Confidential(77)

But even as I said it, as I yelled it, I wanted him to prove her—to prove me—wrong. He stared down at the floor, and that made me even madder.

“She told me the truth about you. She told me you’d done this before. Two different women lodged complaints against you. This is a pattern for you, huh? It’s just how you roll, taking advantage of women.”

That got him. He was on his feet, screaming, “I tried to help you! I try to help everyone!”

“You helped yourself to me and to those other women! You took advantage of us!”

He sat back down, shaking his head, fighting to contain himself. I towered over him, feeling like some ridiculous impotent giant, but to sit, to follow suit, somehow felt like a concession. Now he was talking low, practically a mumble, more to himself than to me. “These fucking women. She breaks into my house to tell me that it’s my fault her cousin overdosed.” Then he looked right at me. “News flash. People are responsible for their own actions. If she felt like using, she should have called her sponsor. She should have done anything—except use. Did you ever think maybe she wanted to die? She had practically nothing in her life besides you. Would you want to live if you were her?”

His blow landed. When Kate said that I barely asked about her, that wasn’t a recent development. Kate went to work and back home after. She had a few Twelve Step friends. Ask her what’s new, and she’d say, “Nothing. What’s new with you?” It was almost no life, and instead of my encouraging her to get one, I capitalized on it. She was just this waiting receptacle, someone I could always lean on, always so eager to listen to me, to laugh and to cry with me, until she got strong opinions about Michael, and then I turned against her.

No, it couldn’t be. She hadn’t tried to kill herself because of me.

“You see it now, don’t you?” he said. “She was your therapist, and you took everything out of her. It does that, being there for people. She had nothing left in the tank. That’s how I feel.”

My head was spinning. Somehow, he’d gotten the upper hand, when I thought I finally had. I’d finally seen through the haze of my love for him, and I was going to confront him. Bring him low. Get him to admit to everything. Then I could forgive him. Maybe.

“This is crazy,” I said.

“Yep. It’s crazy that you’re lying in wait for me so you can make me the bad guy and feel better about your cousin. I’m not the bad guy, but you’re not, either. She’s her own bad guy. She did this. She chose this.”

“She didn’t choose a coma.”

“She risked a coma. Maybe it was because she wanted to die, or maybe it was because she wanted a few hours of oblivion and instead she got eternity. We can’t know.” For a second, I felt just a little comforted. He could be right, and we were all responsible for our own actions, and I could let go of the intolerable guilt I’d felt since I got my parents’ call earlier tonight. “But you know what’s also crazy? That you came here to play the victim.”

“No, that’s not me.”

“Yes, apparently it is. Ever since the mugging. I know trauma, and you, Flora, were not traumatized. You saw an opportunity to get back into my bed, and you took it, and I was too weak to fight. I was too tired.” He gave me a penetrating stare. “You’re the one who’s been taking advantage of me all this time. You seduced me in the sessions. You used all the compassion I had for you about your inability to love a man who was learning to treat you well. I’m a sucker for damaged women, and you must have figured that out. You all do.”

All. As in, there had been others. Kate had been telling the truth.

Michael’s the one with all the reasons to lie. How many reasons? How many women? At least two, based on those complaints that were filed and withdrawn.

He must have manipulated them into withdrawing the complaints, the same as he was manipulating me.

Because he was a monster, just like Kate said. I chose a monster over her, and now . . .

I stormed out of the house. There was no way I was going to let that monster see me cry ever again.





CHAPTER 63





GREER


“This is the first time it’s even seemed possible that someone is growing inside me,” I said. “I’ve always been so careful to avoid it.” I was curled up on my sofa in front of a roaring fire (it’s electric, but top-of-the-line and entirely convincing). I was drinking hot cocoa. Nesting, is that what they called this feeling, this pursuit of coziness, this need for home?

“You’ve never had a pregnancy scare?” he asked. I wished he were there in the room instead of on the phone, but tempting as it was, I wasn’t going to be issuing an invitation. Therapists were big on boundaries, and I had always been, too. Maybe that was part of why I’d never had a pregnancy scare. I’d put up so many barriers in my life. But I was ready to let some of them drop.

Tonight was too soon, though. Michael and I could afford to wait for the right moment. Forty weeks of pregnancy, and afterward, we’d be bonded for life by having created a life and then by nurturing one.

“I’ve always been extremely careful.” Also, I hadn’t had that much sex in my life, by the standards of what would be termed my advanced maternal age. Only twelve partners, which meant that if Michael and I decided to give it a whirl, he’d be lucky thirteen. If the IUI had worked, then he already was lucky thirteen. Could we have gotten that lucky? My gut said yes, but it had no experience in these matters.