Confidential(89)

I’d been denying it for so long. Kate had been the only one who knew, and not because I’d told her. She just knew, and now . . .

“I would never judge you. I was nearly killed, and the guy was sent to prison before I broke free. I had this sixth sense, and that’s why I came out tonight. I was meant to find you so that you couldn’t pretend anymore. So you’d finally let me help you.”

It was all hitting me at once: that Michael had abused and manipulated me from the first; that he’d driven me to this point; that I’d been pretending to be traumatized by the mugger, but I’d been genuinely traumatized by Michael. Trauma distorted and contorted, until you didn’t even recognize yourself.

“His name’s Michael Baylor,” I said. “He was my old couples therapist, and we’ve been involved since Young and I split up.”

She did a double take. “You’ve been with him for, like, two years?”

“He didn’t want me to tell anyone.”

“Of course. That’s what they do. They isolate you, and they break you down mentally. And if he used to be your therapist, he must have had all kinds of tricks up his sleeve. He must have been using all your secrets against you, everything he learned from when you and Young were seeing him.”

“It wasn’t his style to use things against me like a threat. It was more, he knew where my wounds were, and he healed them. Or he seemed to, until he got tired of me or until I asked for too much; I don’t know.” I couldn’t be sure what exactly had happened in his mind, but I knew that it hadn’t been love.

“He must have known from your therapy that you wouldn’t report him. You’re a very private person. Secretive, almost. It takes a long time to really know you.”

Was that true? I’d never seen myself that way. I’d thought the Tinder tales were only for Michael’s benefit, but maybe a part of me did like to keep people far away. Jeanie and I had bonded when she cried over her failed IVF treatments; I’d never cried to her. As Michael discovered, I love you best when I can’t really reach you.

“Well,” she said, “domestic violence is a crime. If you’re willing to testify, we can try to get him that way.”

“We can’t. It really was a mugging.”

She shook her head in frustration. “You have to stop protecting him.”

“Oh, I’ve stopped.” I gestured across the street.

“If I hadn’t been here . . .” She shuddered. She didn’t believe I had my eye on only his tires. “I don’t even want to think about it. But I do get it. I had those thoughts myself when I was going through the worst of it. I fantasized.”

Nothing wrong with fantasies. But I couldn’t go around losing control. I wanted to destroy Michael; I didn’t want to go down with him. I needed to be strategic.

And I needed to get my life back, with people who actually cared about me. Jeanie had been right about the isolation. If I hadn’t pulled away from Kate, she might be okay right now.

He’d never laid a hand on me, but he’d been every bit as destructive, and he was going to pay.





CHAPTER 73





GREER


Let me go on record as saying I didn’t like these women at all. It could have been my hormones, or that if Michael had actually done something to them it had distended their personalities, or I might have simply resented being shoehorned into keeping this new company.

I’d had quick run-ins with Lucinda before, ships passing in the night, and I’d always had the impression she was sweet but scattered, unaware of just how beautiful she really was. But from the moment I sat down across from her at the dim sum restaurant, I had an entirely different sense. There was something almost cannily unhinged about her. Somewhere along the line, she’d learned that the world likes a tall drink of water who averts her eyes and bumps into walls, so my initial perception had been a reaction to a performance, an act that was wearing thin. This was the real Lucinda, the one with a furious radiance in her blue eyes, who was eager to tell her tale and exact her pound of flesh from Michael, and she wanted my help to do it.

Mine and Flora’s, that was. Flora was another real winner. Just like last time, she was done up to the nines, with so much makeup she might not even have had flesh under there. I could tell that she was used to being the bawdy sexpot, the one who went out with her friends to bars with twenty-dollar cocktails and said outrageous things to all the men who came up to hit on them. It strained credulity, frankly, to think that the same man would be interested in the three of us.

The first ten minutes were taken with figuring out which items we should mark with a pencil on the dim sum menu. Flora wanted us all to split so she’d get to try everything, but this plan soon fell apart. Lucinda was a vegetarian (of course). She was already thin as a bean sprout, might as well eat them, too, and I had to decline anything with fish. Even if it was cooked, I didn’t know if I could trust Oakland to get it fresh enough for the precious cargo I was carrying. But I had to hand it to Flora: this restaurant was an inspired choice. Everyone in there except the three of us was Asian, both the customers and staff. They were all speaking Cantonese. Silver carts were pushed along the thickly carpeted floor, and the tables were covered in white linen. It looked like a banquet hall, and it absorbed sound just as readily, which was perfect, since the one thing we could surely agree on was that we’d prefer not to be heard.