Zoe
Philadelphia, 2024
On the elevator ride up to Jordan’s office, touched the piece of paper in her pocket, checking for the tenth time in as many minutes to make sure she hadn’t lost it.
It turned out that Bess not only had Cassie’s phone number; she also had an address.
had stared down at the words and numbers Bess had written, then up at her aunt. “Alaska?”
she’d asked.
Bess gave her a cool look.
“She told me she wanted to be as far away as she could.”
“Oh,”
said .
Then, “When? When did she tell you this?”
“The day Russell died.”
Bess looked at her steadily.
“She said she was going away, so she wouldn’t hurt anyone else.”
felt her knees going watery.
She leaned against the counter and made herself nod, accepting responsibility; aching with how badly she’d screwed up.
It wasn’t her fault, she thought.
I should have told her it wasn’t her fault.
During the drive to Center City, the walk from the parking garage to Jordan’s building, and the elevator ride, tried to organize her thoughts, to figure out the best way to make her case to a man who made cases for a living, but the memories she thought she’d banished had started to come back and she couldn’t stop remembering how it had been, after Russell had died, and Cherry had come.
At first, Jerry had welcomed her return.“It’s been a minute since people heard from you,”
he’d said.
“But they’ll remember.
It’s not too late. Not yet.”
He’d made it clear that they’d need to move quickly, and he’d paired her with half a dozen likely songwriters, men and women, young and old.
Cam and Tommy were long gone.
Cam had married Wendy, and they’d moved to Los Angeles, where she worked for Nickelodeon and he played in studio sessions, and Tommy had returned to his classical-music roots, and the Midwest, joining the Cleveland Orchestra.
Jerry, as promised, had worked fast, and had built a band around her.
A year after Cherry’s birth, was back on the road again, with a band called Night Becomes Her and a single called “Twenty Questions,”
on which no fewer than four songwriters were credited.
The song had been launched with great fanfare and had been greeted with ringing silence.
The album that had followed earned a handful of lukewarm reviews.
A few radio stations played the song, probably out of residual affection for the Griffin Sisters—or, more likely, memories of how well their music had sold.
But the single hadn’t charted, and the album hadn’t even cracked the top 100.
By then, streaming platforms were emerging, and CD sales were starting to drop.
Instead of paying fifteen dollars for an album’s worth of music, kids were downloading songs at ninety-nine cents apiece, or they were pirating copies and paying nothing at all.
Looking back, years later, could see that her comeback was doomed before it had even begun.
She was attempting it at what was a low moment in the history of pop music, even for artists far more talented and established than she’d been.
Jerry and CJ both reassured her, promising that her pathetic album sales and poorly attended live shows were not due to lack of talent or hard work, but just bad timing.
wanted, badly, to believe them when they told her that anyone would have struggled, even though she knew that her sister would have done just fine, if Cassie had been the one with a new band.
Even if there wasn’t a single radio station left, even if record stores had closed and album sales had cratered, even in a crowded marketplace with a new crop of debut artists every week, Cassie still would have found listeners and made a living.
Cassie was special.
was not.
Night Becomes Her had lasted less than a year.
Jerry’s next idea was to launch as a solo act—probably, thought, with a cynicism that was becoming more habitual, because it was cheaper than hiring another band.
More songwriters were dispatched to the rowhouse in Fishtown, to sit where Russell D’Angelo had once sat and try to coax a song into existence.
Except nineteen-year-old had been delighted at the prospect of fame, hardworking and eager and full of ideas, even if they weren’t especially useful ones.
Twenty-three-year-old , who’d lost a husband and had a baby, was a lot less delighted, and significantly less eager, and had no ideas at all.
“Maybe it’s a song about loss,”
she said, to the young woman songwriter with long, brown hair.
“A song about a woman who loses her love,”
she said, to the middle-aged guy with tired gray eyes.
“A song about loneliness.
About being alone.
About thinking you’re always going to be alone.”
Loss and loneliness were the only things on her mind.
“It’s okay,”
she’d end up telling them all, thinking that the best thing she could do would be to get out of their way.
“You write it.
I’ll sing it.”
It took over a year for her to scrape together enough music for an album.
was pretty sure that most of what the songwriters had given her were songs that had been cut from someone else’s album, or demos that had never been released.
