Chapter Four
Four
“Holy shit,” Elodie says once we’re back inside her SUV. “Holy shit.”
I don’t answer right away. I’m too busy replaying everything about Erin’s demeanor.
She was strange, although that isn’t unexpected.
Living in one of Connecticut’s wealthiest suburbs, I’ve met my share of quirky rich people, though Erin is the first to have lost everything.
She must really believe she’s right if she was willing to lose her family over it.
If she just called her parents and admitted fault, they’d welcome her back.
“Do you think he’s a murderer?” Elodie asks.
“I don’t think anything yet,” I say. “I have to meet him.”
She taps her finger against the steering wheel. “How are you so calm about this? What if he tries to kill us?”
“In a secure building filled with security cameras? I wouldn’t worry about that. Besides, you forget that we’re always being watched. We’ll be safe.”
She shakes her head. “You sound awfully confident.”
I stare pensively through the window as we pull out of the driveway. My phone is buzzing in my pocket. Mr. X will want to know how it went, and what we’re planning, so I’ll have to spend the ride thinking about my strategy.
My phone buzzes again. I slide it out of my pocket and look at the screen. His latest text: Give E a chance. Let her in on whatever you’re thinking.
The message couldn’t be clearer. I do have a habit of taking over these missions—but only because Mr. X pairs me with the green ones.
God, Waylen was so sweet and clueless when we did ours together.
But he proved himself to be more than meets the eye.
There’s an edge underneath the surface that only I can see.
He tries to pretend it isn’t there, but I know. It’s part of why I said “I do.”
Still, Elodie did prove herself by handling that interview with Erin. It’s only fair that I give her a chance. “You’ve heard of ‘good cop, bad cop,’ right?” I ask her.
She snaps to attention. “Huh? Yeah, sure. Of course.” She’s still reeling from the chance that our mark is a murderer.
“We’ll need to go in there with a strategy when we interview him,” I say.
“So, good reporter, bad reporter?” Elodie asks.
“Not exactly. More like super confident, cocky reporter, and bumbling, nervous assistant reporter.”
Something about this makes her smile. “Sounds like the script for a Meryl Streep movie.”
Over the remainder of our drive, we work out that she—of course—will be my confident supervisor.
I’ll bumble my way through the interview, and as I do, I’ll get a sense of what our dear Bertram Casimir responds to.
If he’s irritated, I’ll dial it back. If he likes the attention, I’ll show interest in whatever he has to say.
Improv is where I really shine, but I can tell that Elodie does best with structure.
As soon as the car is parked, she’s whipping out her phone to punch in some notes in her memo app.
“Wait,” she says as I open the door to get out. I turn to face her, surprised that she’s extended a manicured hand out to me. She gives me a firm handshake. “I have to say, Margaux, it’s a pleasure doing business with you.”
—
The house is dark when I tiptoe through the front door. From the foyer I can see into the kitchen, where Waylen has left a plate of food for me, wrapped up in foil. His way of reminding me that I missed dinner.
He’s still awake. I hear him tapping away at his computer, the floorboards groaning as he rolls his desk chair across them.
In the kitchen, I make as little noise as possible and heat up the plate of seared tuna and stir-fried vegetables. The clock on the microwave reads 11:59. At least I kept my promise to be home before midnight.
Waylen is still mad at me. I can feel it lingering in the air like a thick and pungent perfume.
When he’s upset, he makes himself practically invisible.
The kitchen is spotless—all the dishes washed and put away, the sink empty, the counters wiped clean.
He’s purged any trace of his presence while I was away.
He’s been pushing me to retire ever since he got out of the game. I suppose he thought that Collette would be enough to change me. He views my job as a torrid affair, like it’s a lover that I can’t seem to leave. He despises Mr. X for the role he plays in this as well.
It doesn’t matter how much time I give him or that I spend my days fully dedicated to our daughter’s student career—even tonight with Elodie, I secured a plan to keep her in good social standing by offering her up as a tutor.
It wouldn’t matter even if I only snuck out of the house long after he was asleep and returned before he woke up.
He won’t be satisfied until I give it up; we’ve had enough fights on the topic.
But he’s run out of ideas to try to wear me down. Maybe that scares him.
I look up when I hear footsteps coming down the stairs. That will be him, with a disappointed, weary expression and greeting me with a sigh. Maybe he’ll apologize for being upset with me earlier, or maybe he’ll just ask for my opinion on how well he seasoned the fish.
But the figure that emerges from the darkness of the hallway is Collette, her hair tousled with sleep. “Mom?” she says softly. “Did you just get home?” She climbs into a chair across from me.
“I was working on some PTA things and it ran a little late,” I lie.
I have worked hard not to shatter the perfect image that Collette has of her life.
She doesn’t even know that Waylen and I argue.
She’s smart, though, and she’s getting older.
She’s bound to pick up on it eventually—and when that day comes, she’ll want to know just what we’re fighting about.
“Actually, I spent the evening with Mrs. Blevins—you know, Finnegan’s mom.
She’s not so bad when she’s not wearing a whistle around her neck and directing traffic. ”
Collette wrinkles her nose, but whatever she’s thinking, she’s too tactful to say.
