The Mother's Promise(34)

For some reason this made Zoe well up with tears. Judy patted her shoulder. Zoe was worried she might try to hug her, but instead she headed for the door. Judy, Zoe realized, seemed to have a knack for knowing what she needed. “I’m going to get dinner started. You just holler if you need me, okay?”

When she was gone, Zoe sat on the bed, feeling the eyes of the children who had been here before her. Some of them were doing really well now, Judy had said. Some of them had children of their own. Zoe knew she should find this comforting, but instead she wondered about the other ones. The ones who weren’t doing so well. The ones for whom “coming to Granny’s” wasn’t enough. And she wondered, if something did happen to her mom, which one she would be.





23

As soon as Sonja opened the front door, she knew George was home. There was no evidence to this effect—she’d parked in the driveway, so she couldn’t tell if his car was in the garage or not—but Sonja just knew. After years of marriage she was so attuned to his presence that she could tell before even opening the door. Sure enough, he was at the kitchen counter on his laptop. There were fresh flowers in the vase by the window. The house was clean and polished; the rich hardwood floors gleamed up at her.

It was a far cry from the single-fronted home she’d grown up in. Sonja’s parents were working-class—a receptionist at a car dealership and a plumber—but Sonja had graduated to something bigger. A higher bracket. When she’d brought George home to meet her parents (separately, by then—they split up when she was nine) none of her family could conceal their surprise. “Good luck holding on to him,” her dad had muttered too loudly. Her sister, Agnes, seemed surprised too, but at least she kept quiet about it. At their wedding, Sonja could admit she felt a little smug. Bunch of nonbelievers, she remembered thinking, looking back at them from the altar. She knew they attributed her lack of visits to her “being too good for” them and she was happy to go along with that. It was easier than the truth. That she was embarrassed. That, perhaps, she never had any reason to be smug.

“Hello,” she said, dropping her grocery bags onto one end of the kitchen counter. She must have been on autopilot at the grocery store, because she didn’t even remember what was in them.

“How was your day?” George asked, his eyes still on the screen.

“Well … I had to place a client’s teenage daughter in foster care. That’s never fun.” She started unloading the groceries onto the counter. Eggs, marmalade, a cabbage. What on earth was she going to make with this?

“Why did you do that?” George asked.

“The girl was staying at home all alone while her mom was in the hospital,” she said. “Which might have been all right. But then her neighbor told me she never answers the door, doesn’t talk very much, and that she and her mom are very insular, they don’t go out much. She also had a bruise on her cheek and a fairly unlikely explanation for why it was there. And then she had a panic attack while I was with her.”

George shook his head. “They’re not paying you enough, Sonja.”

He looked back at the screen. Sonja noticed the glass next to his laptop, the finger of amber liquid. Silently she unloaded the rest of the groceries. Whenever George had been drinking, he had a tendency to underestimate his own strength. He also tended to become more aggressive after a few drinks; sometimes it even felt as though he intended to hurt her, as though he enjoyed it.

She’d heard all the popular sayings about marriage—how it was so much more about giving than receiving—but it was impossible to understand how much you had to give, and forgive, until you were in the situation. Sonja wanted her marriage to succeed. Then again, what did it mean to make a marriage succeed? Was it simply about staying together? Or was there something more she should be striving for?

Suddenly Sonja noticed George’s gaze lingering on her. An uneasy feeling started.

“Come here,” he said.

“George, I … I’m making dinner.”

He cocked an eyebrow and glanced at the peculiar assortment of groceries. His expression said, Really? You call this dinner?

There wasn’t a lot she could do at this point. If she’d thought ahead, she might have been able to fake an emergency at work and get out of the house. But it was too late now, George already had that look about him. His eyes were narrow and glassy, his body rigid. If there was such a thing as body language, it was saying, I’m about to take what’s mine.

“Come here,” he said again.

Sonja cringed internally. It would be worse because he’d been drinking. It was always worse. A few years back, after a half bottle of Scotch, he’d broken a bone in her wrist from holding her so tightly. It was an accident, of course. It was never intentional.

Sonja walked around the bench and stood in front of him. He grasped her waist and pulled her closer. She saw something in his eyes. A pulse of excitement.

“Lie on the bench.”

“Can’t we just wait until—”

He turned her around. Her stomach pressed painfully into the sharp edge of the countertop. Then he pushed her face down against the cold stone. The cabbage rolled onto the floor.

Marriage was all about giving, she thought. And George gave a lot. With his work, he’d changed so many lives for the better. He’d changed her life. It was only fair that he got something in return. With her hands gripping the counter, Sonja stifled a whimper. She could have stopped him if she’d wanted. She could have said no. But she didn’t.