Chapter 26 #2
I come down off the stage with my pulse going and the good kind of warmth under my skin, the kind I'd forgotten could happen to me.
Someone's brought pastries. There's coffee.
People-watching, side conversations, normal life carrying on in a church fellowship hall on a Tuesday afternoon, and I'm standing in the middle of it holding a paper cup, part of it.
I catch myself smiling at nothing again.
I don't bother stopping it this time.
It's nearly five when I'm gathering my bag from the back row, script under my arm, keys already in hand.
"Audrey, can we talk for a moment?"
I turn.
Jenna Holloway stands a few feet behind me with her purse held in front of her in both hands, and behind her, half a step back, Bethany Long and Annie Sorenson.
Women I've known for years. Women who brought casseroles to my door, who sat three rows back at the funeral.
Bethany was with me when my water broke with Sophie.
Annie taught Eli his Sunday school verse, the Lord is my shepherd.
Made him recite it with the hand motions.
"Sure," I say.
"In here might be better." Jenna tips her head toward the side room off the hall, the one for choir robes and folding chairs. "So we're not in everyone's way."
The room is small and smells like dust and old fabric. One round table, a stack of chairs against the wall, a high window that doesn't open. Jenna sets her purse on the table. Annie closes the door, and the latch catches with a soft click, the noise from the hall dropping to nothing.
We sit, Jenna across from me, the other two on either side, like a panel.
"We wanted to talk because we care about you," Jenna begins. Her voice is soft—her face soft—everything about her arranged into concern. "We've watched you go through so much these last two years. Nobody admires you more than I do, the way you've held your family together."
"Thank you."
"So I hope you'll hear this the way it's meant.
" She folds her hands on the table. "You know my grandmother lives with us now, across the street from you.
We couldn't put her in a home, not after everything.
And she sits in that front window most of the day with not enough to do, and a while back she got it in her head that there was a policeman at your house.
I didn't think anything of it. She gets confused. She sees things."
I keep my face still.
"But it stuck with me," Jenna says. "So I started paying a little more attention.
We have one of those video doorbells. It catches a good bit of the street.
" She says it lightly, like everyone keeps a record of their neighbor's front walk.
"And there's a man. Coming to your house.
Late, mostly. Different nights, several times now. "
Annie makes a small sound.
"I didn't want to say anything until I was sure," Jenna goes on. "But the last time, the camera caught him clear in the porch light." She pauses, and something like apology crosses her face, the performance of not wanting to be the one to say it. "Audrey, it's Asher Calloway."
The name lands in the small room and sits there.
"The ballplayer," Annie adds softly, as if I might not know.
"I looked him up," Jenna says. "I almost wish I hadn't.
The things written about that man." She shakes her head, slow.
"I'm sure he can be very charming. Men like that always are.
That's the whole problem with them. Maybe you haven’t read the articles, but I have.
Or maybe you do know. Either way, that man is trouble. "
My hands curl into fists, nails digging into my palms.
"You don't know him." It comes out level, almost calm. "What's written about him isn't who he is. He's kind. He's careful with my kids. He's the most honorable man I've ever—"
"Oh, sweetie." Bethany leans across the table and lays her hand over mine, her face soft and crumpling at the edges. "He got to you too."
The bottom drops out of the room.
I look at her hand on mine. I look up at her face, then at Annie's and Jenna's, and they're all wearing it now, the same expression.
Gentle, grieving, certain.
Not disapproval anymore.
Pity.
The settled, comfortable pity of women watching someone be fooled.
"He hasn't gotten to me." My voice isn't level now.
"If you knew him, if you sat with him for ten minutes, you'd see.
He's not the man in those articles. That man doesn't exist; they made him up.
He silenced my microwave so I'd stop racing the timer.
He asked my children for their permission before he risked anything. He—"
"Audrey." Jenna's voice is so soft it's almost a lullaby.
"Listen to yourself. A man like that, coming and going at all hours.
" She tips her head. "Honey. If he's at your door late at night, where do you think he is on the nights he isn't? A man with his reputation.
Do you really believe you're the only one? "
I know it isn't true.
I know exactly where he is on the nights he isn't here.
Home, alone, in a penthouse he doesn't bring women to.
With Nate in hotel rooms across the country so he can play the game he loves.
Turning down the kind of attention these three couldn't imagine because he is mine, and I am his.
I know it the way I know my children's breathing through a wall.
But it doesn't matter.
There's nothing I can say out loud that looks like anything but evidence of how deep I’ve fallen.
The truer the man I describe, the more obviously I've been taken in.
If I built him for them brick by brick, every honorable thing he's done, they'd only lean closer and hold my hand tighter, because nobody gets that gone over a regular man.
The truth doesn't free me. The truth is a trap.
So I stop.
I close my mouth, sit with my hands under Bethany's, and I let them talk.