She couldn’t bring herself to protest.
With no ideas of her own, no ability to write, she had to be grateful for what she got, even if it felt like crumbs from a rich man’s table.
The label sent her to a recording studio in New Jersey, where she spent ten days in a soundproofed cubicle two stories underground, hoping she was imagining the bored look on the engineer’s face on the other side of the glass window, and that the backup singers were not rolling their eyes at her ineptitude.
“There’s a photographer in the Village,”
Jerry told her, once the sound engineer signed off on the album, saying, “I think that’s as good as we can get.
He just shot his first feature for Vogue.”
had expected the label to make arrangements with a stylist, to schedule her hair and makeup and come up with a concept for the cover, the way they had for the Griffin Sisters and Night Becomes Her, but when she’d arrived at the guy’s studio—a fourth-floor walkup in a building with a steep, narrow staircase covered in thin gray carpeting and white-painted brick walls—she hadn’t found the expected racks of clothing or boxes of shoes.
No makeup artist, no hairstylist, no assistant either ...
and, when she knocked on the door, no one had answered.
She checked the new BlackBerry she’d purchased, making sure she had the time and the address right.
When she knocked again, and there was still no answer, she pushed the door open.
A man, about her age, in a loose-fitting crewneck sweatshirt and dark-blue sweatpants, was standing in the corner of a high-ceilinged room with his back toward the door and a cordless phone tucked under his chin.
Light fought its way in through a grimy skylight and through south-facing windows, illuminating the dust on the hardwood floors.
saw a white paper backdrop on a roller, collapsible reflectors and diffusers stacked untidily in the corner, lights on wheels, a stepstool, and a ladder.
“Yeah ...the Griffin Sister,”
the guy was saying into the phone.
“Sister, singular.”
He paused, listening, then said, “No, no.
The other one.”
His laughter had a nasty edge.
“Hello?”
she all but shouted.
The guy turned and eyed her up and down, not even trying to pretend he wasn’t.
pushed her hand at him, waiting until he shook it.
“I’m Griffin.”
“Yeah.
You are.
Brian Halvorsen.”
He had a long, narrow face, with shaggy brows, a beaky nose, and pockmarked cheeks.
His dark hair was thinning on top.
His arms and legs were spindly; his belly pushed at his sweatshirt’s hem.
tried to give him the same treatment he’d given her, moving her gaze up and down the length of his body.
She found that she couldn’t.
It felt too invasive, too weird.
He clapped his hands together, the sound as loud as a shotgun in the mostly empty space.
“Okay, what are we doing?”
“Um.
An album cover?”
He laughed like she’d told a joke.
“Yes, but what, exactly?”
No one had spoken to about the concept for the cover, or given her—or, it seemed, Brian, the photographer—any direction.
Which told her exactly how much of a priority she was to the label these days.
“A portrait,”
she said, after thinking it over.
“Black and white.
Chest up.
Three-quarter profile.”
There.
That sounded like something.
She could picture it too: her expression, thoughtful and sober, her eyes clear.
Maybe with her hair blowing over her shoulders.
She looked around hopefully for a fan.
“Okay, then.”
Brian was loading his camera.
He jerked his chin toward the backdrop.
walked over, wondering if she had time to primp.
She’d worn a loose-fitting black sweater with a cream-colored silk camisole underneath, boot-cut jeans, low-heeled black boots.
Nothing fancy.
Nothing sexy.
But that was fine.
She was going for more of a singer-songwriter vibe these days.
No more prancing party princess; no more miniskirted, bare-midriffed dancer.
Her belly, once as golden-brown and flat as the desert, had stretch marks and a little bit of pooch below her navel.
“All set?”
Brian asked, without looking at her.
Fuck it, she thought, and walked onto the roll of white paper, standing, facing him with her hands in her pockets.
Brian hit a switch.
found herself blinking in the sudden glare of a brilliant white light.
“Chin up.”
could hear his voice, but couldn’t see him.
She blinked, feeling mole-like, hoping her eyes weren’t watering.
Over the click-click-click of the camera, his voice sounded bored.
“Lean forward a little.
Weight on your back foot.
