Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
Sarah
“Neither of us got what we wanted,” I groan, hands in my hair, fingers digging hard into my scalp as if I can scoop out the dumb parts of my brain and fix this mess that way. “All that work. All of it just poof! Gone.”
“Taken by two arseholes.”
“You’re not an asshole.”
“I didn’t mean us, Sarah,” he says with a sad little laugh. “I meant Prakash and Stuart.”
“Oh. Right. Do you think they were in cahoots?”
“Those two? Working together somehow? I can’t see it. Why would Prakash willingly give information about his federal crimes to a reporter?”
“Good point. I just – how did Stuart get quotes from Barbi and Dori?”
“Check your texts.”
I twist my neck his way, giving Case a sidelong look, then I scroll on through.
“Here’s one from Barbi – it says Great article, but why is your fact-checker listed as the author? ”
“Fact checker? Is Stuart a fact checker, and there was some kind of byline error?” Case asks, confused.
“No and no. No such thing. Case, I haven’t even turned my article in to my editor yet.”
“That bastard. He pretended to be your fact checker and contacted your sources?”
I am deep in my phone, typing. Hey Marsha, what the fuck is going on? I type, then delete the word fuck .
He’s peering over my shoulder. “I would absolutely send that unedited.”
“I guess I’m a hopeless optimist, because I don’t want to burn a bridge.”
“Sarah. Sarah .” He touches my arm, forcing me to pause. “You’re worried about burning a bridge after they covered your career in napalm and set it on fire while roasting marshmallows over the blaze?”
“You have a way with words, Case,” I reply, suddenly sniffing hard, the end of my sentence turning into a sob.
But I hit send on the text anyhow.
“Tell me again what happened. Go back to the middle of the night when I found you texting Marsha in my apartment. Please tell me everything. All cards are on the table now.”
“Brutal honesty and transparency,” I intone, the words hollow and full at the same time.
“Exactly. Both ways. It’s the only path forward.”
“We have to shift into reality mode,” he mutters, making me gawk at him.
“You think I’m in denial about anything? This is as real as it gets!”
“I wasn’t making a judgment about you. I was trying,” he says with a sick laugh, “to rally myself to action.”
“Like chasing Prakash halfway around the globe and beating the shit out of him?”
“If I thought it would help things, I’d be booking tickets already.”
Case’s phone rings again. He looks at the screen and declines the call.
“You must have so many business issues to deal with.”
“Yeah. I do. And now the personal lawyer my father has on retainer is calling. And my father as well.”
“Personal lawyer? Why?”
“Prakash is trying to throw me under the bus. Make it look like I was part of the laundering.”
“But you weren’t.”
“I absolutely, unequivocally was not. Zero culpability. But my father wants me to get ahead of the mess and has been texting me. Now his lawyer is calling me.”
“Prakash can’t be allowed to do this. He’s destroyed hundreds of lives. And he just runs away?”
“It’s sickening.”
“It’s so unfair. How can someone like that live with himself?”
An unexpected grin comes my way as Case looks at me, eyes sparking, his face changing to something like wistfulness as he watches me. “You really are unique, Sarah. Tough as nails and soft as a marshmallow.”
“I am not soft!”
“Yet you are. I admire it in you. I’m drawn to it.”
“You – what?”
“You have this deep belief that people are good at the core, don’t you?”
“Of course I do.”
“See? Even that reply. ‘Of course.’ No – there is no of course . People like Prakash live easily with themselves after doing heinous things to hundreds of other people because they like it. They enjoy it. They derive pleasure from being cruel and getting away with it.”
“Which is why they need to be exposed and stopped!”
“How do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Hold such diametrically opposite views at the same time?”
“How is it opposite to say people are good at their cores but that when they do bad things, they have to be exposed and stopped?”
“Ah. The old ‘there are no bad people, just bad behaviors?’”
“Exactly.”
“I disagree. There are plenty of bad people in the world. They’re bad – even evil – and they do not give a fuck about who they hurt or how many people they harm.”
“But if you rob them of their humanity, you’re just playing their game. I don’t want to do that.”
“I think you’re more enlightened than I am, Sarah.”
“I don’t know about that. After all, you just told me I’m not brilliant.”
The hit scores me a point.
A point that feels unfair.
It’s not. He said it. And when he said it, it was like he slit my throat and watched me bleed out. I don’t need to be brilliant. I don’t need to be smart or savvy or clever or any of the accolades people throw my way.
