Chapter 33
PAIGE
After nightfall, Paige is putting a kettle on the stove to make tea and try to decompress her nerves, even if it’s just for a few minutes.
When she walks into the living room to ask if Nicola wants some, she sees her standing at the front bay window, looking down across the street at two police cars, their red lights like a strobe in the darkness.
Nicola’s hands are cupped over her mouth as she watches Lucas being forced into handcuffs on the front lawn.
Paige looks out to see what’s going on, then she lunges at Nicola, tackling her to the floor. Nicola howls.
“Are you insane?” Paige hisses. “He could see you!”
“I—I... He didn’t. I just looked out when I heard the... It happened fast. I didn’t—”
“Stay down. The lights are all on. He could glance up here and see you,” she snaps, and Nicola’s eyes fill.
She knows how careful Nicola has always been but is surprised she wouldn’t think about the risk, even if it’s unlikely he’d have the wherewithal to look at which neighbors are witnessing his humiliation.
“He’s getting arrested. I can’t believe it,” Nicola says from her crouched position next to a wingback chair.
“Well, after everything I brought them, they had to, but I’m surprised that they did it this fast,” she says.
“Make sure you see him actually go. Make sure they don’t let him do something—say something—to get out of it. That could happen,” Nicola says frantically. Paige watches out the window, a sense of satisfaction washing over her as she sees him struggling, arguing with the police.
“My wife is missing, and this is how you’re spending your time! You’re following ridiculous accusations. Stop! I demand to talk to the chief before—Stop!” he yells.
Then, his eyes dart around as he starts on another train of thought about calling his lawyer before they take him anywhere, and while he’s shouting and wriggling, he looks up. He looks right up at Paige, standing in the window, backlit by a table lamp.
She wants to smile and give him a small, condescending wave, but she resists the urge because it would give her away—could give Nicola away. Jail or not, she can’t have him know where she is. He’s too powerful. It wouldn’t be safe.
All his resisting and threats don’t do him any good. She watches them push his head down to duck under the roof of the car and into the back seat. She’s surprised when he looks out the window and up at her again, but it doesn’t really matter. He’s gone.
“Look, they’re gone. They took him. It’s okay,” she says, feeling a surge of emotion she swallows down. Nicola stands next to her at the window.
“You saw it. You saw him in the actual car,” she says, seeking confirmation.
“Yes. Thank God. They actually did their job this time,” Paige says, and Nicola exhales.
“Are there things in that house you need? Do you want me to get anything you left behind there?” Paige asks.
“There is nothing in that house I want. I never want to step foot in there again,” Nicola says. Paige looks at her and nods, then they both watch the red lights illuminate the distant main road until they are out of sight.
After Nicola goes to bed upon Paige’s insistence, Paige rocks Avery softly in her bassinet in the living room.
None of them have really slept in days, but Paige needs to finally tell Grant what’s happening, and just in case Lucas is on the news before morning, it should happen tonight.
On the phone she has only really told him that Georgia, the neighbor he’s seen once or twice, was trafficked, and that Lucas has been holding her hostage, but now he’s been caught and arrested, that Georgia/Nicola and the baby are staying with her for the time being.
Grant was stunned into silence on the other end.
Then he just repeated, “Lucas Kinney?” a few confused times and said he’d have the bartender close the restaurant tonight and come over.
An hour later, Grant is sitting next to Paige on the sofa with the drink she’s poured him.
“It’s good you’re sitting,” she says. She doesn’t know how to lie to Grant.
She can’t remember ever lying to him. He probably deserves the truth, but what good will it do?
What does it matter to him whether it is Nicola or Lucas who is guilty?
He’s healed as much as a father is able.
She was the one obsessed with the truth, with justice.
..which is exactly what she feels like this is.
Still, it feels strange to not tell him everything.
She might be difficult and fanatical, but she is always blunt and straightforward.
But she and Cora and Nicola have made a vow that the truth would stay between them. With every other person who knows the truth comes a higher risk of it all falling apart, and she will not lose Avery. Not for anything.
“There’s a video that surfaced showing Lucas fleeing from the accident—from Caleb—that night,” she says and then studies Grant’s face.
Red blotches appear on his cheeks, and the crease in his forehead tightens.
He doesn’t ask how the video has shown up.
He puts down his drink and perches at the edge of his seat. He runs his hand over his mouth.
“Was he drunk? Is that why he didn’t... Finn is the one with the DUIs. It made sense that—”
“No. It wasn’t an accident,” she says, resting her hand on his knee, and just then, Avery starts to make a low, whimpering sound. Paige sees she’s waking up and goes to pick her up. She stands and props her on one hip, swaying her back and forth rhythmically.
“Okay, Paige, but you always say that, so what are you saying, exactly?”
“Lucas found out that his wife was having an affair. With Caleb. He found out she was pregnant.”
“Wait. I’m sorry. What? You’re not just saying this because you have a hunch? This is for real?” he asks, fidgety and wide-eyed.
“Yeah. The proof is all there. The video, proof of abuse and him keeping her captive, the motive, everything...and Nicola told me,” she says, and he stares for a minute, unblinking, trying to come up with a response.
“Wait. Wait. Stop. What? You’re telling me.
