Chapter Four #3
Clotheslining myself on an electric fence would be less painful than hearing my married name in his voice. What? Why? How? A million questions battle on my tongue, the overwhelming desire to scream at him to never call me that again raging.
“Don’t open—” I start. It’s too late.
He opens the envelope, withdrawing a small pale green note card.
“ ‘Time’s up, my prodigal wife. You owe me.’ ” Caine’s face reminds me of those viral videos of dogs licking lemon slices. He’s disturbed, confused, and—the emotion that makes me feel two inches tall—slightly betrayed.
Rising, he crosses the floor to me. “What does this mean?”
I swallow hard; this is a conversation best had sitting.
Moving to the couch, I drop onto the far end.
Caine follows, settling an arm’s length away.
His stillness has me on edge. Caine is a fidgeter—a worry-his-hoodie-strings, fold-and-refold-a-piece-of-paper, constantly-fiddle-with-something type of person.
But now, he’s immobile, face unreadable.
Here we go.
I console myself by thinking that at least Sheryl will be proud. She’s been urging me to be more emotionally vulnerable about my history with trusted people—like Claire—but I’ve been resisting. Looks like life is forcing my hand.
“I was married; my ex-husband’s kind of a dick.” Each word feels as if it’s being wrung from me, but I force myself onward. “I thought you were him earlier.”
“Margot.” Caine leans forward, elbows resting on his knees.
His side-eye is more of a glower. “ ‘Kind of a dick’ is claiming the Keurig and flat-screen in the divorce, not attempting homicide via reptile.” His already-impressive glower grows more intense.
“You don’t tase now, ask questions later when you think someone is ‘kind of a dick.’ ”
“Tasers shoot. It’s a stun gun.” This feedback goes ignored, as does “He’s not trying to kill me.”
At least not right now.
Caine doesn’t look convinced. “What does he mean by ‘you owe me’?”
I scoff too hard. “Who knows.” The lie sticks in my throat. Time to redirect, give him different information to ponder.
“You know how I moved here from Texas a few years back?”
“To be closer to Sophia while she was at NU, right?”
Surprised he remembers that my sister went to Newbound University, I nod. “Right. Well, that wasn’t the only reason. The divorce wasn’t as amicable as I would have liked.”
Unclipping and reclipping Gremlin’s collar, I take a deep breath and roll right into the mess before I can change my mind. “I wanted out, but he was making it…difficult.”
Difficult is a vast understatement, but I’ve yet to find a word that properly encompasses the frustration, fear, and constant mind fuck of wondering, Am I overreacting? Am I underreacting? Am I actually the problem here? that was trying to leave Nicholas.
“I started snooping, hoping I could find something to leverage—like inappropriate messages with congregants. Instead, I discovered he and another pastor had embezzled from the church’s benevolence fund.
I’d been negotiating with one of the local hospitals—they’d agreed to bundle the medical debt of patients needing financial assistance and let the church pay it off for a discount.
” I keep fidgeting with Gremlin’s collar, because if I’m doing that, I’m not clenching my fists.
There’s zero doubt in my mind that Nicholas siphoned from that specific fund because it was my project, the one place I devoted energy that wasn’t related directly to him or his career.
Clearing my throat, I press on, “I confronted Nicholas, things turned physical, and he fell through the stained-glass window in his office. I turned him and the other pastor in, and they went to prison. The sentence was only eight years, and I knew there was no way Nicholas would serve the whole thing. I didn’t want to be in Texas when he got out. ”
Caine makes an incredulous sound, the leather couch creaking as he turns to look at me. “How have you never told me any of this?” He works both hands through his hair. His next words are mumbled to himself, not me, something about “a book” I can’t make out.
“Why would I?” The question fires out more frustrated than I intend, years of secret-keeping uncorking. “Why would I want anyone to know about this?”
Caine would look less shocked if I’d just taken a bite out of the couch, but he matches my exasperated energy. “Hmm, I don’t know. In case you need help?”
“And risk Nicholas aiming his particular brand of awful toward someone else too?” I gesture at the tub.
“No. This is my mess, and I’ll figure it out myself.
” Clicking my teeth together, I barely stop myself from adding, I always do, because that sounds like the kind of thing people say when they want someone to convince them otherwise.
I don’t want Caine to convince me, and maybe more importantly, I don’t need him to convince me.
After years of seeing religion used like a weapon, I toe the line of faithless, but what little I have is reserved for my own abilities. Nicholas scares me because I have a baseline level of common sense, but that doesn’t mean I can’t deal with him.
I just don’t want Caine Underwood witnessing how I do it.