Confidential(88)

But as I listened to my mother sob, I started thinking that slowly circling Michael, amassing evidence, and ultimately destroying his practice wasn’t nearly enough. Kate was gone, and he was still here. Was there any justice in the world?

There was only what you made. What you took.

It was Friday night. Michael didn’t work on Friday nights. He would be home, since he had no freaking friends. Unless, of course, he was out with his latest woman. Latest client, maybe? I’d spoken to Lucy, who was pretty shaken up, and she was keeping her distance. Greer supposedly wasn’t even fucking him. While I thought that was a lie, I couldn’t imagine that either of those two women was going to be with him before we all met up for our little powwow. But I wouldn’t put anything past him. He could be very persuasive.

I headed for his house, my hands trembling on the wheel with adrenaline. I was driving with purpose, though I had no plan. I’d never felt this before, like I didn’t even care what happened to me; it was all about stopping this feeling. Stopping him. He couldn’t do this anymore. I wasn’t going to let him.

His car was out front. Images were flashing in front of my eyes, bloodred: Kate in her hospital bed, my mother distraught, Michael inside the house that I’d thought would someday be our home together. All the lies and the machinations and the terrible consequences, not just for the two of us but for my whole family. They didn’t deserve this. I was a kaleidoscope of rage. I was lit up, psychedelic, drunk with it. Uninhibited. I wanted him looking over his shoulder, feeling hunted. It was the least I could do. It was a start.

Since the mugging, I’d been carrying a small knife on my keychain. It was the one Michael had bought for me. Such sweet irony.

I walked across the street, popping it in and out of its protective case. I felt like I was in a movie about the fifties, where there was about to be a street fight and everyone was readying their switchblades.

He was so cocky, so sure he could control everything and everyone when the time came.

Well, time’s up.

I was almost to his car when I heard my name. I spun around, the knife still protruding, and saw Jeanie.

“Oh my God,” she whispered. “Put that away, please.”

The knife, she meant. I was still holding an unsheathed knife. Seeing the expression on her eminently sane face made me realize just how insane I looked.

I did as she’d instructed. She came up the stairs, putting her arm around my shoulders and ushering me down, like I was a small child. One of her twins, maybe. And inside the circle of her maternal energy, I let myself be led. I leaned into her, feeling the emotional exhaustion of the past weeks.

Her Mercedes was parked behind my car. She helped me into the leather passenger seat and then took the driver’s seat. “Should we get you to a hospital, do you think?” Her tone was halting. This was clearly new territory for her. It was Michael’s territory, committing people to psych hospitals, but I didn’t think we’d be consulting with him tonight.

“No, I’m fine,” I said in a small voice.

“You were holding a knife.”

“I was just going to slash his tires.”

“Just?”

I tried to smile. “Carrie Underwood did it, right?”

“No, she sang about it.”

“Shocker. I’m not Carrie Underwood.” I wanted to seem breezy, like the version of myself she used to know. But I wasn’t her. I was unhinged, and I wasn’t fooling anyone.

“Oh, Flora,” she said sadly. “What’s he done to you?”

“I’m fine,” I repeated. Or I would be, as soon as he’d paid for what he’d done to Kate, and to me, and to who knew how many others.

Really, slashed tires were too good for him.

I could see that Jeanie wanted to believe me, like always—that I was fine or would soon be. But how could that happen when Michael was walking around free and easy?

“How did you get here?” I asked. “Where did you come from?”

“You didn’t answer any of my texts, so I drove to your apartment. I rang your bell a few times, and you didn’t answer, but your car was there. So I waited, and then you came out and you looked—you know, like you look.” Disheveled. Bedraggled. Unkempt. Utterly unlike myself. That was what Kate hated most about Michael: how he’d transformed me, entirely for the worse. “I called your name, but it was like you didn’t hear me.”

“No, I didn’t.” I’d been possessed.

“You got in your car, and I didn’t think you should be driving, so I ran back and got in mine and followed you here, and I called your name again.”

Now that made me smile for real. I hoped his neighbors had heard (though I hoped no one else had seen the knife).

“Sorry I put you through all this,” I said.

“It was just so familiar. Even tonight, the way you looked. Like you’d gone into some kind of fugue state. When I was being abused, there were times where I’d basically sleepwalk while awake and I’d come to somewhere—one time it was a Laundromat—and I couldn’t remember how I’d gotten there. I was literally out of my mind.”

“All I could think about was putting him on notice,” I whispered. “Making him stop.”

“Making him stop what? What, exactly, has been going on?”