Chương 6
“Your calls show up on records.”
The phrase made every muscle in my back tighten.
Records.
Not feelings.
Not caution.
Records.
I picked up my phone and texted my father one word.
Listening.
His reply came almost immediately.
Leave if you feel unsafe.
I did not answer.
Downstairs, a cabinet opened.
Glass touched glass.
Someone poured wine.
Charlotte said, “I’m not staying for this.”
Solomon’s voice changed.
“Mom.”
“No.”
“You already came.”
“To make sure you weren’t stupid enough to bring her here again.”
Jennifer made a sound that might have been a laugh, but there was no humor in it.
“That’s rich.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you’ve been covering for him for almost a year.”
The room around me seemed to tilt.
Almost a year.
I sat down carefully.
Charlotte replied, “I was protecting my grandson.”
Jennifer said, “By telling him to lie?”
“I was trying to keep his parents together.”
Solomon said, “Can both of you stop?”
Neither woman stopped.
Jennifer’s voice rose.
“You told me it was temporary.”
Charlotte snapped back, “You told me you were leaving your husband.”
A different silence fell.
I stared at the closed guest-room door.
Jennifer had a husband.
I knew that.
His name was Marcus.
I had met him once at an agency picnic.
He was a tall, quiet man who spent most of the afternoon helping Theo and two other children build a crooked kite.
I had forgotten his face until that moment.
Now I could see him crouching in the grass, holding wooden sticks together while Jennifer stood beside Solomon near the beer cooler.
Solomon said, “This isn’t about Marcus.”
Jennifer answered, “It became about Marcus when you started panicking.”
Charlotte said, “It became about all of us when Theo saw you.”
“I said stop.”
Solomon’s voice cracked across the house.
Nobody spoke for several seconds.
Then he said, quieter, “We need to know what she knows.”
My mouth went dry.
Jennifer asked, “How?”
“I’ll talk to her.”
Charlotte said, “And ask what?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s your plan?”
“I said I don’t know.”
The irritation in his voice sounded familiar.
I had heard it when bills confused him, when a client canceled, when traffic trapped us somewhere.
For years I had treated that tone as harmless impatience.
Now I heard fear underneath it.
Charlotte said, “If she knows, you tell the truth.”
Solomon laughed once.
“No.”
“Solomon.”
“No, because then she takes Theo and this becomes a custody nightmare.”
My fingers tightened around the edge of the desk.
Charlotte replied, “She cannot just take your child.”
“You don’t know what she’ll do.”
“I know exactly what she’ll do.”
That sentence from Charlotte sounded so certain that I leaned closer to the door.
“She’ll call Frank.”
My father.
“She’ll call Frank, and he’ll tell her to throw you out before midnight.”
Solomon muttered something.
Charlotte continued.
“And then you’ll be sleeping in my guest room while lawyers bleed you dry.”
Jennifer said, “That sounds like a you problem.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
Jennifer said, “You promised me you were going to separate.”
“I was.”
“When?”
“I was working on it.”
“You’ve been working on it since November.”
November.
I stared at the wall.
There had been a weekend in November when Solomon took me to a bed-and-breakfast for our anniversary.
He had booked the room himself.
He had ordered champagne.
We had walked through a small downtown holding hands because it was cold and I had forgotten gloves.
Two weeks later, apparently, he had still been telling Jennifer he intended to leave me.
The contradiction did not fit into any emotion I could name.
Jennifer said, “You told me after Thanksgiving.”
Solomon answered, “And then Theo got sick.”
“He had an ear infection.”
“You know what I mean.”
“No, actually, I don’t.”
Charlotte cut in.
“Neither of you gets to use Theo as an excuse.”
That almost made me laugh.
The hypocrisy was too large for anger.
Solomon said, “Mom, please.”
Charlotte replied, “I helped because I thought you were confused.”
“You helped because you hate conflict.”
“I helped because I watched your father walk out when you were eight and I was not going to stand by while another little boy watched his family explode.”
There it was.
Not an excuse.
A wound.
My father had told me everyone involved would have reasons they could live with.
Charlotte had found hers.
She had turned childhood abandonment into permission.
Jennifer said, “So instead you taught him to lie to his mother.”
Charlotte did not answer.
I imagined her looking down.
For the first time, I felt something other than hatred toward her.
It was not forgiveness.
It was the recognition that people could do cruel things while believing they were preventing cruelty.
That might have been worse.
Solomon said, “None of this matters if she doesn’t know.”
Jennifer answered, “She knows something.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because you texted me this morning that she asked about Dalton.”
“So?”
“There is no Dalton pitch.”
I closed my eyes.
Of course there wasn’t.
Solomon said, “She doesn’t know that.”
Jennifer replied, “She works in contracts.”
“She doesn’t know every client at my agency.”
“She knows how to Google.”
Charlotte said, “Why did you even invent a client?”
“Because saying we were working on nothing would be suspicious.”
“That sentence makes no sense.”
“Can everyone stop telling me what makes sense?”
A glass struck the counter harder than necessary.
Then came footsteps.
I stood again.
This time they reached the stairs.
One step.
Two.
Three.
I looked around the guest room.
There was nowhere sensible to go.
The closet was full of winter coats.
The bathroom across the hall required crossing open space.
The window faced the side yard and was too high for anything except an embarrassing injury.
I had promised myself I would not hide in a closet.
Now the closet suddenly seemed underrated.
May you like
The footsteps stopped halfway up.
Jennifer said, “Where are you going?”
