Chapter 18 #3
“Campbell is dead. Corrine is going to push for answers when he doesn’t come home.
The longer you wait, the worse things are going to get.
And when Emma learns you lied about where Campbell went that night, don’t you think she will go to the police herself?
And tell them not just about this, but Sarah too? ”
“If Emma planned on going to the police,” Henry counters, “she would have done it already. It’s too late now. She had information about a crime and she used it to punish the married man she was having an affair with. She’s too involved. She’s guilty.”
I lift my chin with defiance. “Well, I am not. And the second I can, I’m going to the police.”
Henry stares at me with especially cold eyes.
“Please,” I scoff. “If you were going to kill me, you’d have done it already.”
“I don’t want to kill you, Faye.”
“Then what do you want?”
“I want you to trust me.”
“Trust you?” I repeat harshly.
“Trust me to take care of this. To keep you clear of it. To protect you.”
“Sure, okay,” I agree sarcastically. “Tell me what that looks like.”
“That looks like speaking to Emma tomorrow, then hunkering down here for another day or two while I take care of a few more things.”
I look at Henry like he has sprouted an additional head. “What things?”
“You need to trust me.”
“I don’t!” I shout this, and Henry presses his lips together stubbornly.
“The other night,” he says after a moment, “when we slept next to each other. And I said I could not feel what we once had? That was a lie.”
“Don’t,” I say, twisting my wrists raw in my restraints. “Don’t do that.”
Henry ignores me. “I did feel something different. Something that made me crazy.”
“Stop,” I say, but my voice sounds weak and ineffective.
He does not stop. His face is pleading and guileless. “I was bursting out of my skin trying not to touch you.”
I close my eyes in one final act of self-preservation. I feel like one of those street cobras, dumped onto the hot pavement, too sluggish and malnourished to attack my charmer, easily tamed, soothed, tricked. “You will say anything at this point,” I insist, mostly for myself.
“I could say that if you decide not to trust me, if you decide not to let me take care of this my way, I will go ahead and I will ruin everything you have worked so hard to accomplish.”
I open my eyes to find Henry looking at me with what I can only describe as anticipatory regret. Do not make me do this to you is what his face is saying. I curl my hands into fists, furious. “Then do it. I know you want to. Or is that the grand fucking finale to this elaborate revenge plot?”
Henry leans forward to stress what he is about to say.
“I promise you, there is a way out of this, for both of us, unscathed, if you just trust me. And if it all goes to shit, I will say you were coerced into doing this, and you will have your episode to prove I was always a controlling piece of shit.”
“You would never.”
“I would. A thousand times over I would. Because I still love you.”
I turn my head like he has slapped me. The windows show a black as solid as a brick wall, hiding the surface of the lake, though I imagine its frightened, gooseflesh appearance in the rain.
I can only see myself in the window’s reflection, the struggle on my face to hide my same sobby feelings.
Yes, I went to PT’s funeral because I wanted to pay my respects to the man who helped me get my start, who was kind to me on top of it, but also because when Campbell told me Henry would be there, my body lurched like a creature brought back to life to destroy the person who created it.
I face Henry. Find his eyes like one of those old carousel projectors, blinking fuzzy, precious memories. Before the word is even out of my mouth, I regret it.
“Beg,” I say to him.
Surprise softens Henry’s features. Then, I watch as understanding sets in, rearranges him molecule by molecule.
He leans forward, stares at me with his hands bracing his upper body on his knees, long enough for me to take back what I said.
He is giving that to me, I realize. A chance to change my mind.
Even if I wanted to, my mouth is sandpaper.
Now it is too late; he is rising from the couch.
There is an unreal quality to the room, its golden romantic cast, its cold drumbeat of rain, as he steps around the coffee table and comes to loom over me in a way that reminds me I am tied to a chair in the middle of nowhere with a murderer who has already gotten away with it once.
“You asked for this,” Henry reminds me. He drops down to his knees, putting us at eye level.
