THIRTY-ONE
ELLE
Graham is gone when I wake up the next morning. I’m not surprised—I had drifted to sleep expecting this to happen—but my chest still twinges the moment I reach behind me to discover he’s left without saying goodbye. Squeezing my eyes, I turn over, facing the empty side of the bed. I skim my fingertips over the rumpled sheets, drinking in the scent of cedar and sandalwood that washes over my senses. When I reach the pillow, my heart seizes as my hand brushes over the note.
Opening my eyes, I stare at it, pressure throbbing behind my temples because I’m certain that this is goodbye.
It’s written on the pale blue cardstock I keep on my desk, in that same thick handwriting that was on the note his driver had given me on my first trip to Manhattan. My fingers quiver as I snatch it to me, rolling onto my back and holding it above my face. I expect I won’t see him again. That, after last night, we’ll go back to being nothing to each other.
But I guess Graham is capable of shocking me today.
E,
I apologize for leaving without properly waking you. I promise that won’t happen again. I have work then an appointment with my D.C. accountant tonight, but I want to see you. I’ll call.
-G
I glare at his note, reading and re-reading, until the words seem to collide together and blur. The heavy weight in my lungs, on my chest, lifts slowly. It’s replaced by something else. Blind, stupid, aching hope. When I hear water rushing from the pipes in the bathroom down the hall, indicating Blake has beaten me to the shower, I finally get out of bed. I leave Graham’s note face down on my nightstand. And I know what I’ll have to do next.
It’s usually a twenty-five minute trip from my apartment to my parents’ home in McLean, but my life moves in slow motion today. Forty minutes after I leave my place, I sit outside the gate at the edge of their property, cold air whipping my hair around my face when I lower my window and reach for the keypad. I pause. Have a moment where fear tightens my gut.
I won’t be able to undo this. And there will be no coming back once it’s done.
But Charlotte Strickland won’t come back either, and someone has to give her a voice. If it has to be me, then my father can hate me a little more than he did yesterday. I’ll welcome that hatred.
Pushing my shoulders back, I type in the passcode and the wrought iron gate swings open. My heart is a heavy drum as I drive between the dogwoods lining the driveway, their winter red a startling contrast against the white colonial where I grew up. By the time I loop around the driveway and park next to a van—a cleaning crew, judging from the cheery pink branding on the side of the truck—my chest is close to exploding.
I make myself get out of the car. Force myself to push down the panic and unlock the front door with my key. And when my knees buckle in the foyer, I tell myself what a disappointment I’ll be if I don’t do what I came for.
My mother’s not in her garden or the kitchen, but I find her quickly in her first-floor office. It’s just across the hall from my father’s study, and my muscles tense when I glance at his closed door. “Focus,” I whisper. “Fuck him, just focus.” I rap the backs of my fingers on the French doors separating me from my mom. She looks up from her planner, blue eyes narrowed because she hates distractions, but her expression immediately softens.
She mouths my name and motions me inside. As I walk across the reclaimed wood floor, she swallows down the bite of scone in her mouth and pats her lips daintily with an embroidered linen napkin.
“Why didn’t you call to let me know you were coming?” While she doesn’t sound angry, there is a note of impatience in her voice. She taps the end of her monogrammed pen on a page of her opened planner. “I have lunch scheduled with friends, but I can cancel—”
“No.” My voice is as intense as the weight on my stomach. “I-I won’t be here long.”
Her brow knits, but she nods in understanding. “At least sit down. You know it bothers me when you pace around while we talk.” She gestures to the pink floral upholstered chair across from her. “Do you want some coffee?”
“No. I already had a few cups this morning.”
“A few cups already? You must have been up for hours.” For the first time since I walked in, she takes in my attire—a gray and blue GWU sweatshirt, leggings, and tennis shoes. She’s immaculate, as always, in a pink oxford button down and gray wool trousers, not an auburn hair out of place. She runs her tongue over her teeth and wrinkles her nose. “Did you come here from the gym?”
