Teddy narrows his eyes at Mel and takes a deep breath. I hold up my hand. “It’s okay,” I say. “We’ll be right back.”
I follow Teddy out the door and into the carriage house’s yard. We are surrounded by sprawling brick mansions penned in by high wrought-iron fences. It is ten degrees, icicles hanging from the oaks. There are no lights. I try to put my hand on his back. He shakes it off. “What the hell was that, Sharon?”
“That— What do you mean? That was the project. Or the start of it.”
“And when were you planning on disclosing that I would be in this project?”
My mind goes white, empty. I stall. “I told you it was about me. I thought you might kind of infer—”
“You said it was about your stroke.”
“Well,” I say, “we started talking about it and decided that we’d start from, you know, Faulkner, and when I was a…”
I trail off. Teddy is staring at me.
“That boy character was me,” he says.
“It never said that it was you. It never used your name.”
“Bullshit,” he yells.
I have never heard Teddy raise his voice before. It robs me of breath. I feel dread lace long, cold fingers up my spine. “It’s not bullshit,” I say weakly.
“Sharon. Do you think I’m an idiot? That is obviously me. You effectively co-opted my life in there.” He stops, puts his hands on his hips, closes his eyes. “You’ve been working on this the entire time you’ve been here?”
“There’s a lot more to it than what you just saw. Or there will be.”
“Unbelievable. There’s more.”
“You’re angry.”
He makes a sound close to a laugh as he pinches the bridge of his nose. “Yes. Sharon. I am angry. As I think any reasonable person would be.”
“Okay. This is a problem.” I try to put my hands on him again. His entire body tightens. It’s worse than feeling him push me away. “How you feel is important to me. What can I do?”
He shakes his head and presses his palms to his face. “What can you do. Okay. The first step would be to burn what you just showed me.”
“What?”
“You heard me. Burn it. Fucking trash it. Make sure nobody else ever sees this.”
My voice comes out tiny. “All of it?”
He takes his hands away and stares at me. “Jesus Christ, Sharon, yes. All of it.”
My bad leg starts to tingle. I would do just about anything to get out of this situation—Teddy glaring at me in the dark, his voice venom on ice.
I glance back at the carriage house and see Mel’s shadow, tall and skinny, through the curtains. She’s watching and listening, Ryan and Tatum alongside. It’s been over six weeks of work. Good work. Getting-lost-in-it, getting-lifted work. It’s been, God help me, revelatory work. And it’s ours. “That’s unreasonable,” I tell him.
He looks hard. “Did you just tell me I’m unreasonable? You— You’re standing there staring at me like you’re totally dumbfounded. Which seems pretty impossible. Is this why you’ve been staying with me?”
“Teddy. Of course not.”
“Because I don’t know anymore,” he says. “Seeing what I just saw throws a lot into question, doesn’t it? Did you— Wait.” He dips his head to the ground, takes a deep breath. “You mentioned this project, the first night you came to the store. And then you never touched it again. Even when I asked you about your work, you avoided the question. Did you come to town to specifically solicit my permission?”
“No.”
“Because if you did, I’m not giving it to you.”
“I never asked you for anything,” I tell him. “We do not need your permission. That story in there is mine. It belongs to me. It’s not your story.”
“That’s such a weak argument. And moreover, it’s a lie. It’s my prerogative to say no. My entire life was fucking traumatized by what we just saw in there.”
“Who’s to say mine wasn’t?” I counter.
He hisses, “I had to testify in court in front of those girls. I had to sit there and have them look at me, knowing that my father had ruined their lives. And I don’t want that to be in any story ever.”
“Teddy.” I try to take his arm.
He shakes me off, holding his hand out in front of him as if to keep me from getting any closer. “Don’t wheedle me, goddammit.”
My mouth closes. I hear my teeth click together.
“Maybe this practice of taking all your personal shit and publicly manipulating it until your life is explained sufficiently to your liking works for you. But I can’t do it. And I won’t. If you can sleep at night after putting something like that out into the world, then good for you, Sharon. If it makes you feel better, great. But you have no right to make that decision for anybody else. And just to be clear: Your pain is nothing compared to mine.”
“That’s not fair.” My voice is high and loud. I scrub at my eyes with the back of my hand.
“I’m telling you now,” he says. “Emphatically. Do not do this. Do not turn me into another Nashville Combat. You want an answer? This is it. No.”
“It doesn’t belong to you,” I tell him. As I say it, I can feel how flimsy it sounds.