“We’ll see what you think in twenty years when I’ve got a private plane and you’re paying for Sophie’s ninth year as a gender studies major.”
I laugh. “I’d still choose them, cheapskate.”
He’s silent for so long that I’ve assumed the conversation is over by the time he speaks again. “The kid thing? It’s less about the money than it is the responsibility. And the fear. It would be terrifying to care about someone that much.”
My eyes fall closed, picturing Henry. Is he happy today? Is he ever going to find a friend? “Yeah,” I tell him. “It can be.”
JEREMY ARRIVES Sunday to take the kids to lunch, still tan from the ‘work’ trip he took to Hawaii with Whitney.
Though he’s spent the last week calling me every name under the sun and hacking into my bank account, he smiles when I open the door. He’s always done that, though—he’ll smile at the wrong moment, in the middle of saying or doing something awful, as if he’s mistimed the appearance of an emotion he never felt in the first place. I once watched a documentary about serial killers and what struck me most was how much they reminded me of my own husband.
“Aren’t you going to invite me in?” he asks.
I don’t want him in my home. I don’t trust him in my home, this man I was sharing a bed with two weeks ago. The fear, the revulsion…it was always there. Sometimes, though, you can’t allow yourself to feel the full force of a thing until you’ve escaped it. Now I wonder how I lasted so long.
I continue to block the entrance. “They’re almost ready.”
His smile holds but his eye twitches, a tiny flash of annoyance he somehow masters.
“You look good, Lucie.” It’s a significant change from what he said a mere twenty-four hours ago, which was that my looks were ‘already fading’ and that my ass would be as big as my mom’s any day now.
“Sophie! Henry!” I shout up the stairs. “Daddy’s waiting!”
“Can we talk?” he asks. “I feel like we’ve never talked this through.” He stares at the ground. His shoulders sag. He is laughably bad at pretending to be sorry.
“I don’t see what there is to talk about.”
“Just…there are some things I want to say to you. Important things.” His eyes meet mine. “I miss you.”
And there it is.
Jeremy doesn’t like to lose. It would be one thing if he’d left me, but the fact that he’s been left is finally starting to rankle. And he really believes that after everything he’s done, he can briefly don that face he shows the world—the face he fooled me with when I was a na?ve college student—and I’ll come trotting right back.
Sophie runs past me without a backward glance, but Henry lingers, pressing his head to my leg and wrapping his little arms around me. I wish he wasn’t leaving, and I suspect he wishes it too.
“We’ll talk later?” Jeremy asks.
If I argue with him, he’ll take it out on Henry, which is how he’s kept me in line for most of our marriage. I nod, lips pressed tight, as he grabs Henry’s hand and pulls him away.
I stayed with Jeremy as long as I did because I knew he’d make the twins’ lives difficult if we left. It was only when he began including Henry in the potshots aimed my way that I knew we had to go. “Apparently, he’s as dumb as you,” Jeremy said when we got Henry’s first school report. Both the twins were sitting across from me at the table, and as I watched the light dimming in Henry’s eyes, I knew it was time to do the hard thing, the scary thing.
Except leaving was only half the battle.
As long as he has the power to hurt my children, I’m never going to be free. And neither are they.
11
CALEB
I'm in the garage on Sunday afternoon setting up a sawmill when a BMW swerves into Lucie’s driveway at high speed. Henry and Sophie emerge from the back of the car and run to their mother, who wraps herself around them as if they've been gone for a year.
The man who climbs out after them is the exact kind of jackass I hate—the type who spends the weekend dressed for golf, whether he’s playing it or not, and smiles like a smug prick at the woman he just cheated on.
I’m about to enter the house, but when he tells the twins to go inside, there’s something about Lucie that holds me in place. Her jaw is set hard, but it's not anger I sense in her posture—it's fear. I fight the urge to go out there and ask if she’s okay.