I don’t know what I do need, though.
And that’s making me brutally honest.
“Why do you need to believe that people are fundamentally good?” he whispers, not addressing my barb, which makes me feel even worse.
“I don’t know.”
“It’s a fantasy.”
“No.”
“It is. On some level. Every person across time hasn’t been good at the center of their conscience, Sarah. It’s statistically impossible.”
“Don’t you dare make me do math right now, Case!”
We both laugh, anemic sounds that don’t really make a difference, but it’s something. His question made my mind go blank, and I really don’t know why.
That’s frightening.
“May I ask a very touchy question?” Case ventures.
“As if you haven’t turned into the third rail of my life already? Please. Ask away.”
“Does this have to do with your father?”
“I do not have the mental capacity to deal with my daddy issues on a day like today. Why would you bring him up like this? Right now? Are you trying to nuclear bomb my psyche?”
“Cards on the table, right? You said it yourself earlier. Brutal honesty and transparency.”
“Does that mean I get to bring up your sister’s death?”
“Of course,” he says softly. “It’s the reason I’m here now, sitting on the floor of a hair salon in the Berkshires, arguing with a woman I am falling in love with, hating myself for not being able to find a solution for all the pain we’re going through.”
“You weren’t kidding about the brutal part.”
“Or the honesty and transparency,” he says, his hand so close to mine, I feel the magnetic pull of his emotion.
“Capacity, Case. I’m not this strong. I can’t take anymore today.”
“I’m not asking you to take on anything, Sarah. I’m asking you to let me help support you through this. Let’s be there for each other.”
“You told me when you came here, you weren’t looking to get back together.”
“I’m not.”
“Then what is this?”
“I’m trying to find a way we can help each other get through this.”
“And my dad has something to do with my need to believe that people are good but sometimes they do bad things?”
“I don’t know. Does he?”
I close my eyes and Instagram appears behind my eyelids.
Not Luna’s account.
My stepmother’s.
I don’t call her that. Don’t even refer to her at all. I haven’t seen her since I was thirteen, nearly half a life ago, and I haven’t seen my father since then, either.
Neither of them has reached out.
But algorithms have accomplished what my own biological father can’t: connecting us.
Having my stepmother’s Insta account suggested over and over, and later, TikTok, means our orbits are just close enough, even without touching, for complex AI databases to figure out that we have something in common.
Her. My dad. My two teenage stepbrothers.
If you took a big pink eraser from a new school year kit and just rubbed it all over my dad’s life, you’d accomplish what they’ve done to me. I don’t exist in their world. My nose presses against the phone glass every once in a while as I look at the pictures of their nice house in upstate New York, three hours away. The private schools my stepbrothers go to. Lacrosse games. Fancy ski trips to Europe.
It’s not Dad’s money. He married up .
When I was eleven, he met Her. I don’t even want to give her a name. They married when I was twelve and I wasn’t invited to the wedding. The boys were there, two grinning toddlers in matching tuxedoes.
Matching my dad’s.
And when I was thirteen, he came to see me. Or so I thought.
“Sarah. I hit a nerve.” Case touches my hand.
I gasp, shaken out of my own train of thought. “Yeah. You did.”
“I’m sorry. Insensitive of me.”
“No. It’s okay. Because I think you’re onto something.”
He just nods.
“And I don’t want to hear it.”
“Sorry.” He squeezes my hand as his phone rings.
“Now is not the time for a therapy session.”
“This isn’t therapy. This is being real with each other.”
Her Instagram squares, all color-coordinated, all filled with my father laughing with her kids and not me, make my throat tighten.
“Last time I saw my dad, I was thirteen.”
Case says nothing.
“He remarried when I was twelve. To a wealthy woman with two small sons. I wasn’t invited. I found out from a cousin who went and wondered why I wasn’t there.”
“Ouch.”
“And a year later, he came to visit. Took me out to a really nice restaurant. We went to Six Flags and had a blast. I thought maybe I got my daddy back.”
“But…”
“But then he talked to my mother. I heard them fighting. He wanted her to waive $17,000 in back child support. There’s a federal law that says you can’t get a passport if you owe child support, and his new wife wanted them to go to Europe for a spring month-long vacation. He didn’t want her to know about the arrears.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah. I’ve never heard my mother so angry. First time hearing her scream, 'You cheapshit cocksucking bootlicking motherfucker!'”