Hips toward me.”
felt herself start sweating at her hairline, above her upper lip.
After a few minutes, Brian walked toward her, the camera still at his eye.
Without a word, he reached out and pushed her sweater off her shoulder.
looked at his hand on her skin.
Don’t touch me, she wanted to say.
But she didn’t say a word.
“Okay to try some with the sweater off?”
’s fingers felt like frozen sticks as she worked the buttons and tossed the sweater into a corner.
“There you go,”
he said, still click-click-clicking away.
He dragged a white plastic stepstool over, unfolded it, and climbed on top of it, shooting down.
“Very nice.”
“Did you get what you need?”
asked, when the camera stopped.
Brian climbed back down and circled around her, holding his camera, then stopped, shaking his head.
“Can you take your shirt off for me?”
stared at him.
“I’m not going to show anything,”
he said.
“Just the tops of your shoulders.”
His voice wasn’t even cajoling, just flat and matter-of-fact.
told herself not to make trouble.
She knew she was running out of chances, and if this album didn’t work, there would not be another attempt to give her a career.
wasn’t ashamed of her body—at least, she knew she wasn’t supposed to be—and she wasn’t shy.
She’d gotten changed in a hundred dressing rooms, with people all around her.
She was a professional, told herself, and pulled off her camisole.
Brian reached toward her.
With two thick fingers he pinched her bra strap, then slid it off her shoulder.
First the left strap, then the right.
Click-click-click, went the camera, before Brian stopped and looked at her again.
“Let’s lose the bra.”
blinked. “What?”
“Take it off.”
He’d turned away, was walking back toward a folding table, where there were two other cameras set out, along with boxes of film.
stared after him.
She felt like her spirit was hovering, somewhere in the air above her, staring down at this unhappy scene.
“No,”
she finally said.
Her voice was so faint she could hardly hear it.
She cleared her throat.
Tried again. “No.”
Brian had his back to her as he fiddled with his camera.
“If the straps show up in the pictures, I’ll have to retouch them.
And you’re on a pretty tight budget.”
He finally turned around to face her.
“You’re not a prude, are you? Nah,”
he said, answering his own question.
“You’re a rock-and-roll girl, right?”
He flipped a switch, the sounds of drum machines rattling and vocals glitching as the lyrics of Nine Inch Nails “Starfuckers, Inc.”
filled the room.
looked at him, at herself.
It doesn’t matter, she thought.
Nothing matters.
And this will be over soon.
She unhooked her bra, tossing it on top of her discarded sweater.
She crossed her hands over her breasts, trying not to shiver, turning her face, lifting her chin.
Click ...
click ...
click, went the camera.
Brian was sweating now—she could see widening circles of wetness underneath his armpits, could smell it too, the ripe odor of unclean male body, as he circled her, coming closer with each pass. “Relax,”
he whispered in her ear.
The music had changed.
heard a discordant shriek of guitars, the ominous thud of a bass line, and recognized Marilyn Manson’s “The Dope Show.”
Cops and queers ...
to swim, you have to swallow . . .
felt his hands on her shoulders, then sliding down to grip her upper arms.
He was leaning toward her, close enough that she could see a fleck of dried egg on his chin.
He pushed her arms down, rolling her shoulders back, leaving her breasts exposed.
“Come on,”
he whispered.
“Who are you saving it for? You want people to buy what you’re selling, right?”
Buy what I’m selling, thought numbly.
Which, clearly, was not her music.
Had Jerry called this guy beforehand, given him a heads-up? Don’t spend too much time on this.
Don’t make a big deal.
She’s nothing special.
Girls like her are a dime a dozen.
“Come on,”
he said again, and reached out to cup a goose-pimpled breast.
When flinched, he pinched her nipple, hard enough to hurt.
He rolled it between his fingers, left, then right.
“Let’s give the people what they want.”
In her mind, pushed him away.
In her mind, she said Stop and No; said What are you doing, and I’m going to tell Jerry.
She saw herself, bending, scooping up her abandoned clothes, running out of the studio, letting the door slam behind her.
In real life, she let him move her, let him touch her, let him pose her, like a doll.
“Hot,”
he said. “Sexy.”
He had her straddle a chair, still topless, hair tossed over one shoulder.
