As if she were reading my mind, Kira looked at Vanessa and said, “And Vanessa—you too? Connor?”
Vanessa shook her head emphatically. “Not quite. The most important part: Connor is Phoebe’s father.” Holy shit. So Vanessa actually had his baby. “But it’s not what you think,” she continued. “I’m actually the only one here who didn’t have the misfortune of meeting Connor while alone at a bar.” So he had an MO. “A fact I’m grateful for,” she added.
Now I was more confused than ever. Thankfully, she continued.
“My sister, Allison, did, though. And she got pregnant and decided, of all things, to keep the baby. She didn’t know anything about him—I was actually the one who dug up the truth about who he was: that he was a New York millionaire, married to Isabel. Obviously, it’s not what he’d told her about himself.”
She looked momentarily exasperated but then coughed, seemingly an attempt to stifle tears that were brewing in her chest. I could see that she wasn’t the type who was comfortable crying in front of other people. Once she’d mastered herself, she went on.
“Allison and I were so close. Our mom died when we were young, so I helped take care of her. Allison was always fun loving, spontaneous, silly . . . until Connor came along. She became a shell of herself. She was traumatized after their night together. Depressed. Being lied to, taken advantage of like that—it takes its toll. Not to mention, all of a sudden, she’s a single mom. Granted, she chose that path. But still—it was a lot. More than she’d realized it would be.”
I could certainly relate to that. “So, where is Allison?” I ventured to ask.
“She killed herself,” Vanessa choked out. Kira, Selena, and I produced nearly identical gasps, our hands flying to our mouths. “Overdosed on pills. It was all too much for her to handle. On top of being so low after what had happened with Connor, she was completely overwhelmed by new motherhood. So she took her own life and left Phoebe with me.” Tears were rolling down Vanessa’s face finally, and she wiped them away with a manicured hand.
“Connor was the catalyst for all of it,” she went on. “So I vowed to myself that I would never let Connor do to another woman what he’d done to Allison. And that needed to start with Isabel.” Isabel looked at Vanessa gratefully as she spoke. “Allison had already called Isabel once to tell her about what had happened with Connor, but Isabel was like a hostage. I knew she needed more help than Allison had been able to offer. So I offered more.” She shrugged modestly and took a long sip of wine.
Isabel put her hand on Vanessa’s shoulder and squeezed it, then took over, giving Vanessa a minute to regroup.
“Allison reached out to me, yes,” she said. “And frankly, I loved her for that. For trying. And I wish I had let her say her piece, because while I knew about Connor’s infidelity, I didn’t know . . . what it was really like. What he was really doing to women. I figured he was just finding other consenting women to have sex with. But it wasn’t that, was it?” No. It wasn’t. “I didn’t learn that until Vanessa came to me and told me about her sister. Though I still don’t know what I could have done to stop him.”
I remembered Isabel’s dark undereye circles, the ones I’d once briefly thought were bruises, and a fresh flush of shame rose in my face. Shame that I had done nothing, had dismissed any concern I’d felt for her so that I could go back to worrying about myself and my own problems.
“It’s been going on for years,” she continued quietly, “the obsessive control, the abuse, the other women. All he cared about was that we had this picture-perfect life. He made every decision for me: clothes, food, our house.” I thought of Naomi’s little dresses and of how Isabel would rush out of our meetings. I also remembered how Connor hadn’t even known she’d been in a moms’ group; he probably wouldn’t have approved. “Not that it’s any kind of excuse, but he had a rough childhood; his dad hit both him and his mom. A lot. The psychology could hardly have been any clearer: Connor had to control everything about our life, since he didn’t have any control of his childhood. In his effort to create what he thought was the perfect life, he didn’t even realize he was doing the exact same thing his father did.
“For a while, when it first started, I did sort of use his past as an excuse for him. I was quick to forgive and rationalize. But that only took me so far. Soon, I just sort of shut down.