All the Dangerous Things(87)

“You didn’t meet at that grief counseling group.”

It seems so obvious to me now, I hate myself for not seeing it sooner. After all, we had a story, too. Ben and I. But it wasn’t real. It was something he had concocted; something he had created to paint himself in the most flattering light. Our relationship had started long before we announced it to the world, and I remember that first night together after the memorial now, the two of us tangled between the sheets of my childhood bed. The sickness that settled in my stomach after he stood up and walked away, like I knew I had just consumed something that was bound to hurt me.

“You know we can’t tell anybody about this. Not yet.”

I twist around now and look at Valerie, standing right behind me, eyes wide and afraid. He really did do to me what we did to Allison.

Ben and Valerie were together long before we were apart.

“How long?” I ask, taking a step closer. “How long have you been together?”

Valerie shakes her head, a little quiver in her lip, and takes a step backward, putting some distance between us.

“How long?”

“I felt so bad for the longest time,” she says at last. “Doing what we did behind your back. But the things he told me about you…”

I remember that feeling: the justification of it. The guilt, the indignity, overridden by the stories I told myself. The stories about Allison I decided to accept in order to make myself feel better: that they weren’t us. It’s a form of self-preservation, really. We are nothing but what we choose to believe, but it’s all a mirage, bending and warping and shimmering in the distance, changing its form at any given second.

Showing us exactly what we want to see when we want to see it.

“How long?” I repeat, my resolve settling back in and hardening in my stomach. “How long have you been with Ben?”

The house is quiet in a silent standoff. Finally, she sighs.

“Two years.”

Two years. Two years. For two entire years, Ben has been seeing someone else. Before Mason was taken. Before he even took his first steps.

I count back in my head now, trying to determine how old he would have been.

“Six months,” I say, muttering to myself. Mason would have been six months old when they first got together: the age he was when I started working again. When I took off for a few nights every month, driving to North Carolina and Alabama and Mississippi, trying to chase those little moments of meaning that were ripped from me all those years ago.

“You were always leaving,” Valerie says now, still trying to justify it. “He was lonely, Isabelle. You left him and your son for days on end—”

“He was lonely?” I say, a sudden burst of anger surging through me. “Is that what he said? He said that I was always leaving? That I was the one who was never around?”

“I saw it,” she says, her voice suddenly sharp like venom. “I saw the way he had to take care of Mason by himself. Don’t deny it.”

“You saw it—” I whisper, the room starting to spin. “Oh my God. He brought you to our house?”

I take a few steps closer, into the center of the room, my mind racing.

“He brought you to our house, around our son, and he was growing up,” I say, speaking faster. “Mason was growing up, just starting to talk. Pretty soon, he would have started saying something, right? Saying something to me about the other woman who came over when I wasn’t there?”

I think about that story I always tell to the audience; the one meant to ease the tension and elicit a laugh. Mason and Ben and the mobile above his crib; how he would try to sound out the words—Tyrantosnorious—getting better and better every single time.

“Don’t you think Ben thought about that?” I ask. “Don’t you think he realized—”

I stop, stare, understanding settling over me slowly. All of these little pieces that never added up, never made sense, until now. I can feel the blood drain from my face, like someone ripped out a plug from beneath me, bleeding me dry.

The truth is right here, right in front of me. I have literally been staring at it, at her, this entire time.

“What did you do?” I ask, my voice a whisper. “What did you do to my son?”

Valerie is quiet, eying me. It really is striking how alike we look, especially at a distance. The tanned skin of her arms, her legs; the coffee-brown shade of her hair and the wide, unassuming eyes. I imagine her walking down the street at night, late, leaving my house at the end of a few days spent with Ben. She would have parked somewhere far away, I’m sure, to keep a cover from the neighbors. Ben would have insisted—for appearances’ sake. Always for appearances’ sake. And I can almost picture it: her, striding past that streetlight, feeling the life leaking from her skin with every single step, knowing that I was on my way home to him. Knowing that we would be sleeping together that night while she was in this sad little house, alone, her eyes on the ceiling and her mind on us. It was the same way I felt when Ben would stand up from that barstool and return home to Allison: the gut-wrenching knowledge of being something he kept hidden, secret, like a dirty habit he only broke out at night.

And then: the creak of a rocking chair. The realization that she wasn’t alone. A glance to the side and an old man sitting on his porch, cloudy eyes on her.