“That’s a lot to hear at thirteen.”
As he says those words, I can hear Mom’s screams ringing in my ears like they’re happening now, smell the black bean soup on the kitchen stove, feel the heat from the wood stove.
“Too much to hear. He came into my room and tried to plead with me, explaining that it would hurt his ability to work if he couldn’t travel, and I just watched him like we were under water and he was talking, the words floating up like bubbles.”
“You were smart. Are smart. You figured him out long ago.”
“Sure. That’s the moment I hated Her, though. The woman he married. Because in my mind, this was all about Her. His wife was the reason he was like this.”
“Oh, dear.”
“I google him sometimes. Like when you google an ex? Except I have to do it with my own father.”
We just breathe together.
“I got a Facebook account, then an Insta account. The algorithms started finding my cousins on Dad’s side. He doesn’t have social media accounts, but his wife does. The pictures are all about a life where I don’t exist.”
“You are so much better than him.”
“They disappear me. Erase me. I don’t exist.”
“You are very, very real. Very real. Right here, right now, with me.”
“For so long, I thought that there must be some misunderstanding. That he couldn’t be closer to me because of Her. That somehow his wife controlled him and made him not include me. Oh, the anger I had for Her. Vicious anger that tore away at me when I’d look at her Insta. I had to be so careful. It was tempting to post on her feed. Reveal the truth of David’s biological daughter he abandoned. Make it so they couldn’t ignore me.”
“No one should ever ignore you.” He lets go of my hand and stretches, wrapping his arm around my shoulders, pulling me in.
“I had to hold two opposite beliefs in my head and heart all those years, Case. Had to. Had to believe that my dad really wanted more of a relationship with me at the same time he somehow couldn’t.”
“I understand.”
“Do you?”
“I think? I’m not you, so I can’t say what you feel, but I think I had something lesser going on around this stupid fucking Chakroga deal. If I could just make a big pile of money, it would redeem all those years of ignoring the people I loved, and help take care of them. I didn’t erase anyone like your father did. I just forgot how to make the most important thing the most important thing.”
“And I thought if I got bylines in major, national magazines, my dad couldn’t ignore me. He’d wake up one day and go, ‘Look at how awesome she is! I’m so proud of my daughter! I need to go give her praise and acknowledgement.’” Tears prick my sinuses, my nose turning bitter. “I’m so stupid.”
“You’re anything but stupid. And I’m sorry for my arsehole brilliant comment. That was uncalled for.”
“You were mad.”
“I was. I was also wrong.”
“I’ve never screamed at anyone like that in my life,” I confess. “Not even my mother when she accidentally threw away a napkin that my friend’s sister swears Nelly touched when he stayed at the hotel where she worked and she stole it off his room service cart.”
“I’m special, then.” The way he holds his hand on my shoulder makes me want to curl into him, dig into his warmth, lose myself in him forever.
Instead, I pull back and give him the full me, red eyes, runny nose and all.
“It’s not your fault Jared and your niece and nephew lost Stacey.”
“I don’t think that.”
“I know you don’t think that, but some part of you needs to atone for not being around during the good years. Before she was sick.”
His eyes flare. “Good God.”
“Sorry.”
“No sorries. You’re right. I think about all the times Stacey invited me over and I declined. All the barbecues. The ice skating. Watching Molly do toddler hockey. Jared’s middle school band concerts.” He winces. “Those, though, are just painful, period. Any reasonable person would do whatever it takes to avoid an hour of nothing but off-key songs.”
“It’s okay that you missed it all.”
“It’s not, Sarah. It’s not. But thank you for saying it is.”
“Case.” I reach for his jawline, framing his face with my hands. My eyes bore into his. “It is. You do not need to be Superman and redeem yourself for being human. You missed what you missed because you were living your life and working on your dreams. No one can fault you for that.”
He leans in first, but I lean right back, each of us covering exactly half the distance between us, the kiss as much a need for something that grounds us as it is pure lust. We screamed at each other in passion just minutes ago, his words ringing in my head in a loop as his lips and tongue find mine:
I feel like the luckiest bastard because I – me! - get to see the real, vulnerable, laughing, naked you underneath it all.
And I told him I was halfway toward loving him.
