Chapter 27
27
SAMANTHA
T he next morning, I’m moving slowly when I enter the dining room. My entire body aches—from Russo’s abuse, from the way I wrenched my back trying to get away from him, and from sitting up all night without shifting position the way I longed to do.
I put on a brave face, though, because Aiofe looks terrified in her seat beside Braiden. Frowning, she touches her own arm, then points at mine.
“It hurts,” I tell her. “But I’ll be better soon.”
She nods, but I’m not sure she believes me. I’m spared coming up with a better answer by Fairfax sailing in from the kitchen. It seems like he has twice the usual number of dishes, and he fusses more than ever finding places for them on the table.
“Three square meals,” he says. “That will help your healing.”
“But not all at one time,” I say.
He laughs, but then he remembers the apple compote he left on the stove.
I wrestle with the serving platters, sliding a fried egg onto my plate. I add a single slice of bacon and a small spoonful of hash. I’ll be able to eat everything with my fingers or just using my fork.
But Braiden isn’t satisfied. “You need some black pudding,” he says. “Get your blood back.”
“I didn’t lose any blood,” I point out.
He merely scowls and crosses to my side, transferring a round of blood sausage to my plate. “You need one of these too,” he says, adding a hefty link sausage. “And don’t forget the tomatoes.”
I stare at my food after he returns to his seat.
“Don’t make this one of your things,” he warns.
“ I’m not making it anything,” I snap.
“Eat,” Braiden says.
“I would, if I could manage a knife and fork.”
The shock on his face couldn’t be more complete if I served him with divorce papers.
He only hesitates a moment before he scoots his chair around the corner of the table. He picks up my silverware and builds a perfect bite of food—tomato and sausage and a tiny bit of potato—all balanced on the back of the fork’s tines. He shifts it to my lips with all the care of a first-time mother.
I rear back. “You’re not going to feed me!”
He steadies his complicated composition before it falls to my plate. “I am, if you can’t feed yourself.”
“I’m a grown woman,” I say. I barely remember to keep my voice down as I glance across the table at Aiofe. She’s staring at both of us like we’re the most fascinating movie ever filmed.
“Do I have to remind you that I’m a grown man?” The danger in his voice tosses something deep inside me. And then he touches the food to my lower lip with an undeniable insistence. “Eat,” he says, using the tone that can take me to my knees.
I open my mouth. I accept the fork. I chew.
And Braiden’s eyes gleam as he prepares my next bite. He doesn’t stop until my plate is clean.
“Satisfied?” I ask, after I swallow a last bite of jam-laden toast.
“Very.”
He moves back to his own place and starts to eat his ice-cold breakfast. I try to pretend my voice doesn’t quaver. “Will you be working from home today?”
“I will.”
“I thought I might have Liam drive me to the freeport this morning.”
“Over my dead body.” He says it mildly, as if he’s commenting on the bright blue sky or the bare winter trees outside the dining room window.
“I’ll just be sitting there, in the back of the car!”
“I already phoned Prince,” he says. “I told him you’re taking sick leave today. We’ll reevaluate on Monday.”
“You had no right?—”
“I’m your husband,” he says. “It’s my job to make sure you take care of yourself.”
He almost makes his argument sound reasonable.
“I suppose you’re going to take my computer too,” I say.
“I will if you don’t follow the rules. You’ll do no work today. Promise. ”
Promise. Something about the word sparks a fire between my thighs. I want to test him. I want to see how far I can push things. I want to know exactly what he’ll do when he catches me breaking that promise.
But the reality is, my shoulder is throbbing like a strobe light. I didn’t sleep well last night, even though he let me hog the covers. I would be worthless, whatever work I tried to complete.
“I promise,” I say.
“ Mo chailín maith, ” Braiden says.
It occurs to me that Aiofe might understand those words. I glance at the child to see how she reacts. But she’s just chewing the last of her honeyed toast, her green eyes as grave as ever.
Braiden goes to his office.
Aiofe goes to the nursery, to meet with John Bell.
I wander through the house aimlessly, trying to find a way to fill my day.
I read for a while, but I fall asleep over an incomprehensible section of James Joyce’s Ulysses . I try to watch television in the study, but nothing on the nine hundred channels holds my interest. I think about walking to the greenhouse but it’s too far, and the weather is too cold, and the thought of the flowers just takes me back to Russo’s threat.
That Night. He’ll tell Braiden. Tell Trap. Tell the Delaware bar.
What will the bar make of the truth, after all this time? Maybe I’ve been worried about nothing. I showed a shocking lack of moral judgment, one that to this day I can’t begin to explain, can’t even start to justify.
But will it make me lose my license to practice law?
I take my computer into the guest room, quietly closing the door behind me. I’m not breaking my promise. I’m not doing work. I’m just using the machine to access legal databases, to see what’s happened to other people who did what I did.
No one has done what I did.
At least, no lawyer has. I can’t find a single case in Delaware, where the bar has ruled on my situation.
But I find other cases where lawyers lied by omission. Where they hid the truth for years, about stealing, about rape, about murder. When the truth comes out, the bar says those are crimes of moral turpitude .
I haven’t used the phrase since law school, but I remember it clearly enough. It’s any act that completely violates the accepted standard of a community. Something that shocks the conscience. Something that cannot be forgiven.
I’ve committed a crime that cannot be forgiven and if—when—Russo discloses it, I’ll be disbarred. Feeling like I’ve been punched in the gut, I lower my head over my computer.
I’m guilty. I’m damned. If I still believed in the heaven and hell Zia Sara taught me about, I’d brace myself for an eternity in the fiery pits.
My eyes water. The roof of my mouth prickles. I’ve never cried about what happened, never mourned. I sniff, to keep my nose from running. I can almost smell it—Zia Sara’s sulfur and brimstone.
No.
I do smell it.
And just as I realize the stench is real, my ears are filled with a piercing screech. It’s a smoke detector, complete with a mechanical voice and a flashing white light.
My heart tumbling into triple-time, I scramble to my feet. I vaguely remember fire safety drills from the freeport. I touch my hand to the door, making sure it isn’t warm. I check for smoke seeping over the threshold. I crouch so I’m low to the floor, more likely to avoid smoke inhalation.
With my good hand, I test the doorknob. It turns easily, and I make my way into the hall.
I can hear multiple smoke detectors now—the one in the guest room, and one in the hall, another in the nursery, and more in other rooms. I risk a twinge from my shoulder so I can cover my ears.
The stink of smoke is even stronger out here. And looking down the hall, I understand why.
Flames climb the door to Braiden’s office.