“Like this,”
he said, climbing behind her, pressing into her, his fingers all over her skin and his breath hot and damp in her ear.
She told herself that it didn’t matter, that it was just her body, that this was her last chance.
Later, at home, in the shower, trying to scrub away the feeling of his hands on her body, trying to get his stench out of her nose, would think, Why didn’t I stop him? But the answer was obvious.
She still wanted success, fame, fortune.
If she didn’t have the talent she needed to acquire those things, she’d use what she could.
If that meant trading her body for a good album cover, she’d do it.
Her body wasn’t her, she told herself, as the hot water turned her skin pink, then red.
When the photographs arrived, went to New York to see them.
The shots were black and white, bare neck and shoulders.
Her hair looked limp and her eyes looked sad. “Nice,”
Jerry said.
“Very nice.”
They sent her on a three-week tour, in support of the album that had called One Time, which was the name of the first single, a song she hadn’t written.
Three weeks, seventeen shows, in bars in big cities and clubs or halls in smaller ones.
Vienna, Virginia, and Frederick, Maryland, instead of Washington, DC; Princeton, New Jersey, smallish towns in Maine and Connecticut.
None of the larger venues in Philadelphia had been interested.
Instead, had been booked at the Scottish Rite Auditorium in Collingswood, one night after a Led Zeppelin tribute band called Get the Led Out.
To save money, she was driving herself to her gigs in her mother’s ten-year-old Toyota, staying in Hampton Inns instead of fancier places.
She’d finally learned to play the guitar, after six months of intensive study with an eighteen-year-old teacher moonlighting from the School of Rock.
She’d done her best ...
but the album, like the one before it, had flopped.
She’d spent a year after its release flogging it, playing at any bar or club that would have her.
That was when she’d met Jordan, at a bar in West Philadelphia, at one of the last shows she’d played.
“Sorry we don’t really have a greenroom,”
the bar’s owner had said, ushering to a cramped back office, indicating, with a sweep of his hand, a desk with an elderly desktop computer, a cardboard box filled with foam beer cozies, and a rolling chair with a torn fabric seat.
A tiny adjoining bathroom breathed an odor of industrial cleanser and sewage.
“It’s fine,” said.
“Just let me know if you need anything.”
He had the grace to look apologetic as he said, “I can comp your dinner if you want anything, but drinks are full price.”
“It’s fine,”
said again, and tried not to think about the bottles of top-shelf liquor, plus garnishes and mixers, and the platters of fancy cheese and fruit and charcuterie that would be waiting backstage for the Griffin Sisters during their tour, or the designers who’d send her dozens of free outfits, dresses and blouses and shoes, right off the runway, with the hope that she would deign to wear one of their pieces.
It had felt endless—a cornucopia of riches that would pour out until the world ended.
There were only a dozen people at the bar.
had noticed Jordan right away.
He was in his mid-thirties, nursing a glass of whiskey, dressed in a dark-blue shirt and a loosened tie, with his suit jacket hung neatly over the back of his chair.
was used to men looking at her—used to being appreciated—but Jordan was not just looking; he was listening too.
“Hey, make sure you do some Griffin Sisters stuff,”
the manager had told her, right before she’d gone on.
That was what her audiences, such as they were, wanted from her.
It was all they wanted, really.
Sometimes, just to be perverse, would only play new stuff, the songs she’d written for Night Becomes Her, or covers of old songs that she liked.
Mostly, though, she did as she was told, knowing that if she refused, word would make its way back to CJ.
Then she’d get a lecture.
, if you want to make this work, you’ve got to give the people what they want.
CJ would say those words, and she’d feel the photographer’s hands on her shoulders again.
It wouldn’t be worth it.
Normally, sounded okay to her own ears ...
but that night, with the stranger’s flattering attention, the rapt way he listened, the way he looked at her, barely blinking, like he didn’t want to miss even a second of the show, sang better than she had in a long time.
She ran through her usual set, which included some covers, some of her original stuff, and enough Griffin Sisters songs to keep the crowds, and the club owners, happy.
There was muted applause when she finished up with “Last Night in Fishtown,”
except for the man in the suit, who had clapped and clapped, with his eyes on ’s face.
