Stephanie had one hand on her abdomen like she’d just been gut-punched. “But you wouldn’t call her even if you were allowed to, right?” she said. “Out of sight, out of mind? Write a check and move on?”
“I’m not sure how I could help her. And, yes, I do want to move on. That’s what I’ve been trying to do here!”
“The money? Is this why—”
“Yes. Francie funded the settlement from the trust,” said Leo. “There’s not a lot left, not as much as everyone was counting on, and that’s why they’re circling around here like fucking vultures. Everyone wants me to magically come up with what they think they’re owed. You can see my predicament.”
“Your predicament?”
“How am I supposed to make that kind of sum appear out of thin air? Those three aren’t thinking clearly.”
“But you’re thinking clearly?”
“Comparatively? Very much so.”
“I see.” Stephanie stood and took a wineglass down from the cabinet, opened a corked bottle on the counter, and poured herself an enormous glass. She thought about the pregnancy app on her phone. The first day she opened it, she’d paged through all nine months and had been amused to see week sixteen, the one that said, This week your baby is a plum! A Plumb. She dumped the wine down the sink.
“What’s her name?” Stephanie asked Leo.
“What difference does that make?” Leo sounded irritated.
“Do you even know her name, Leo?” Stephanie watched him carefully. His cheeks were pink from the shower, his hair slicked back. His eyes were guarded, flinty—ugly within his otherwise lovely face.
“Matilda.” He bit the word hard, as if there were something illegal about lingering too long on each syllable. His unwillingness to hold her name in his mouth made Stephanie mad.
“What was that?” she said.
Leo straightened and spoke more clearly. “Her name is Matilda Rodriguez.”
“And she was nineteen? She was a teenager?”
“Yeah, well.” Leo pictured Matilda’s fingers and remembered how she’d nervously licked her palm before taking him in her hand. He shook his head, trying to block the image, which had already caused a regrettable hardening in his pants. “She was old enough,” he said.
That was the thing he would take back, the words that evoked the tiny but perceptible flinch from Stephanie. She walked over to the table and picked up Bea’s story.
“What are you doing with those?” Leo said.
“What are you going to do with them?” Stephanie gripped the pages in her hands.
“You see why it can’t be published. Forget about me,” Leo said. The heat radiating from Stephanie alarmed him. “What if Matilda reads it?”
“Matilda’s a big reader of literary fiction?” Stephanie said. “You were able to figure that out during your brief car ride?”
“Okay, forget about Matilda,” Leo said. “I’m trying to re-create a life here. Rebuild some kind of business. Bea publishes a new Archie story? Come on. That’s news. She publishes this story—it’s even bigger news and everyone finds out what happened and that’s it. I’m fucked. Who’s going to work with me?”
Stephanie felt dizzy and nauseated. She had to eat. She was afraid she was going to vomit.
“You know I’m right,” Leo said, pacing the kitchen now. “You know if this story is published, people are going to know it’s really about me. She can call the guy Archie or Marcus or Barack Obama, it’s about ME.”
“Even if it is about you, Leo,” Stephanie said, shoving a cracker in her mouth, trying to steady the room, soothe her gullet, quell her anger, and ignore her fear. “Even if it is about you, and even if Bea gets the thing published, and even if someone reads it and connects it to you—” Stephanie took a long sip of water. Exhaled. “Even if all those things happen, who is going to care?”
It was that last sentence she would call back if she could. That was the one where she saw the shift, the slightest narrowing of his gaze, the moment when she had—inadvertently and slightly, but clearly in Leo’s eyes, concisely in his mind—positioned herself on the wrong side of a dividing line.
That was the thing she would take back.
CHAPTER TWENTY–NINE