Never Have I Ever(81)

She stared at the camera with her slits for eyes, her face expressionless. The other five were much the same, showing that whoever had gotten to her hadn’t stopped with the face. There was a profile shot and then body shots. Her abdomen and ribs bloomed with navy and purple bruises, dark as pansies.

I flipped the top Polaroid over and found writing on the back. Just two letters: NE

I flipped them all. Each had two or three letters on the back, and when I dealt them out in order, they spelled words in all capitals.

NEVER FORGET.

I wasn’t sure if these pictures or the letter said more about her mysterious marriage. Maybe both. Maybe neither. She’d been surprised by how much I loved Maddy. Had she and Luca had a bad experience with steps? Or this might be the work of Luca’s father.

He’s not a good person, Luca had said. I don’t talk about him. Like, ever.

It was hard to tell Roux’s age in these pictures, she was so badly beaten. How long ago had this happened? Was this the thing she was running from? If so, I would have to move forward very carefully. Because of Luca. What would a man who could do this to a woman, even one as duplicitous as Roux, do to a teenage boy? What had he done already?

I still hoped an open warrant, not a man, had sent her hurtling down highways until she landed with Tig Simms. But now a man seemed much more likely. Worse, it could be both. If I sent her to jail, would Luca be returned to the man who’d done this?

Luca didn’t seem like a boy who’d been beaten, but wasn’t that how domestic abuse worked? Everyone hid it. I only knew the face that Luca showed me. Maddy might know more, though.

I checked my watch. I was nearly out of time. I started putting everything back, but on impulse I pocketed one of the Polaroids. The first one, with NE written on the back. It was Roux facing the camera, recognizable even through the bruising. A record of her face could come in handy, and I wasn’t likely to get another. She was camera-shy, Tig had said. His own picture of her was distant and blurry. I didn’t take it only to be practical, though. Part of me wanted a record of this, proof that she was vulnerable. Proof that she didn’t always win her games. I put everything else back exactly as I’d found it.

I was at the front door, ready to go home, when I realized what I’d almost done. We were going diving tomorrow. Roux would bring her gear. I ran back to the master, stopping by the bathroom for a wad of toilet paper. I went to the closet and fished out the condom. It was right beside her gear bag.

Gagging, I hurried back to the bed and flung it under. Then I flushed the toilet paper and got out of there.

As soon as I was home, I slipped my shoes off, not wanting the kids to hear me coming through the front door. They weren’t in the keeping room though. They must have decided to watch the video downstairs, taking Oliver with them. He would be asleep by now. I went to the guest bathroom and slipped Luca’s keys back into his jeans, then dropped by the laundry room to change my top. I wanted a shower, but there was no time. I headed for the basement.

The door was closed, a minor no-no, but I eased it open and listened. The cheery sounds of the instructional video drifted up the stairs. The kids had the volume up to eleven; they wouldn’t have noticed if I had tap-danced in. I’d seen the DVD approximately seven thousand times, so I knew that it was nearly over. I’d come home just in time.

I headed down to check on the baby.

I was still in my bare feet, quiet against the wooden stairs. I could see the kids on the sofa. Oliver flopped in his bounce chair, sleeping. Luca sat on the end of the couch closer to the stairs, his back to me, facing the TV screen where a pretty girl in a wet suit was giving the wrap-up speech.

Maddy wasn’t watching. Something was not right with her. She was lying down, one bare foot hanging off the sofa, braced hard and tense against the floor. Her other bare foot rested in Luca’s lap in what looked like a girlfriend pose to me. Her hands were thrown over her head, as abandoned as Oliver in his deepest sleeps, and her head was propped on a throw pillow against the sofa’s other arm. Her face was tipped back, and her eyes were closed, but too tight for her to be sleeping. Her eyebrows were knit up, and her cheeks were very pink. A strange little smile played over her face. It was not an expression I had ever seen before.

It took me a moment to understand what I was seeing. I even opened my mouth to call her name, to ask if she was all right, but then I realized Luca’s arm was stretched out, running parallel to the tensed leg in his lap. His right hand disappeared up under the skirt of her pool cover-up.

I froze for the endless half second it took for me to make sense of what was happening. Luca himself was completely dressed, his other hand innocently resting along the top of the sofa. Maddy gasped, her head tipping back farther and her little smile widening. It broke my paralysis. I found myself retreating up the stairs, rapidly, silently, unsure what to do but very sure I did not want Maddy to know that I’d seen this.

If they had been making out, I would have slipped upstairs and then started banging noisily around, giving them a minute so Luca could wipe away Mad’s strawberry lip gloss and she could straighten her hair. But this? I did not know what the hell to do with this.

Luca watching TV, and yet his hand had been busy, moving between her legs. What the hell was that? It felt clinical and weird and not appropriate. They were definitely rounding third base, but they hadn’t been kissing. Her cover-up was still on, all the way, and I’d seen the strap of her tankini top, so that was on, too. What teenagers go straight to third base?