His mouth is soft, prying, seeking, and as his tongue lingers along the edge of my teeth I cup his face, his hands pressing my shoulders closer, his breath hot against my cheek as we pause.
I groan. “We threw our relationship away for nothing .”
Case presses his forehead against mine and closes his eyes.
“Jared was right.”
“What does he have to do with - ”
Case takes two breaths, making my heart speed up through the thick sludge of my confounded horror. “Sarah.” His hand goes to my shoulder, eyes pleading. “It’s over.”
Whatever hope I had fades like an ice bucket dumped on a thin candle. That kiss meant nothing.
No – worse .
That kiss was a very kind goodbye.
“Oh.” I pull back, scooching over, curling my arms around my knees.
“We lost. We both lost. My deal won’t go through and you didn’t get your byline. We both got screwed by other people who decided they’re the only person in the world.”
The brutal truth of those words holds me, suspended, unable to think.
His hand goes to my knee. “And anyone who tries to erase you is insecure, petty, and a fool.”
He’s touching me again. That scatters more brain cells.
“Thank you.”
Loss . I feel nothing but loss right now, all of it echoing through me like something precious dropped down a cavern whose bottom you cannot see. It’s so vast and endless, all the parts of me I cannot have any longer. The Sarah who met Case a short time ago in that bar, on her third glass of wine, feels like a fragment, a figment, a former me who bears no relation to the person sitting here, freshly kissed, being told it’s over.
At least I’m not being erased.
I’m just being gently let down.
“Are there tissues here?” he asks as my nose starts dripping, his sympathy verging on pity. I’ve been dumped before and I know how much it sucks, so while we’re not together and this isn’t the same, I’d just as rather get some closure and go on about my life.
I have wounds to nurse.
And complications to untangle.
“There’s some up here,” I tell him, reaching up for the hairstylist’s counter, knowing the area by eidetic memory, feeling for a box of tissues above me.
Instead, my fingers hit curved glass, then metal, and suddenly, I feel the shock of hard pain on my head, making my neck twist, ear stroking my shoulder, the jolt of nerves being pushed too far making me reel.
“AUGH!” Case shouts, jumping up as something fluid pours over both of us, blue liquid dripping down his ear, my forehead wet as I blink and quickly shut my eyes.
“It’s BARBICIDE!” I scream. “Don’t let it get on you!”
“TOO LATE!” he booms. “Don’t open your eyes! Close your eyes, Sarah!”
“You too!”
“It’s only on my ear and shoulder. It’s all over your head! In your hair! Where are the towels?”
If I open my mouth, the liquid will get in, so I point as I tip my head back, hoping to keep it out of my eyes.
“Bloody hell, here.” My eyes are shut, mouth as well, so I guess he just grabs whatever he can and starts blotting the top of my head. “This stuff is poisonous!” he says in horror.
Groping blindly, I find his hands and the towel and take over, patting my face delicately as I feel him using another towel on the top of my head.
“The entire cylinder dumped all over us,” he mutters. “You got about eighty percent of it.”
My mouth is finally free of the stuff. “I am literally toxic,” I whisper. “This day can fuckity fuck fuck all the way off.”
“Your hair, Sarah. Oh, your hair.” He’s patting my head and as I finally open my eyes, I see how bluish-green the white towels are.
“Mom had always wanted to dye my hair some wild color. Who knew she could just use Barbicide on me.”
“Well,” he says, patting his ear and neck, “at least we can cross lice off our list of things to worry about today.”
Hands splayed, fingers sticky, I look up at him and gasp. One side of his face is a mess, hair poking out like barbed wire over his ear, and his business shirt is ruined, looking like a bad high-school oil and water coloring project.
“You look blue!”
“That’s quite a statement coming from Smurfette,” he says, tongue touching the tip of his teeth as he laughs. I stand, my feet going out from under me as I slip on liquid we didn’t mop up, but before my ass can hit the floor I’m in his arms.
Caught.
Safe.
My back is to his front and his arms are bands, taut wire that holds me in place, secure and unharmed. As I gain my footing, the overwhelming stench of antiseptic filling the space around us, I start giggling.
And continue.
His body shakes with mine, out of sync but we’re making music from our laughter, the beats off but the intent pure and real. I laugh until I can’t breathe, caught up in absurdity, wondering how on earth my life has devolved to the point where I accidentally dumped lice poison all over our heads.
And we’re laughing about it.