The bartender caught her eye and nodded at the manager, who, saw, was tapping his wrist where a watch would be.
pretended not to see him.
“This is a new song,”
she said, and sang, for the first time, the song she’d been working on for almost a year, staying up late at night while Cherry slept in Cassie’s old bed beside her.
It was the only song she’d written completely on her own.
Writing it had been the hardest thing she’d ever done, every word and note wrestled into being, like she’d clawed them out of the rock face with her bare hands.
The process had left her jealous of her sister all over again.
I want a love like a death row pardon
A back-bent smile, a pretty little weed
Growing wild in a witch’s dark garden
Behind wire walls that don’t care if you bleed
She hadn’t been surprised when the handsome man had clapped enthusiastically, getting off his chair and onto his feet, eventually shaming the other patrons into joining his ovation.
He’d looked at her the way people used to look at her sister.
The thought filled her with shame and remorse again, like she was a glass and there was a bottomless pitcher somewhere that could just keep pouring it into her, topping her off, making sure that the story of how she’d betrayed her sister and killed Russell D’Angelo was the first thing she thought of every morning and the last thing she thought of every night.
But she was still pretty ...
and she wasn’t surprised when she’d been walking to her car and the guy from the show had called out to her and jogged to catch up.
“Hey,”
he said, slightly breathless, smiling a boyish smile.
“Hi.
I just wanted to tell you that you were incredible.”
“Thank you.
That’s nice of you to say.”
“I . . .”
He swallowed.
felt herself tensing.
She wondered if he’d say he was a Griffin Sisters superfan, if he had questions about Russell, about Cassie.
But he surprised her.
“I feel so lucky I was here tonight.”
“You don’t come here often?”
thought she’d judged her tone perfectly—light, but not flirty.
Interested, but not desperate.
He shook his head.
“It’s the first time I’ve been out in ...God.Over a year.”
He swallowed.
“My wife’s been sick.”
Wife, thought .
Well.
Of course there was a wife.
Of course some other, wiser woman had married this handsome, attentive, kind-eyed man.
“Oh, I’m sorry,”
she said.
“I hope she’s better?”
She heard her voice getting higher, tilting the last statement into a question, even as she looked at the guy more closely, and saw his pallor, the circles under his eyes.
“No.
Not better.
She’s dead,”
he said.
“She died . . .”
He tilted his head briefly at the sky.
“Six months ago,”
he said.
“My God.
Sometimes it feels like it just happened yesterday,”
he said, mostly to himself.
“Oh,”
said.
“I’m sorry.”
Up close, she could see that the guy was no older than forty, probably closer to thirty-five.
His wife must have been a young woman too.
“Yeah,”
the guy said.
“It’s—it’s been hard.
I haven’t been sleeping.
And I knew if I went home tonight, I’d just lie awake, staring at the ceiling, and so . . .”
He gestured back in the direction of the bar.
“I was walking around, and I just wandered in, randomly.
And there you were!”
His face lit up.
“I’ve never heard of you, or the band you were in.
Which I apologize for.”
felt herself smile.
Once, that admission would have hurt her.
Now it made her glad.
“I think you’re amazing,”
said the guy.
could feel her smile soften, as she thought, Oh, honey.
You should have heard my sister.
“I’d love to buy you a drink.
Or dinner,” he said.
hadn’t kissed a man since Tommy.
Hadn’t touched one since her last fight with Russell.
Hadn’t been touched by one since Brian the photographer, and hadn’t wanted to be touched since then.
Between her grief, and the pregnancy, and the exhaustion of new motherhood, she hadn’t felt even a flicker of desire.
Now she looked at this man and wondered how it would feel if he put his hands on her hips.
She wondered how he’d smell, up close; how he’d kiss her.
“I’d like that,”
she said, and gave him her number.
The elevator doors to Jordan’s office slid open.
walked down the short length of a hallway, opened the heavy paneled wooden doors, and announced herself at the front desk.
“You can take a seat,”
the receptionist said, indicating the comfortable armchairs that stood on fringed wool carpets.
Colorful modern art hung on the gleaming dark wood of the walls; fresh flowers wafted their fragrance from the receptionist’s desk; and magazines—Fortune, Real Simple, Bon Appétit, The Atlantic—were neatly fanned out on the coffee table.
