Dream Girl(76)

“It’s not a tale,” says the woman. Kim. “It’s true.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt a word of it. He basically raped you in that hotel room, which would have been bad enough under any circumstances—”

“Rape!” Gerry yelps. “I invited you up to my room and you came. What followed was absolutely consensual. If I recall, you were the one who had the condom, you were the one who chose to have intercourse, you were—”

She is one of those pale blondes who flushes bright pink when emotional. “I tried to say no, but you ignored me. And, given the circumstances, I was so overwhelmed. You weren’t going to let me out of there unless I, um, reciprocated in some fashion, so I chose the easiest, fastest way.”

“The circumstances? You were, are, an adult woman who went to a man’s hotel room and didn’t seem to mind at all when things went the way they usually do in a man’s hotel room after a couple of drinks in a bar. In fact, it was my impression, in hindsight, that you were looking for me, you came to that hotel hoping to find me. I’m not going to have this turned into some sort of ‘Me, too’ moment.”

“Yes, I was hoping to meet you, but—not for that. I wanted to see you, to get some sense of you, but I used a fake name just in case. I had wanted to be a writer, too—”

God, was there anyone left in the world who didn’t want to be a writer?

“You had loomed so large in my life, ever since I was a teenager. I read everything you wrote. Granddad would say, ‘It’s right there on your DNA. If your uncle can do it, so can you.’”

Granddad. Uncle. What?

Leenie smiles, pleased with her handiwork. She literally rubs her hands together in delight. “Kim is the daughter of your half sister, Gerry, the family that was cut out of your father’s will. They contested it, but they had no grounds—your father was within his rights to leave everything to your mother. So Kim’s mother, her grandmother, her aunt—the family your father actually lived with and supported for much of his life—they’re out in the cold and you’re going to get money that you don’t even need. Kim’s grandfather always said she would inherit enough to pay off her college debt. A good man would help her out.”

Gerry sees himself as a boy, playing with his father’s sample case, pulling a long blond hair from one of the little chairs. Had it belonged to this girl’s mother? He sees himself picking up the phone, oh so stealthily, listening to his father speak first to his other wife, then to his daughters, comforting the one who had broken her arm. Was that this girl’s mother? It was the way his father spoke to the girls that hardened Gerry’s heart, the tenderness and sweetness, a tone he had never known. Maybe fathers were different with daughters than they were with sons, but Gerry felt in that moment that he knew where his father’s heart lay and that was why he ordered him from the house on Berwick Road, all the while hoping his father would say, “No, it’s a horrible mistake. I choose you! I choose you!”

He sees himself with this woman in the hotel room. His niece. His stomach roils, yet surely she should be the one who is held accountable. It was consensual, he’s not responsible for her regrets. He didn’t know. It’s not as if he were some paternal figure who had watched her grow up. He didn’t even have an inkling she existed.

Then again, Oedipus also was wholly ignorant of his relationship to Jocasta, and the gods didn’t spare him.

Gerry thinks quickly. He has to get one of the women in this room on his side. He has to get the right woman on his side, even if that means saying things he doesn’t believe.

“Leenie, this was cruel of you. You shouldn’t have lied to this young woman to get her here under a false pretext. You should have told me about her letters, what they said. I would, in fact, like to do the right thing.”

He is struggling to keep his voice even, calm. He wonders what part of the saga Margot planned to make public if he continued to deny her request for financial assistance. The niece part was icky, but the #MeToo aspect was probably more of a news hook. The one-two punch—surely there was a salacious gossip site that would have enjoyed telling the story, which would then allow more traditional media to report on it with that disingenuous stance of reporting on the story’s existence, not the story itself. But was this going to be part of Leenie’s novel? Was this the climax?

I have to win this young woman over. She’s my only hope. I have to say whatever will keep her here long enough to save me.

“Kim, I am so sorry for the pain the men in my family have caused the women in your family. First my father and now me. I cannot begin to find the words for the injury done to you.”

“Thank you,” she says stiffly.

“We do need to talk. Leenie, would you take Kim’s suitcase downstairs and maybe fix us a light snack?”

“She won’t need—” Leenie interrupts herself, but Gerry takes note of her words. She was about to say that Kim would not require a room here. Has Leenie secured a reservation for her elsewhere? Or is Kim going to be sacrificed for Leenie’s story before the day is through? “Fine, I’ll take it downstairs.”

Gerry indicates the chair by his bed, the Leenie chair, as he thinks of it. He glances at his bedside table. One thing Leenie has not thought to take from him is his Moleskine notebooks and astronaut pens.