He is so much more daunting at eye level than he is standing.
I can see myself reflected in his exploding pupils, seamed blue and then black again, a miniature, petrified version of myself.
“I am begging you, Faye,” he says. “Please. Trust me.”
I stare at him, unyielding.
“Faye.” Something splinters in Henry’s smooth voice.
“If we go through all this, and I don’t ever get to touch you again—” He breaks off and stares at my lap, where under the blanket I am not wearing underwear.
His cheeks are flushed. His mouth is pink, his eyes are soft and downturned and a wretched blue.
“I will never forgive myself.” Beneath the blanket I am beating a loud and lonely percussion for him. He hears it, he must.
“Please,” Henry says. He begs. “Faye. Please.”
I make myself count to three before I ruin my life, to be sure this is really what I want. Yes. With Henry, the answer is always yes. “You never bothered to ask before.”
Henry’s absurdly full lips part in disbelief. “Because that’s not what you like.”
I am shackled like a prisoner and dizzy with freedom as I say, “Then do what I like.”
The rain has stopped. The house is silent and waiting.
Then, methodically, Henry folds back the blanket, lets it slip off my knees and bunch on the ground.
I am thinking that the sight of my thighs forced wide by the restraints is nearly intolerable until Henry slides his cool hand under my shirt and puts his thumb on my clit, obliterating the physical barrier we’ve been testing and pushing up against these last few days.
We stare at each other, astonished. When all of this is over, when I am stuck in stock-still traffic on Sunset at three forty-five in the afternoon, when I am staring at the pink dusk, wondering if it is nature or pollution I am enjoying, this will be the moment I return to again and again: Henry’s thumb printed on my center and our shared awe that we get to have this again.
“You’re still so soft.” He says this with a slight gasp, with total grief. He leans in, brushes my bottom lip with his. We open our mouths, do not use tongue. He groans a curse deep into my throat, thumbing my clit in small, delicate circles. “Does he tell you how soft you are?”
I press my forehead against his with a whimper. No, my husband does not tell me how soft I am.
“How pink you are? How perfect?”
“Fuck.”
“You still like it when I hold you there?”
I melt into his hand. Nod with my bottom lip in my teeth.
And so Henry cups me between the legs, snugly, in the way I still like, the heel of his hand firm against my clit, fingertips digging into my ass. I am a nuclear button to which only he has the code.
“You’re in my dreams,” Henry says, kissing the tip of my nose, the dip in my cupid’s bow.
“Sometimes you refuse to talk to me. Sometimes I’m chasing you, trying to stop you from leaving again.
But sometimes you are like this.” He sits back on his heels, strokes my pussy lightly, thoughtfully.
Watches, his beautiful face mesmerized by his ability to stir up all the ugly, undisguised desperation on my own.
I feel full and empty at the same time, an irreconcilable pain that binds me to Henry still.
His eyes leave mine, travel the length of my body, stop at the place where my long shirt cuts off his hand at the wrist. I follow his sightline to see his hand roving under my shirt.
Such a small movement, barely a rotation, to be so vulgar.
We stare at what his hand is doing to me with slack jaws, looking like two druggy dumbfucks who are almost certainly going to jail.
But, you know what? Hard time might give me an edge.
I’d have a good lawyer; I bet Gloria Allred would take me as a client, she’d make sure I was sent to one of those cushy prisons where they do yoga and eat organic, that I was out in less than a year.
I raise my chin, open my mouth in a silent groan.
Release blasts through me, shrapnel lodging in my nerves and fibers, embedding a bright new everywhere burn that makes kindling of the lie I’ve been telling myself over the years. That I could ever be okay without this.
I am a limp, leaking mess as Henry unties my ankles, my rug- burned wrists.
I reach for him like a child, and he picks me up, hooks my legs around his waist, carries me into the bedroom.
He pulls back the sheets and packs us tightly inside.
I fall asleep on top of Henry’s chest, listening to the private conversations in the chambers of his heart.