The atmosphere was hushed, reverential, like something holy was going on beyond the doors the receptionist was guarding.
The First Church of the Almighty Dollar, thought, and smirked.
In less than a minute, Jordan emerged.
He’d removed his suit jacket.
His sleeves were rolled up and his tie was loosened, and he looked so handsome, so dear to her, that felt her eyes burning, the back of her throat prickling.
“? What’s wrong? Did you hear from Cherry?”
She shook her head.
“I need to talk to you.”
Jordan nodded.
Murmuring something to the receptionist, he led past her, through a doorway, down a hall, and into his office, which had a floor-to-ceiling window that looked east, toward the Delaware River.
He moved a stack of files from the chair across from his desk to the floor, then took a seat behind his desk and gestured toward the now-vacant chair.
stayed on her feet.
She wondered how she looked to him, if he guessed that there was trouble, if he had any idea at all what it was.
“What’s been going on with Cherry and Bix?”
she asked.
Jordan stared at her.
tried again.
“Do you know what Bix has been doing to Cherry?”
Jordan’s expression was baffled.
didn’t think he was faking ...
but would she know for sure if he was?
“Did Cherry say something happened?”
he asked.
Jordan’s desk was a slab of lacquered wood, an unbroken stretch of glossy black, without a single latch or handle or ornament.
His hands rested on it, palms tipped open toward her.
“Did she accuse him of something?”
Instead of answering, swiped her phone to life, opened the file she’d prepared, and slid the phone across the black hole of the desk, watching as Jordan scrolled through the pictures she’d found on Bix’s phone.
“How did you get these?”
he asked, when he’d reached the last one.
’s hands clenched.
“That’s your first question? Not ‘Why is my son taking creepy pictures of my stepdaughter?’ It’s ‘How did you get these?’”
Jordan just looked at her, his expression calm, his voice patient. “—”
“For God’s sake,”
said, “does it matter? Can we focus on the pictures? They’re gross, they’re weird, it’s a violation . . .”
A little stiffly, Jordan said, “Looking at his phone without his permission is a betrayal of his trust.”
felt breathless with fury.
“Jordan, he took pictures of Cherry in the bathroom.
Pictures while she was sleeping.
And you think he’s the victim?”
Jordan pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose, massaging the red dents his glasses had left there, a gesture she’d seen him make a thousand times.
“I don’t know what to tell you,”
he said.
His voice was thin, frustrated.
could see the tight line of his lips, and how angry he was in his helplessness.
“What do you want me to do? Kick him out? Tell him he can never come home again?”
“Yes.
That’s what I want.
I’m not comfortable—”
She knew what Jordan was going to say before he said it.
She’d heard it so many times.
“.
He’s my son.”
That was usually where the conversation ended, because what reply could she possibly make? What could she say? Except, this time, there was something.
“Yes.
He’s your son.
And she’s my daughter.
And she’s gone now.
And it’s your son’s fault.”
Jordan pressed his lips together. “Well,”
he said.
“That’s convenient.”
“Which means what?”
“That if it’s his fault,”
said Jordan, “it’s not your fault.
And I think at least some of her leaving has to do with you refusing to listen to what Cherry was telling you, about what she wanted to do with her life.”
recoiled.
“Well, that’s very convenient for you,”
she said, when she could speak.
“Because if it’s my fault, it’s not his.”
They’d gone round and round, neither one yielding.
Jordan admitted that the pictures were problematic, but refused to concede that Bix had anything to do with Cherry running away.
said that she was happy to own her part of the mess, but she couldn’t countenance Bix’s continued presence in their home.
Jordan, who hardly ever got angry, had yelled at her.
, who hardly ever got emotional, had cried.
She’d wept, and she’d pleaded, but she hadn’t relented.
Hadn’t said, Okay, we’ll do it your way, or agreed that Bix could come home if Jordan promised to watch him more carefully and insist on more therapy and never leave him alone with Cherry.
He can’t stay with us ever again, said.
If he’s there, I’ll leave.
She made herself look at the wall, and the framed diplomas that hung there, instead of her husband’s hurt expression.
“I’ll take the boys with me.
And you’ll never see Cherry again.”
