And maybe I didn’t want to let go. Maybe I still loved him. I even imagined, back then, that Dwayne might have wanted the first pregnancy enough to want to try again. Everyone thought I’d trapped him, but there were plenty of things about our life, about me, that Dwayne liked—that any man could have liked. Growing up the way I did had taught me how to make the most of not-enough. I knew how to stretch a dollar. How to hunt and field dress a deer. How to make a house full of cheap secondhand shit look like something better than it was. I knew how to take care of a man who couldn’t take care of himself. When Dwayne had his accident, it was me who convinced the doctors not to just take the whole foot. When the workmen’s comp payout came, I was the one who negotiated a sweetheart deal for Doug Bwart’s business. When the oxycontin ran out and my husband was writhing on the bed, sweating and screaming, with stumps where his toes used to be, I found a way to stop the pain—even though it meant losing the best thing I had, and even though I knew full well that I was only kicking a pile of misery down the line. I’d promised to love, honor, comfort, and keep. And like Pop said, a promise is a promise.
That’s how it went. That’s how ten years passed. And it wasn’t as pathetic as you’re probably imagining. Even after everything, I found ways to be happy. Eventually, I made it to the community college, for a few classes if not the certification I’d hoped for. I had the part-time gig at the vet, while it lasted. I had the lake house, with its untapped potential. And unlike Pop, I had no loyalty to Teddy Reardon or the insular, dumbass traditions of Copper Falls, the people who still called me “whore” and “trash” behind my back, and sometimes when they passed me in the street. Being the jezebel junkyard girl meant I had nothing to lose by breaking the rules—and even Dwayne stopped complaining about renting to outsiders once he saw how much money it brought in.
I had a life. I want you to understand that. It might not have been much to look at, but it was mine. If I’d had the choice, I would have kept living it.
Chapter 16
The City
Adrienne wasn’t much of a cook, and the pantry was largely empty except for spices, dried pasta, and a few cans of soup. But the wine rack: now, that was fully stocked. She pulled a bottle at random, barely glancing at the label, and rummaged through two drawers in search of an opener before she realized the bottle was the kind with a cap, not a cork. Somehow, it felt like just one more sign of how far they’d fallen. At the height of her fame and Ethan’s success, Adrienne had been photographed by paparazzi in Ibiza, wearing a red bikini and sipping ice-cold gin on the deck of a yacht that belonged to an Academy Award–winning actor. It was a far cry from this moment, the privileged bitch alone in her town house, drinking twist-off Shiraz and waiting for a visit from the police, while her man cowered in a cheap motel somewhere outside the city. Her haters would be beside themselves if they could see her now, and she almost wanted them to. How perversely fun would it be to blow up her carefully cultivated brand with a single video: no cute camera angle, no flattering filter, just ten ugly seconds slugging wine straight from the bottle and then belching into the camera at the end. Maybe, for good measure, she’d film it sitting on the toilet. How ya like me now, bitches?
But then everyone would know that something was wrong.
She reached for a glass instead.
The wine was more purple than red, and she breathed deeply as she brought the glass to her lips. She caught a brief, vivid scent of dark fruit, blackberries heavy on the bush, so ripe and warm in the late summer sun that they’d paint your fingers with juice at the first touch. Then the wine was on her tongue, in her belly. The flavor wasn’t familiar, not like blackberries at all, but the way the tension in her temples dissolved with the first swallow felt like home. She topped off the wine and walked to the big window, settling in next to it with her forehead resting against the glass. She would need to eat something, and to resist the urge to down that entire bottle while she was at it. It wouldn’t do to be drunk when the cops showed up. Somewhere on the way, though, not sloppy but definitely not sober either—that might not be bad, she thought, and took another sip. Rich bitch, alone on a Tuesday night in her bajillion-dollar designer home, getting a little loose, maybe watching some shitty reality show: the more she leaned into the annoying stereotype, the less likely anyone was to look past the surface and see the disturbing truth beneath. Yes, she would drink.
But first, she needed to think. She gazed out at the dusky facade of the house across the way. An ivy plant was growing abundantly up one corner of the building and across its face, the vines like shadowy fingers gripping the brick, the leaves black and shiny in the streetlamp light. The windows were dimly lit rectangles, curtained to keep someone like Adrienne from looking in—or maybe to allow the neighbors to look out without being seen. She realized with a shiver how visible she would be right now, lit behind the glass like an animal in a terrarium. Was someone in the house across the street watching her? Was that a twitch, a tiny seam of light opening between the curtains as some unseen person peered out? Her husband had sworn up and down that he’d stayed out of sight while she was gone today, and she believed him—he didn’t want to be caught any more than she did—but she’d have to remind him to be cautious, especially at night. If he passed too close to the window at the wrong moment, if he unthinkingly left a light on, there was no telling who might be lurking out there ready to notice. Even someone passing on the street below would be able to see in. Certainly they’d see her, here in her perch beside the window. She wondered what she looked like from outside. Was she only a shape, a woman’s silhouette with a glass in hand? Could someone walking below discern the movement of her eyes, the twist of her mouth?