..” His eyes light up. They look at each other a moment, and then he looks to Avery, who is nodding back off to sleep in Paige’s arms. She places her on Grant’s lap, and before she can say anything else, she sees his tears fall in fat droplets onto Avery’s pale forehead as he holds her into his chest. Then, he sits her on his knees and holds her under her armpits and stares at her.
He studies her. His head just shakes slowly in utter disbelief, and she can tell he’s not sure if this is real.
“How can this be?” he whispers into the top of her warm little head, and he holds her without ruining it by saying anything else until she’s fast asleep.
After Avery is asleep again in her bassinet and Grant has regained his ability to speak, he and Paige move into the kitchen so they don’t wake her.
There are too many questions to ask and so much information that Grant hasn’t been able to digest in small bits the way Paige has, so he doesn’t know where to begin.
“Where will they live?” is the first thing he asks, which is one of the first things she thought herself—the selfish and overarching instinct to wonder, Will I get to see my granddaughter?
“She wants to go home,” she says.
“There?” he asks, indicating across the street.
“Jesus. No. England. I mean, I can’t say that I blame her. But I’ll go with her if I have to.”
“But he’s, like... After everything you told me, my God, how could he ever get out? Isn’t she safe here?” he says, and the desperation in his voice is something she understands well because it’s how she’s felt for the last year.
“Hopefully. Right now, they only have the domestic abuse and trafficking evidence—” she starts to say, but he interrupts.
“Only?” he scoffs. “The man sounds like a complete psychopath—like something you see on a Law and Order episode. That’s not enough?”
“What I mean is they don’t even know about the motive part. They have the video that shows Lucas’s car screeching away from the scene. Which is, I don’t know, damning, but when they find out about the reason—about Avery—I hope it’s enough.”
“You hope?” he asks. “How could a fraction of what you have told me not be enough?”
“I don’t know. I’ve heard of pot dealers getting life and the guy who puts a hit out on his wife getting five years.
Plus he’s a—whatdyacallit?—pillar of the community,” she says, using air quotes.
“Gag me. And, of course, he’s white and male, so there’s that.
I mean, I just think she has reason to be freaked out that he wouldn’t die in prison and then he’d find her.
But at least he’ll be held, and if he doesn’t plead out, there’ll be a trial, right?
” she asks, having thought through every scenario a thousand times, even googling some of her questions to try and get a sense of how this could play out.
“Even if he pleads out on murder, he’ll still be gone a very long time. She has time.”
“Yeah,” Paige agrees.
“They should stay here,” he adds. “They’re staying with you, right?
” he asks. And Paige tries to make her mouth smile.
She doesn’t know how to feel. Of course she wants Avery there.
But Grant doesn’t know what Nicola has done, how hard it is for Paige to look at her sometimes.
She doesn’t want to feel that way. She wants to separate the truth from her pain, but that will take time.
“If there’s a trial, she’ll have to be here.”
“Yes, I’ve—Yeah, she knows she can stay here,” she says, but Grant gives her a sideways look.
“Is she afraid of you?” he asks. She scoffs, an almost laugh.
“What kind of question is that?”
“Have you been nice to her? Will she want to stay? You know exactly what I’m asking,” he says, and he’s right. She’s not unaware of the way she comes off, but he, of course, doesn’t know the half of what’s happened.
“She’s here, isn’t she?” Paige says, and he doesn’t reply. She walks away from him and goes to sit on the couch. Grant follows her and sits next to Avery’s bassinet, watching her sleep. He stays that way for an impossibly long time.
“Can I stay on the couch?” he finally asks. And she resists saying what she always says when he asks about something in his own house. It’s your house, too!
Instead she sits next to him and lays her head on his shoulder, a gesture that surprises him: she can tell by the way he tenses and then softens.
“I’ll stay with you,” she says. He lifts his head and looks at her.
She knows it’s something he’s been longing to hear her say for almost a year.
She gets up and goes to the linen closet and grabs a pile of sheets and blankets.
They top up their drinks and curl up close together with Avery next to them.
Paige looks through the dim room out the front window and sees a fingernail moon against a black sky.
She finally knows what happened. There is some modicum of hope that she could come to peace with it.
In due time, Grant will find out more about what Caleb had become in his last months of life, but right now, she will relish this moment.
She remembers hearing the moon described as a dead star that is caught in the earth’s gravitational pull and suspended there forever.
This is exactly how she feels—like a dead star being held up by forces beyond her control.
She wishes she could stay like this forever.
They sit with their bare feet intertwined and her weight on his chest. She knows she doesn’t deserve his grace, his forgiveness, but she wants it.
“We’ll probably need some help around here,” she says. She thinks she feels his heart quicken, but it’s like him to not respond quickly, especially when it comes to her and the sometimes unpredictable things she says.
“A baby’s a lot of work,” he says, and his voice is calm, but the speed of his heart gives him away.
“Would you wanna help?” she asks. “Maybe move your things back in?” He doesn’t say it in words because she can tell he’s trying to keep his emotions in check. He nods his head a few deliberate times in response, and she can’t see it, but only feels it against her shoulder.
“Good,” she says, and they sip their drinks in the silence.