46.
Celeste drove home from book club thinking about the last time she’d seen Saxon and his wife, Eleni. It was at a wedding in Adelaide just before she got pregnant with the boys, a huge wedding for one of Perry’s multitude of cousins.
By chance, she and Perry had pulled up in the reception center parking lot right next to them. They hadn’t seen one another at the church, and Perry and Saxon had jumped straight from their cars to give each other bear hugs and manly slaps on the back. Both Perry and Saxon were teary. There was real affection between the two of them. Celeste and Eleni were both shivering in sleeveless cocktail dresses, and they were all looking forward to a drink after sitting through the long wedding ceremony in a cold, damp church.
“The food is meant to be excellent here,” Saxon had said, rubbing his hands together, and they’d all been walking up the path into the warmth when Eleni stopped. She’d left her phone sitting on a pew in the church. It was a one-hour return trip.
“You stay. I’ll go,” said Eleni, but Saxon just rolled his eyes and said, “No you won’t, my love.”
Perry and Saxon had ended up driving back together to get the phone, while Celeste and Eleni went inside and enjoyed champagne in front of a roaring fire. “Oh dear, I feel just terrible,” Eleni had said cheerfully as she beckoned over a waiter to refill her glass.
No you won’t, my love.
How could a man who reacted with such rueful, chivalrous good humor to a really annoying inconvenience be the same person who treated a nineteen-year-old girl with such cruelty?
But she should know better than anyone that of course that was possible. Perry would have gone back to get the phone for her too.
Did the two men share some sort of genetic mental disorder? Mental illnesses ran in families, and Perry and Saxon were the sons of identical twins. Genetically speaking they weren’t just cousins, they were half brothers.
Or had their mothers somehow broken them? Jean and Eileen were sweet elfin women with identical babyish voices, tinkly laughs and good cheekbones; the sort of women who seemed so femininely submissive and were anything but. The sort of women who attracted the sort of successful men who spent their days telling people what to do, and then went home and did exactly as they were told by their wives.
Perhaps that was the problem. Celeste and Eleni lacked that peculiar combination of sweetness and power. They were just ordinary girls. They couldn’t live up to the maternal role models established by Jean and Eileen for their sons.
And so Saxon and Perry both had developed these unfortunate . . . glitches.
But what Saxon had done to Jane was far, far worse than anything Perry had ever done.
Perry had a bad temper. That was all. He was hotheaded. Volatile. The stress of his job and the exhaustion and upheaval of all that international travel made him snap. It didn’t make it right. Of course not. But it was understandable. It wasn’t malevolent. It wasn’t evil. It was poor Eleni who was unknowingly married to an evil man.
Did she have a responsibility to tell Eleni what her husband had done? Did she have a responsibility to the tipsy, impressionable young girls Saxon might still be picking up in bars?
But they didn’t even know for sure it was him.
Celeste drove her car into her driveway, flicking the switch for the triple-car garage and seeing their lavish panoramic view: the twinkling lights of homes around the bay, the mighty black presence of the ocean. The garage door opened like a curtain revealing a lit-up stage, and her car purred on in without her having to lift her foot off the accelerator.
She turned the key. Silence.
There was no garage in that other pretend life she was planning. There was an underground parking lot for the apartment block, but the spaces looked tiny, with big concrete posts. She’d have to reverse into her spot. She already knew that she’d smash a taillight. She was a terrible parker.
She pulled up the sleeve of her shirt and looked at the bruises on her arm.
Yes, Celeste, stay with a man who does this to you, because of the great parking.
She opened her car door.
At least he wasn’t as bad as his cousin.