I cross my arms over my chest as I sit down. “No. It’s cold out, and this was comfortable.”
“I see. You haven’t been home since Thanksgiving, and you’ve never come without calling first. Not since you moved in with Blake.” She fidgets with the pearl stud in her left ear as she flicks her gaze over my sweatshirt. I know that she wants to complain about it, but she forces a polite smile before asking, “Is everything all right?”
God, I wish it were. Following Graham’s admission last night, the first thing I did this morning after showering was call my father. Dad had gone silent the second I told him I knew what had happened with Charlotte. And then, he hung up on me. When he called back five minutes later, out of breath like he’d just walked ten stories of steps to find a private place to talk, he hadn’t explained. Hadn’t denied anything.
The first words that fell from his lips were a promise. He would cut me out of his will, out of his life, for good if I dared to tarnish his good name and career.
“I haven’t tarnished anything. Not yet,” I’d told him as my heart sank to the pit of my stomach. I’d wished and hoped like a fool that his response would be different. That maybe—just maybe—I was wrong about him. “I just want the truth. No filters. No bull, Dad. I want to believe you’re not capable of anything like this because … because of me. Because you have a daughter and a wife, and you can’t imagine someone taking advantage of either of us that way.”
He’d laughed, called me a spoiled, brainless bitch. And then what he said next had confirmed everything. “My attorney will be in touch with you this afternoon, Eleanor. It would be in your best interest to keep your mouth shut.”
I’m not expected to be at work until two today—Mr. Kyler has meetings all morning—but I wasn’t about to wait in my apartment for someone on my father’s payroll to show up and bully me into signing a gag order. So I came here. To another attorney. At least, that’s what she was before he talked her out of continuing law just after Zach was born.
“Eleanor?” Mom’s voice drags me back to the present. Inside an office in a multi-million dollar house. “Are you okay?”
“I’ve got something to tell you,” I say huskily. I worry my fingers together in my lap and grimace at her questioning smile. “It might make you angry, but I’m just asking that you give me a chance without doing what you always do.”
Taking up for him. Brushing off his behavior. Or not reacting at all.
I’m not even sure what would hurt the most at this point.
“Do you promise to hear me out?” I ask.
Her expression changes, the smile melting into a scowl. “You’re not pregnant, are you?” When I shake my head, she presses a hand to her chest and filters out a shallow breath. “Thank God. Please don’t ever scare me like that again.” She pauses, then worries her bottom lip between her teeth. “You’re not in any type of legal trouble? Is Zachary okay? I haven’t spoken to him since yesterday afternoon...”
“No, Zach is fine, I promise. And I’m not in any type of trouble. I need to talk to you about Dad.”
“I’ve tried to talk to him about Zachary.” Impatiently, she closes her planner and taps her manicured nails on the floral cover. “I’ve tried several times, though I doubt you—”
I’m about to open my mouth, to cut her off and tell her everything, but her office phone rings. She holds up one finger, answering it with a professional, “Cheryl Courtney speaking.” From her smile, that indulgent turn of her lips, I know exactly who’s on the other line and it forms a knot in my stomach. She listens for a few seconds and then lifts her eyebrows at me. “Well, yes, she’s here right now.”
A brief pause.
Another string loops and tangles in my belly.
“What do you mean tell her to leave?” Now, her forehead wrinkles. “What are you talking about?”
I grit my teeth. Feel the fury rise from my chest as I hear my father’s voice boom from the other line about what an ungrateful child I am. And then, before I can stop myself, I’m on my feet. Jerking the line out of the back of the phone.
For a moment, she just stares at the silent receiver, stunned. Then, slowly, she raises her blue eyes to mine. “Eleanor, what on—”
I grind my teeth. “He. Is. A. Predator.” I drop the cord and press my fist to my mouth. “Mom … he’s not who you think he is. Not at all.”
She doesn’t move, still doesn’t blink, as I sit back down. I wring my hands together and take a breath. When her cell phone vibrates on her desk, and she rips her stare from mine, I speak up. “If you answer that phone and buy his lies, I’ll never come back.”
