“The body they found,” she said, her voice shaking. “It wasn’t Geneva. It was Jacqueline Carson.”
He looked up at her quickly, his face a mask of pure shock. She almost believed he was surprised.
“Wh-wh-what?” he stammered. “No.”
She almost believed him.
An object on the counter caught her eye. The gun from the lockbox upstairs. The sight of it sent chills down her arms.
“Who are you?” she asked him.
The expression that crossed his face—some twist of sadness and rage. She didn’t even know him.
They’d flown home from Vegas together, she taking the points upgrade to first class and letting him languish in a middle seat back in coach. For weeks, she couldn’t even stand to look at him, the image of the young woman he’d hit flashing over and over again in her memory. It was that more than the fact that he was in a strip club to begin with. She could live with that; turn a blind eye to boyish indulgences. But the violence. It made him something else. Something that was vile, frightening.
But she’d let him and the therapist convince her that there was a path forward.
A marriage is a negotiation, the therapist told her. You both have to decide what you can live with, what you can forgive, how you cope with various behaviors. It all sounded so reasonable. She could forgive him—for the boys. If not for the children, she’d have been long gone, years ago. At least that’s what she told herself. But there was no other self, no Selena without Oliver and Stephen. How could she know what that other imagined woman would do? The unencumbered Selena—she was long gone.
“Who are you?” she asked again of the stranger who used to be her husband. “We had everything. What have you done?”
“Selena.” Now the pleading. “Please believe me. I’ve made mistakes. I’ve hurt you. That girl in Vegas, I hurt her. But not this. What’s happening now. I promise, I didn’t hurt either of these women.”
He was so earnest. Like the boys, eyes wide and searching, the picture of innocence wronged. The smell of bourbon reached her, turned her stomach.
He rose, and she started backing toward the door.
“You’re afraid of me?”
Was she?
When Detective Crowe had asked if Graham ever hurt her, she’d felt a jolt of indignation. Of course not. In fact, her husband currently bore a gash on his head from her last angry outburst. And it wasn’t the first time. She’d slapped him during a Vegas argument they’d had after a particularly brutal therapy session where they’d dug in deep about how his father didn’t respect women, was verbally abusive to Graham’s mom. How it used to anger him when his father mistreated his mother, but he could still hear that voice—women were liars, they teased, couldn’t be trusted, they were manipulators. That was the voice Graham heard when he lost control.
After the session they’d had a terrible fight. He’d called her a castrating bitch. She’d slapped him hard enough to leave a red mark on his face into the next day.
Now, he moved closer. His face was dark with anger. A hollow of dread opened, her mouth going dry. She backed away, her hands shaking in anger.
“What are you going to do, Selena?” His voice was a tease, a goad.
“Let me guess,” he went on when she didn’t answer.
No, he had never hurt her. But would he? Could he?
Selena leaned her weight against the door and felt it give way behind her. She backed up as he kept moving forward, a tense dance.
“You’re going to leave me. Take the boys. Ruin our lives.”
His breathing was heavy, eyes shining.
In the hallway, she kept moving, slowly. His shaking hands formed into fists at his sides. He was a big man, over six feet. She’d always loved that about him. Graham’s size always made her feel small. His strength made her feel safe. Until it didn’t.
“It won’t be six months before you’re back with Will, right?”
“Stop it,” she said.
She passed the console table, a glance at the phone revealing that it had come back online. It started pinging and vibrating with texts and calls. Every nerve ending in her body was sizzling. Grab it. Run.
“Don’t touch it,” he said, following her gaze. “We need to talk. There are things I need you to understand.”
She thought about the boys asleep at home with her mother. She had to get back to them, away from him.
But she was aware of something else, too, something that had risen in her when she watched Graham and Geneva through the nanny cam. Maybe she felt it for the first time after the sexting. Then, after the woman in Vegas, it grew. Finally, as she watched him with Geneva, it reached another level. But maybe it was there before all that—her father who cheated on her mother, who had another family, other children. Women weren’t supposed to feel rage, were they? It was ugly. But that’s what it was. Pure and white-hot, a siren. She’d been tamping it down, pushing it back, swallowing it. Her whole body was shaking with it now.
“I’ve been a good husband,” Graham said. “Mostly. Haven’t I taken care of our family? I need you to believe me. Selena, I need you to have a little faith in me.”
She laughed at that; she couldn’t help it. It rose up from her like a wave, a hysterical burst that shifted suddenly to tears.
“Faith?” she said. The word felt like fire in her throat. Then it was scream. “Faith?”
There was an explosion inside of her, like a crowd cheering in her veins, adrenaline pumping hot and fast, giving her strength and driving her forward.
She ran at her husband, pushing him back with the weight of her own body and landing on top of him, knocking the wind from him, leaving him struggling for air. Then she lifted her fist and punched him hard in the jaw. He raised his arms to ward her off.
“Selena,” he managed. “Stop.”
But she kept punching him, with everything she had, sobbing with the depth of her rage and her sorrow—not just for herself. For her mother, for Geneva, for Jacqueline, even for Pearl. Yes, Pearl. Who’d brought them all to this somehow, but only because she was formed in pain. Only because the fissures were there to exploit.
Exhaustion slowed her blows, and Graham just lay there, bleeding, arms covering his head. Her fists, her arms, were on fire with effort and impact, her breathing animalistic.
It was an easy thing for him to flip her. In one effortless motion, he was on top of her, looking down. The blood from his face dripped onto hers; she felt it on her face, trailing down her throat. He pinned her arms to the ground, his full weight on her middle. She was immobilized, powerless against his vastly superior strength. It was a surprise to feel so weak. She was breathless, arms and hands aching.
“Those times you hit me, Selena,” he said. He was breathing hard. “It was only because I let you. I deserved it. Hey, who knows, maybe I even liked it a little. You are super-hot when you’re angry. But that’s enough.”
She tried to get away from him, squirming and writhing beneath him. She was a doll, a child, her strength minuscule compared to his.
“Let go of me.” Her voice was a ragged shriek, unfamiliar.
Something dark crossed his face and in the next moment, he slapped her, openhanded across the face. Her jaw rattled; she saw stars as the pain radiated—the back of her head, her neck. The world seemed to halt. His face was twisted into an expression she’d never seen before. Was this the man the Vegas stripper saw? Geneva? Jacqueline?