My daughter isn’t the sort to make waves.
She’s quiet, polite, and so reserved that she intrigues her classmates.
Rather than a shy little girl who’s easy to bully, they see a pretty, well-dressed, well-groomed peer whose social fate depends on what she chooses to say—only she never says anything at all.
Nobody knows what to make of her, and there’s power in that.
Even I don’t know what to make of her half the time.
But she is observant. I know that much.
“We thought it would be nice if you girls got to know each other a little better,” I say, cautiously broaching the subject. “So, you’re going to tutor her in math after school one day next week. She’s struggling, and it’s your best subject.”
Collette raises her head. “I can’t stand Finnegan.” There’s only the barest whine to her words. “She’s the worst.”
“How is she ‘the worst’?”
“Mom, you don’t know what it’s like at school,” Collette says. “It’s like a vat of boiling lobsters meets The Hunger Games.”
“You know,” I say, “sometimes when people are mean, they’re just criticizing the things they don’t like about themselves.”
Collette huffs. “She must really hate herself, then,” she mumbles.
“Try to make the best of it,” I say.
Collette crosses her arms and leans back in her seat. I wish that she’d say whatever she’s thinking. I wish that she’d argue, that she’d insult me—anything.
“I’m doing this for you,” I tell her. “Mrs. Blevins has a lot of pull with the PTA. She’s going to handle a lot of casting for the upcoming Christmas play. Maybe she can help you get a good role as a way of saying thank-you.”
This does nothing to soften the sudden edge to Collette’s expression.
“You want to get into a good college, don’t you?” I say. “Prep work doesn’t start in high school. They’re going to look back at your entire student transcript. Tutoring, starring in plays—all of that will look great, especially if you still have your eye on a theater major.”
Collette’s voice is so soft that I almost don’t hear it. “Stop.”
“What?”
“Stop it,” she says, a little louder now. “You know Finnegan sucks, and Mrs. Blevins sucks. You’re lying about wanting us to be friends. You lie all the time.”
“No, I—”
“You even lie to Dad,” she fires back, before I can argue. “You didn’t want him to know that I went to the trial today. You wanted me to tell him we went to the dentist. Why wouldn’t we just tell him the truth?”
My eyes dart to the doorway. I’m almost expecting Waylen to be standing there, waiting for an answer, as though they’ve formed an alliance against me and planned to strike. But it’s just Collette, the living evidence of the one time in my life I was foolish enough to fall in love.
I want—not for the first time—to tell her everything.
I want to tell her about Mr. X in particular, who asks about her when he’s brazen enough to be vulnerable with me.
I want to tell her that the world is rife with injustices just like the one we learned about in the courtroom today, and that life is nothing like the fantasy books she reads: Sometimes the good guy doesn’t win.
Sometimes good doesn’t prevail. Sometimes the world is cruel and ugly and filled with villains who get off scot-free.
I want to tell her that I can’t fix all of it but that I do whatever small bit I can to right the wrongs that are out there.
I want to tell her that motherhood didn’t make me soft the way that Waylen hoped.
It made me hard. It filled me with rage and defiance and a passion that scares me even now, because it hasn’t dulled, it hasn’t faded, and I know that it never will.
But all I say is, “Your father doesn’t understand.” I hate how patronizing I sound. So I add, “He doesn’t want you to know about crimes like that, but I disagree. I think you should. I think knowing what’s out there will keep you safe.”
Collette frowns pensively. It’s quiet for a long time after that. She watches as I eat what’s left on the plate, even though my appetite is gone, and I want to go online and do a bit more research on Bertram before going to bed.
“Can I go to another one?” Collette asks.
I look up at her.
“Trials,” she presses. “I had fun.”
After dinner, I brush her hair, braid it, and spray it with a water-and-conditioner solution she found the recipe for online. It promises to add volume, and who am I to argue? I smile at her. It is nice, I think, when things are normal.
By the time she’s settled in, the house is quiet. Waylen has left his office and climbed into bed, though I don’t believe he’s asleep.
I sit on my side of the bed and watch the rise and fall of his chest. It’s only in the still, late, dark quiet of the night that I can’t hide from myself.
That’s when I love him the most, in a way that cuts through all the layers I wear like armor.
I love that he cares about Collette and me—really cares about us.
I even love that he’s jealous of my job, because it means he wants me to be safe.
I love that this life we’ve built makes me feel normal, like the fire never happened.
When I’m with him, it’s a preview of who I might have been if things had gone differently.
When we got married, he and I stood at the altar envisioning different things, surrounded on all sides by lilies and violets. He wanted domestic bliss, and I anticipated something more like Mr. and Mrs. Smith.
A long time ago, before all of this, I could have settled for an easy life like the one I pretend to lead, one where the biggest problem is whether we can afford a new water heater, or how to survive a holiday with my in-laws.
Waylen doesn’t know about what happened to me between then and now. He doesn’t know about the trial, the accusations, and all the work it took for me to reinvent myself.
Tell him, something within me whispers, the way it often does. But I push the thought away. Even if I’m living a lie, I don’t want to lose it. I don’t want to lose him.