He glances over. “You could go public with it, then. Show the world he isn’t the superdad he wants everyone to believe he is.”
I stare out the window. I’ve considered all these things before, but I’ll never act on them. “My own father knows exactly who I am and still wants nothing to do with me. It’s a story I’d rather keep to myself.”
“Lucie—” He croons my name as if it’s his favorite song. “The fact that he’s denying you exist has nothing to do with who you are. And, at the very least, force his hand. Tell him he needs to make it worth your while to stay quiet.”
I shake my head. My father wants to believe I’m some trashy mistake he made with a stripper. He wants to think he’s better than us, than me. The moral high ground is really all I’ve got left. “This is how I tell myself that I can be the product of something ugly without being ugly myself. By being a better person than either of them.”
“You don’t need to prove it. But anyway...consider yourself a permanent part of TSG. We clearly need you.”
“You don’t have to say that.”
He shakes his head. “I never say or do anything I don’t mean. You should know that better than anyone by now.”
I guess I do. He says what he means, and as much as I resented that when I started at TSG, I’m starting to appreciate it. He’s not the fairy-tale prince I’d have designed as a six-year-old, but he’s awfully close to the one I’d design now.
“You’re not all bad, Caleb. Aside from believing children are monsters.”
“We’ll see what you think in twenty years when I’ve got a private plane and you’re paying for Sophie’s ninth year as a gender studies major.”
I laugh. “I’d still choose them, cheapskate.”
He’s silent for so long that I’ve assumed the conversation is over by the time he speaks again. “The kid thing? It’s less about the money than it is the responsibility. And the fear. It would be terrifying to care about someone that much.”
My eyes fall closed, picturing Henry. Is he happy today? Is he ever going to find a friend? “Yeah,” I tell him. “It can be.”
JEREMY ARRIVES Sunday to take the kids to lunch, still tan from the ‘work’ trip he took to Hawaii with Whitney.
Though he’s spent the last week calling me every name under the sun and hacking into my bank account, he smiles when I open the door. He’s always done that, though—he’ll smile at the wrong moment, in the middle of saying or doing something awful, as if he’s mistimed the appearance of an emotion he never felt in the first place. I once watched a documentary about serial killers and what struck me most was how much they reminded me of my own husband.
“Aren’t you going to invite me in?” he asks.
I don’t want him in my home. I don’t trust him in my home, this man I was sharing a bed with two weeks ago. The fear, the revulsion…it was always there. Sometimes, though, you can’t allow yourself to feel the full force of a thing until you’ve escaped it. Now I wonder how I lasted so long.
I continue to block the entrance. “They’re almost ready.”
His smile holds but his eye twitches, a tiny flash of annoyance he somehow masters.
“You look good, Lucie.” It’s a significant change from what he said a mere twenty-four hours ago, which was that my looks were ‘already fading’ and that my ass would be as big as my mom’s any day now.
“Sophie! Henry!” I shout up the stairs. “Daddy’s waiting!”
“Can we talk?” he asks. “I feel like we’ve never talked this through.” He stares at the ground. His shoulders sag. He is laughably bad at pretending to be sorry.
“I don’t see what there is to talk about.”
“Just…there are some things I want to say to you. Important things.” His eyes meet mine. “I miss you.”
And there it is.
Jeremy doesn’t like to lose. It would be one thing if he’d left me, but the fact that he’s been left is finally starting to rankle. And he really believes that after everything he’s done, he can briefly don that face he shows the world—the face he fooled me with when I was a na?ve college student—and I’ll come trotting right back.
Sophie runs past me without a backward glance, but Henry lingers, pressing his head to my leg and wrapping his little arms around me. I wish he wasn’t leaving, and I suspect he wishes it too.
“We’ll talk later?” Jeremy asks.
If I argue with him, he’ll take it out on Henry, which is how he’s kept me in line for most of our marriage. I nod, lips pressed tight, as he grabs Henry’s hand and pulls him away.
I stayed with Jeremy as long as I did because I knew he’d make the twins’ lives difficult if we left. It was only when he began including Henry in the potshots aimed my way that I knew we had to go. “Apparently, he’s as dumb as you,” Jeremy said when we got Henry’s first school report. Both the twins were sitting across from me at the table, and as I watched the light dimming in Henry’s eyes, I knew it was time to do the hard thing, the scary thing.
Except leaving was only half the battle.
As long as he has the power to hurt my children, I’m never going to be free. And neither are they.
11
CALEB
I'm in the garage on Sunday afternoon setting up a sawmill when a BMW swerves into Lucie’s driveway at high speed. Henry and Sophie emerge from the back of the car and run to their mother, who wraps herself around them as if they've been gone for a year.
The man who climbs out after them is the exact kind of jackass I hate—the type who spends the weekend dressed for golf, whether he’s playing it or not, and smiles like a smug prick at the woman he just cheated on.
I’m about to enter the house, but when he tells the twins to go inside, there’s something about Lucie that holds me in place. Her jaw is set hard, but it's not anger I sense in her posture—it's fear. I fight the urge to go out there and ask if she’s okay.
“Can we get dinner sometime this week?” he asks. “I’d like to talk things through.”
She hugs herself tighter. “There’s nothing to talk about.”
That fake fucking smile of his falls away even faster than it arrived. “Are our children nothing?” he snaps.
I quietly set the wrench down on the shelf behind me.
“Look,” he says, his voice calm by force, “I’ll admit it. I cheated. I’m a big enough man to admit when I’m wrong.”
This motherfucker. Jesus Christ, Lucie. You married this guy? Why?
“It’s big of you to admit it,” she says, “now that I have it on film.”
His nostrils flare and his eyes narrow, but it’s followed by a small, condescending smile. “You aren’t blameless either. I made a mistake, but you were always so busy with the kids you stopped making time for me. I wanted to come first with you once in a while, but I should have let you know that instead of trying to find comfort elsewhere.”
“Comfort?” she asks. “Is that what we’re calling our babysitter’s vagina now?”
I’m inclined to laugh until he slams his hand against the roof of the BMW. It's not so much the action as it is the look on his face, the rage and loathing.
I’m already heading toward them when he turns to his car. “Fine, Lucie. I tried to give you a chance, but you aren’t capable of loving anyone but yourself. Enjoy these last few days with the kids. You’re about to lose them for good.”
She stands still as a statue with her shoulders back and watches him drive off as if she hasn't heard a word he said. And once he's out of view, her shoulders start to shake and she buries her face in her hands.
As Kate’s amply proven, I just make a bad situation worse, but here I am, walking outside to her anyway, though I should not.
She wipes her eyes and forces a smile. “It never fails. You witness every shitty thing that happens.”
My hand reaches out and falls uselessly back to my side. She’s still an employee, even if I’ve known her since we were kids. “A lot of shitty things happen because your ex is a fucking asshole. I don’t understand how you could have married him in the first place.”
She wipes her eyes again. “The fairy tale,” she says grimly, her voice slightly hoarse. “That’s why I married him.”