She saw bafflement on Jordan’s face, followed by anger.
“I’ll fight you if you do that.”
His voice was cool, detached, almost thoughtful.
“I wouldn’t just let you walk away with my children.”
didn’t reply.
Jordan had adopted Cherry after they’d gotten married.
And he loved her.
Cherry was as much his daughter as the boys were his sons.
But Cherry was an adult now.
If told her daughter what she’d done, told her that Jordan knew about Bix’s actions, would she still want to see him? Or would she cut him out of her life, wall herself off from him, the way she’d closed herself off from ?
“You can fight me,”
she told her husband.
“But I have to keep Cherry safe.
I’m her mother.
That is my job.”
Even as she spoke, wondered if this newfound strength would last, if she’d be able to make good on her promise.
Maybe she’d end up alone again, broke and single again, only this time with three kids instead of one.
Maybe the shame of a divorce, the pitiable and impecunious life of a single mother, was what she deserved for what she’d done.
“Look,”
Jordan finally said.
“, if it happened—if Bix was watching Cherry, or taking pictures—”
“He was,”
she interrupted.
“There’s no ‘if,’ Jordan.
It happened.”
“At least he didn’t touch her.
It could have been worse, right?”
“If it hurt my daughter, that’s bad enough.”
Jordan looked up at her unhappily.
Helplessly.
But he wasn’t helpless, was he? He could do the right thing and live with the consequences.
Or he could lose her.
When Cherry was little, when had been so broken, the prospect of walking away from a marriage would have undone her, left her paralyzed with terror.
But now she was older, and stronger, and the world hadn’t broken her yet.
“I think I know where Cherry is.
I’m going to find her,”
said.
“And when I come home, if Bix isn’t gone, then we’ll leave.
Me, and Cherry, and the boys.”
Jordan had his lawyer look on.
His Let’s not be hasty look.
His I’m sure there are options and Let’s talk it through look.
It was a conciliatory look, but could also see mulishness behind it: a man prepared to dig in for a long siege.
“I’m not kidding,”
she said.
“This has gone on for too long, and I ignored it.
I looked the other way; I stuck my head in the sand.
Because I love you.”
And because it served my purpose to ignore my daughter, she thought.
The churn of guilt that lived just under her breastbone tried to swell, to rise up and choke her back into silence, but wouldn’t let it.
“And because I’d been hurt—that way—I couldn’t stand to think about it happening to Cherry.”
She’d never told Jordan about the photographer, had only talked in a vague, nonspecific way about the industry and the harm it did to young women.
When the #MeToo movement had gotten underway, and it seemed like every day brought new revelations about some prominent man’s wrongdoings, Jordan had asked if anything like that had ever happened to her, and had given him a humorless laugh and said, “Where do you want me to start?”
He’d looked surprised, then saddened.
“That bad?”
he’d said, putting his arms around her shoulders, pulling her close.
picked her words out carefully.
“We didn’t have a way to talk about it then.
It was a different time.”
He’d drawn her against him, kissed her cheeks.
“My poor darling,”
he’d said.
She could see him getting ready to ask for details.
Do you want to talk about it? he’d ask.
didn’t.
So she’d said, “It was a long time ago.”
She’d never offered more information, and Jordan hadn’t pressed.
“—”
She looked across the office, considering her husband, who seemed, in that moment, like a handsome stranger, a man she’d never kissed, never slept beside, a man she didn’t know.
“You’re a good father,”
said.
“I know you love your son.
But I can’t let him keep hurting my daughter.”
She walked to the door.
Her knees weren’t trembling; her voice wasn’t wobbling; her gaze was steady and her palms were dry.
“I’m leaving now.”
Jordan got to his feet.
“Where are you—”
“I’m going to bring Cherry home, and, Jordan, believe me when I tell you that I mean what I say.
Either he’s gone, or we will be.”
knew she’d never come up with a better exit line.
And so she’d gone, leaving Jordan behind his desk, looking bewildered, praying that she’d done the right thing.
She’d go home, book a flight, go find her sister and give Cassie the apology she’d owed her for decades, and hope that Cassie could lead her to Cherry.
Let me be forgiven, she thought, as the elevator descended.
Let this all not be too late.