! How do you figure that?”
“The truth is, I’ll never be who you want me to be. It was stupid of me to even try.” Then he turned around, shoved his feet into his boots, and stormed out.
Grabbing my wine glass off the island, I threw it at him, cringing at the ear-splitting shatter when it hit the door, and bursting into tears when I was alone again in the silence.
I fucking hate messes.
A miserable Christmas came and went, and I heard nothing from Charlie. His gifts sat under my tree, wrapped and gathering dust, sad reminders of what should have been our first Christmas together. I couldn’t bring myself to even touch them. Mia was my saving grace, including me in all her holiday plans, keeping up a cheerful stream of chatter about the baby, and listening patiently whenever I wanted to wallow in my misery. I’d told her about Charlie, and she fully supported my decision to break it off.
“A child is not something you just spring on someone,” she’d said. “He didn’t even tell you why he hid this from you!”