She grabs it, and my heart sinks. But then she hits ignore. Holds down the side button until the screen goes black. “What’s going on, Eleanor? I’m listening,” she whispers.
She shows no sign of emotion as I tell her everything Graham had revealed last night. She doesn’t even move. Blue eyes burn into mine while I say that her husband is an awful man. That he had used his name and influence to force another woman into sleeping with him. That after Charlotte got pregnant, Dad had tossed a thousand dollars her way to take care of the problem she created.
“She quit on him,” I say, my voice breaking. “And then he went out of his way to make sure she couldn’t get another job. He ruined her life because he had the power to do it.”
Mom sucks in her bottom lip slightly but still, she says nothing.
“Can you just … respond?” Because if my father had done this to Charlotte, how many other women have there been in the past? And how many had only gone through with sleeping with him out of fear? “Do you at least believe me?”
Her hands are so shaky that she almost drops her coffee cup as she lifts it to her lips. She focuses on the glass on the office door, and for a long time, she watches as one of the women from the housekeeping service shuffles by. “He told her to take care of the problem she created,” she says, sounding ridiculously composed.
“Yes. Mom … do you—”
“Yes,” she cuts me off, and I almost reel back at the steel in her tone. “I do.”
“Okay.” My stomach twists again as the next question forms on my lips. “Did you know what he was doing?”
She snaps her gaze to mine. I’ve never seen emotion like this behind her eyes, raw pain and rage. It gives me my answer. Relieves me. “Do you think I’m that horrible, Eleanor?” When my shoulders shrug up, she presses her lips into a bitter smile. “I deserve that, I guess. After what happened with Zachary and the way he cut off the money for your school, you must think the worst of me.”
“Not like that. I mean, hell, I didn’t even want to believe the worst about him. Not when all he goes on about is monogamy and the value of life and—”
When she interrupts me this time, it’s in the form of a sharp exhale that makes her thin shoulders tremble. “That’s why I can see him doing this.” Her lips pinch together and she fists her hands as she struggles to find her next words. By the time she does, she has to squeeze her eyes shut to continue. “Your father and I weren’t married when Zachary was conceived.”
This is news. From the time I was old enough to care about the importance of dates, I’ve been told my parents married a year and a half before my brother was born. When I was younger, theirs was a romantic story—how they met at the same firm and immediately fell head over heels, how Dad followed her to Asheville just to propose when she considered taking a job there, how she made him hold his breath waiting for her answer. And now, staring across the desk at her tired expression, I know for certain it was just that.
A story.
Opening her eyes, Mom clears her throat. “We were married six months before Zachary was born. And the only reason that happened was because my father told Robert he’d have no career left—legal, political, flipping burgers, whatever—if he ever told me to take care of the problem I created again.”
It takes me a moment to process what she’s saying, but when I do, and I just blink at her, she continues, “He didn’t want Zach, either, so that’s what he told me. And then we had you and—” She pauses and lets out a low, tremulous exhale. “I let myself believe he was a faithful husband. That, in spite of his flaws, he was a decent man with only our best interests at heart. That he wasn’t going to alienate me from my children or go around bullying women into doing terrible things with him and then telling them to take care of the problem!”
When she reaches the last few words, she’s shouting. In twenty-two years, I’ve never heard my mother raise her voice and it’s terrifying. My throat is so tight I can’t speak, so I let the silence surround us, the only noise in the office our heavy breaths and her gently lifting and then lowering the coffee mug to the desk. She massages her temples.
“He’s probably left me a dozen voicemails,” she says, her voice back to normal, so calm it sends a chill down my spine. I expect he’s done the same to me. I’d left my phone out in my car, but no doubt my father’s called me a hundred times since she’s spent the last several minutes ignoring him while we gave each other a harsh dose of reality. “He’ll have an explanation.”
“He will. Will you … Mom, you’re not going to pretend this never happened and just accept whatever he tells you, are you?”
Her gaze settles on the screen of her phone. “No, Eleanor. I’m not.”