Vi followed her, her footsteps small and silent.
“How are you holding up?” Vi finally asked, and Alecia felt relieved that she wouldn’t have to play detective to figure out what Vi knew.
“Oh you know. Just fine and dandy. I mean it’s a fairly common event when a gal finds out her husband has been sleeping with a student.” Alecia yanked open the refrigerator door and poured milk into a crystal creamer. When she shut the door with her foot, she could see Vi’s face, the way her eyes had widened, horrified, or her mouth hung open, then closed, then open again. Her shoulders had slacked and she leaned against a chair.
“You can’t . . . believe her, can you?” Vi shook her head, but her voice shook, and Alecia almost laughed.
“Of course I can. You can’t believe him can you?” Alecia said this even as she felt the prick of doubt, the same one she’d been feeling for a week now, even when her mouth was insisting Nate was guilty, to Bridget, now to Vi, a few small cells in her brain were shouting with protest. It was a dissonance she couldn’t reconcile, and it was enough to drive her crazy. She’d been wanting someone to prove her wrong, to show her with hard evidence that Nate could not have done these things. But so far, no one had.
Of course Vi would believe her son. Of course she would have gotten the story from him. She looked wildly around the kitchen, craned her thin, veiny neck toward the living room, and Alecia realized that Nate had told her part of the truth, but not the whole truth. Not the part where he wasn’t living here.
Vi patted her blond hair, a round bowl cut that looked like a helmet, her short, squared fingernails flittering. “He’s my son. Of course I believe him. He’s always been this way, sticking his neck out for people that don’t deserve it.”
Alecia gasped, thinking at first that Vi meant her, but realizing too late that Vi meant her—Lucia what’s-her-name, the sexy weirdo.
“Vi, I can assure you that Nate enjoyed this particular charity act, whatever it was.” She busied herself gathering sugar and spoons and set them up on the kitchen island. All this civility over such an ugly conversation that Alecia had run out of patience for.
“Alecia!” Her lip trembled and her eyes, limned in red, twitched. Alecia realized then how fragile Vi looked, how pale, how shaky.
“Vi, I’m sorry . . .” Although she wasn’t really sorry at all. Alecia squared her shoulders, and with her palms on the cold Formica countertop, said, “If you want to find Nate, he’s probably at Tripp Harris’s house. Remember Tripp? The Mt. Oanoke cop? He’s staying there for a while.”
“You kicked him out? Now? He needs you, Alecia. He needs you to believe him. He told me that; he cried.”
“I believe he cried to you, Vi. I really do believe that.” Alecia stirred her tea, blew across the top to cool it, but Vi remained standing, unmoved.
“He didn’t tell me he moved out. He just told me what the papers were saying, what that slut”—Vi spit the word out, her eyes pinched shut at the violence of it—“was saying. She’s lying. You have to realize that.” Her voice was edging louder, maybe the loudest Alecia had ever heard it in her and Nate’s eight years of marriage.
“Violet, listen to me. Your son might not be guilty of everything they’re accusing him of, but he’s guilty of some of it. I cannot figure out which parts of his stories are true when he is here in this house. Do you understand? I’ve found credit card statements and Instagram posts and evidence that something was going on, but I can’t be alone with my thoughts, my own brain, with him rattling around here pleading his own case twenty-four-seven. Until I know more, he’s out. He’s staying with Tripp and we can talk in a few weeks when I’ve got my own head on straight. I have a son with special needs who demands my attention fourteen out of twenty-four hours a day. He comes first.”
“That’s the trouble, though, with you and Nate,” said Violet. “Nate has never come first. Not since Gabe was born. Not one day since he was born.” She pointed her finger at Alecia’s chest, her mouth pinched, angry. “You can’t forsake your own marriage.”
“He is your grandson. He is not like other boys. He needs more than most kids. He needs his mother—”
“He needs his parents to be married! You are sacrificing your marriage to your child! Can’t you see that, Alecia?” Big, fat tears dripped down her cheek, her chin trembling. “You are sacrificing my boy for your boy.”
“Your boy is a liar. And maybe an adulterer. And maybe, in the state of Pennsylvania, a criminal.” Alecia shouted this last part and felt immediate regret. Violet wilted, her fingertips gripping the countertop. It was too much confrontation, a wintery blast of reality on her velvety cheeks.
A crash, followed by a piercing wail came from upstairs. A second later, the doorbell rang, a long and insistent tone, followed by a sharp rap on the glass pane.
“What the hell?” Alecia put her hand to her forehead, just for a second to calm her buzzing brain. “Violet can you get the door, I have to see what happened to Gabe.” The crying had stopped but Alecia hurried past her.
Violet moved through the kitchen, the living room, and the front hall, hot on Alecia’s heels. Alecia was halfway up the steps when Violet said, “Oh dear God, Alecia.” And the tone in her voice stopped Alecia cold on the seventh step. She turned around and Violet’s face was even paler, had that been possible.
Her mouth seemed not to move when she said, “It’s the police.”
?????
For whatever reason, Gabe had been trying to align his toy construction vehicles along the top of the window molding. He’d balanced himself between the desk and the metal radiator in Alecia’s bedroom and it was a wonder he didn’t crack his head open when he fell. She calmed him, kissed his cheeks, and led him back downstairs.
Vi stood in the middle of the living room with a rumpled man in khakis. “Alecia, this is Detective Harper.” She seemed not to know what to do with her hands and she wrung them in front of her, then crossed them around her middle.
“Hello,” Alecia said. Gabe clapped loudly next to her and she attempted to shush him with a gentle hand to his head. “Vi, can you take Gabe back upstairs so we can talk?”
Vi directed Gabe out of the room, under squawking protest, and she heard his heavy clomping on the wooden steps.
“Do you want tea?” Alecia asked, averting her eyes, and started toward the kitchen, motioning for the detective to follow her. He did. “I just boiled a pot.”