“Or me,” Rosemarie offered.
“Or you can stay at the farmhouse. I don’t know what I’m going to do with it. Maybe this is it. You can stay as long as you need to,” Kasey said, rooting through her bag. She got out a key and put it on the table in front of Caroline.
“Whatever you want,” Ada said.
“You’re leaving in the morning. You don’t have time to—” Caro said to Kasey.
“No. I’m not going anywhere until I know you’re okay,” Kasey said sternly.
“Girl, why are you acting like we aren’t who we are? If that son of a bitch ever touches you again, my God!” Rosemarie said.
Why are you acting like we aren’t who we are?
Why was Caroline acting like she wasn’t who she was?
If she tried, she could remember who she used to be before Trey. She was a frail, shaking shadow of that woman now. How had that happened in six short months? Six short months that felt like six long decades of darkness.
Caro tried to put her wineglass on the table, but it slipped.
When it crashed to the floor, she lost it. She finally covered her face and cried, apologizing to Ada for breaking her beautiful glass. She apologized to Kasey for being snappy with her in the bathroom at the Plums’。 She apologized to Rosemarie for acting like nothing was wrong. She was crying so much and so hard she got panicky, thinking she’d never stop. The back of her head hurt from where Trey had slammed it against the wall. He’d been so mad about the night before. How she hadn’t been in the mood for sex after the wedding, but he hadn’t taken no for an answer, and when she cried afterward, he told her she made him feel like a rapist and there were plenty of women in that town he could fuck who wouldn’t cry afterward. He was constantly turning easy women down. They’d beg for it. They’d be grateful.
Her body ached. There were more bruises hidden under her clothes that the girls couldn’t see and tender spots inside of her—painful, forever invisible.
Ada picked up the pitcher and poured a glass of ice water and lemons for Caroline. She took small sips and caught her breath, began telling them everything.
*
For years she’d dated mostly losers in town. Guys she knew she didn’t love but who seemed good enough to pass the time with. Guys whose main personality traits were that they had a workout routine and always flipped a middle finger in the pictures they uploaded to social media. But Jay from the bakery wasn’t a loser; he’d been nice and they stayed friends afterward. Caro had even made the cake for his wedding.
Leo’s best friend, Samuel, had been kind too. He asked Caro if she wanted to come with him to Amsterdam when he left for a museum job over there. Caro went and stayed with him for a few weeks and came home brokenhearted after they’d talked about it, both of them realizing their relationship was ending. She’d been so sad and tenderhearted when Trey popped up in her life not long after that.
Maxwell Mason Foxberry III had come to her rescue. Caro had loved fairy tales her whole life, and finally she was getting her own. It was a fairy-tale dream that a man with so much money would want to heal her broken heart, sweep her off her feet, treat her with such care and attention.
Trey was kind and gentle with her in the beginning, both physically and emotionally. So generous too. He bought her a huge ruby ring and earrings to match. He gave her his credit card and told her to get whatever she wanted. They flew to California together, road-tripped back home. They went on a trip to Europe, and he proposed to her in the summer wind on their balcony in Paris, and after the wedding, they honeymooned in Aruba.
It was there that everything had changed.
Once Caroline was his wife, Trey became controlling. Hypercritical. Verbally abusive. The last night of their honeymoon, he’d grabbed her face and squeezed when she wasn’t looking at him as he was talking. Caro’s eyes filled with tears and fear flashed through her body like lightning, sparking every part. She was thousands of miles away from everyone she’d ever known, and no one had ever touched her like that. She’d never gotten one spanking growing up, not one smack. Mimi didn’t take no mess, but she’d been as gentle as a butterfly with Caroline.
Caro was filled with so much shame she couldn’t tell anyone what had happened. How could she? How could she tell anyone that on their honeymoon, when Trey wanted to have sex but she didn’t—not after how he’d grabbed her—he had sex with her anyway, telling her over and over again that he was sorry it was happening like this but she was his wife now and that was what being a wife meant. He asked how she couldn’t have known. He asked if she was stupid. He said that she hadn’t gone to college, only pastry school, so maybe he should’ve known she wasn’t the brightest light on the porch, but he figured someone would’ve told her what being a wife meant. What being married to a Foxberry meant. He said he knew she wasn’t some precious virgin, so she shouldn’t try to act like it. He knew she had sex with Jay and Samuel. Mateo in high school too. He was willing to forgive her for those. She grew up in a trailer and he was a Foxberry and now she was a Foxberry too. It was how she’d get fixed.
Caro felt the sludge of shame so thick in her blood she thought it’d stop her heart. She’d loved him and thought he loved her too. She had an over-the-top wedding and hadn’t been shy about being proud of landing Goldie’s biggest fish. Now she had him all to herself, this nightmare of a man. It had taken her so long to find someone, a relationship that stuck.
So, it was her duty to stay stuck to him.
She’d tried to focus on the positives of being married to a Foxberry. Trey’s parents had bought them that big house, and she got to live in it with those new cars in the garage. She had a cleaning lady and a pool boy and a gardener now. And when Trey wasn’t forcing her, she could remember the time and place when she wanted to be with him in bed. When she thought he was handsome and masculine and sexy. When she’d admired how much stronger he was than her, that he could hold both her wrists together with one of his hands, so tight she couldn’t get free.
If they had kids—like she’d thought she wanted to, once upon a time—the Foxberry family could send them to the new private school on the other side of town and to college, too, without worries. The kinds of things Caro didn’t even dare dream about when she was growing up.
She’d been witness to some goodness in Trey. Like how she told him how much she loved the line about Tom carrying Daisy down from the Punchbowl to keep her shoes dry in The Great Gatsby, so one time when they were at a fancy Foxberry party at one of their distilleries, he’d slipped Caro’s heels off and carried her down from the punch bowl upstairs. Cradled her out to the car and placed her into the passenger seat. “I knew you’d like that,” he said, all smug and sexy.
Caro wrapped up moments like that with bows of extra emotion and emphasis, and as time went by, she kept lying to herself, leaning into desperate math.
Only one month since they’d been married…only three months since they’d been married.
She made his favorite dinners, tried not to stay at the bakery too late unless it was absolutely necessary. She almost never turned him down for sex, never looked at other men, never interrupted him while he was speaking.