46. Jeremiah
JEREMIAH
Zelda wins four games before I get near the score she made on her first turn.
“You chose this,” she tells me.
“I chose to watch you make everyone nervous.”
“Then you’re getting your money’s worth.”
We are at Suri’s in the first week of December. Zelda has taken off her shoes under the table and is sitting with one foot tucked beneath her. When another guest asks her to explain a rule, she leans forward, moving the pieces to show him, and I can see that she is enjoying herself.
Dax brings another bottle to the table. He congratulates her on her score and asks if I want more. I say yes. He pours, and we leave it at that.
Suri opens a drawer for the spare pieces and finds a bundle of old place cards. She starts to push them back, then looks at Zelda.
“These came with the supplies Candace sent me. She closed the business last month.”
Zelda’s hand stops above the board.
“She told you?”
“In the note she put with them. She’s cleared out the storage unit. The woman with the November birthday got her photographs back, and the other cancellations went through.”
“Good,” Zelda says quietly.
She sits back. Her foot slides down to the floor. She looks at the cards again.
“I used to help her put those in order,” she says.
Suri looks at the cards in her hand. “I know.”
“She always left the alphabetizing until the end.”
Zelda gives a small laugh with no pleasure in it. I wait for her to say something else. She reaches for her glass instead.
Suri puts the bundle away. She doesn’t offer to deliver a message, and Zelda doesn’t ask for one. A guest at the end of the table asks whether we are ready for the next round. Zelda says, “In a minute,” and takes another drink.
Later, by the coat stand, Dax asks me how work is. We exchange a few ordinary sentences. I ask about his father. Then Zelda comes out for the glass she left on the hall table, and Dax turns toward her.
“Could I speak to you?”
She looks at him, then at the study door behind him.
“Here is fine,” she says.
He nods. His hand goes to his pocket and comes out empty.
“I filmed your apology. I hadn’t seen you hit anyone, but I sent it to the group as if it proved you had.”
She keeps one hand on the rim of her glass.
“I sent it to my sister too. And other people who weren’t there. I told myself I was looking out for Jeremiah. Showing them what he was putting up with.”
Beside me, Zelda goes still. I remember Dax saying those words in my office. Hearing him say them to her makes me want to interrupt, to get him past this part. She deserves to hear him admit it. I keep quiet.
“I told you I hadn’t done it. Then Jeremiah told you I hadn’t done it,” she says.
“Yes.”
“And you still kept it up.”
He looks down, then makes himself look at her again.
“People had believed me. I didn’t want to go back to them and say I’d helped spread a lie. So I kept bringing up other things. That you’d been unhappy. That you’d said things about him.”
“As if that meant I deserved it.”
“Yes.” His voice is quieter. “That’s what I was trying to make it mean.”
She sets her glass on the hall table. Carefully, using both hands.
“You knew what it did at my work.”
“I did. I kept saying I hadn’t sent it there. But I’d sent it to people who had no business seeing it, and I wouldn’t even tell you who they were.”
I want to move closer to her. I stay where I am.
“You never touched Candace,” he says. “I knew that, and I let people keep believing you had. I’m sorry, Zelda.”
He takes out his phone and holds it where she can see the screen. He deletes his original recording and removes his post from the group. Then he types a message and gives her the phone to read.
Zelda never hit Candace. The video I shared showed an apology she was pressured into making for something she hadn’t done.
I knew this in January and refused to remove it or correct what I’d told you.
I have now deleted my recording and my post. Please delete any copy I sent you and pass this correction to anyone you forwarded it to. I’m sorry, Zelda.
She reads it, then hands it back.
He sends it. Her phone sounds. Mine does too.
“I’m sending it directly to everyone else I sent the video to,” he says. “Including my sister. I’ll send you their names too.”
Zelda closes her eyes for a moment.
“That took you a year.”
“It did.”
“Send me the names.”
He nods and starts typing.
Suri appears at the living-room door. Dax looks at her, then back at Zelda.
“She said she wouldn’t set a wedding date until I did it. She’s been saying it for months.”
“Then she should have had an answer months ago,” Zelda says.
“Yes.”
There is a silence I once would have filled to make it easier on him. I leave it alone.
“Thank you for taking it down,” Zelda says at last. “I’m still angry you made me wait.”
“I know.”
She picks up her water and goes into the kitchen. I follow after a moment. She is standing by the counter with her phone open to his message.
“He’s named the people,” she says.
The list has names I know and two I don’t.
“Do you want to leave?” I ask.
“Not yet.” She turns off the screen. “I want a minute where nobody is waiting for me to say something nice.”
I lean against the counter beside her. Through the door we hear Suri explaining a rule, then admitting she has forgotten it herself.
Zelda rubs a thumb beneath one eye.
“He called it a record.”
“I remember.”
“I do too.”
We stay there until she puts the empty glass in the sink. Then she reaches for my hand.
“Come on. You haven’t lost the fifth one yet.”
She doesn’t laugh at her first bad turn. By the end of the round, though, she is accusing the man beside her of bluffing with his whole face. He admits it, delighted to have been caught. She wins by two points.
On the way home, she reads Dax’s message again. I keep my eyes on the road. The deletion cannot take back the year, or the copies on other phones. When she puts her phone away, she leaves her hand on my knee for the rest of the drive.
Otto is asleep when we get home. My mother has been keeping him here. She tells us he has learned to drop the same object six times without becoming tired of it. Zelda says the achievement belongs to his grandmother, who picked it up six times.
After my mother leaves, we sit at the kitchen table with the calendar between us. I have been wanting to ask about our anniversary. Zelda has already circled the twenty-third.
“I want dinner here,” she says. “Hedy. Your mother. Suri, if she wants to come without Dax. And the friends who actually stood by me.”
“I won’t invite him.”
She nods. Then she takes my hand.
“I want the cake too. A new one. The same kind.”
“You shall have it.”
I rub my thumb over her fingers.
“There’s something I’d like to say at dinner. About last year.”
She looks toward the dining room. “What?”
I tell her. Not every place she tried to reach me. The thing I did at that table, knowing she was innocent, and the choice she made to leave it.
“I thought about a card,” I say. “The same cream card, with the little gold tree. Different words. Mine.”
Her hand tightens. I wish I had not said it before I see her look back at me.
“You would read that aloud?”
“Yes.”
She is quiet long enough that I start to move my hand. She keeps it.
“I want that,” she says. “I want to see you pick it up and tell them what you did. But don’t put it beside my plate.”
“I won’t.”
“And no hospital story. No telling everyone why I had Hedy at the birth. Those parts are ours.”
“All right.”
Her thumb moves over the bare place on her left hand.
“Bring my ring.”
My breath stops.
“To dinner?”
“Keep it with you. After you’ve spoken, I’ll ask you for it if I’m ready. At the table.”
“We could do it alone.”
“I know.” She smiles a little. “I want it there. But I want to be the one who asks.”
I nod. I cannot quite trust my voice.
“And if I don’t, we eat cake,” she says. “You don’t look at me like a man waiting to be sentenced.”
That gets a laugh out of me, though it catches halfway.
“We eat cake.”
She leans across the corner of the table and kisses me. When she sits back, she is smiling properly.
“I’m not giving you the whole evening for a speech.”
“How long do I get?”
“Less time than you took to choose a game.”
“Cruel.”
“Accurate.”
She pulls the calendar toward her, and we decide who to ask before going upstairs.