Wherever She Goes(51)

“I know who you are,” he says. “Who you were.”

I try not to tense.

“I don’t just mean what you did,” he continues. “When we talked this morning, you said you gave away the money.”

“Not all—”

He continues as if he didn’t hear me. “That made me dig where I told myself I wasn’t going to dig. Into your life. Who you were. You didn’t get that shoulder scar from an accident that killed your parents. But they are gone. Both of them.”

I go still.

“You didn’t lie,” he says. “Not entirely. Your mother died in a car accident when you were two. You were found in the car a day later. I think of Charlotte and try to imagine—” He inhales. “I can’t imagine. I only know that something that . . . horrific . . . would have an impact. A huge one.”

“It’s not an excuse—”

“You grew up on army bases. No siblings. Your dad never remarried, and he was often deployed. I remember all the times you’d fly into a panic, worrying that you weren’t a good parent, that you didn’t know how to be, and I never understood why you’d get so worked up. Now I do.”

“It wasn’t that bad,” I say. “I’d stay with good people when he deployed. I wasn’t neglected or abused. My dad loved me. We were close.”

“Until he took his life.”

I stiffen.

“I’m sorry,” Paul says quickly. “That sounded harsh.”

“It was harsh. There’s no nice way to put it. I was away at college, and he came home from deployment, and he was worse than usual. I kept telling myself talking to him on the phone was enough, that I’d get him help when I got home on break and then—”

I snap a vine so hard it slices into my finger. Blood wells. I wipe it off before Paul notices.

“That’s when it happened, isn’t it?” Paul says. “You dropped out of college, and Ruben took advantage—”

“No.” I meet his gaze. “There aren’t excuses, Paul. I wasn’t tricked into what I did. I chose it. I was angry, and I was stupid, and I chose it.”

“Who’d you give the money to?”

I flail, hands flapping, before I quickly return to the vines. “It doesn’t—”

“Bree?”

“I kept a third.”

“And the rest?”

I hesitate. Then I say, “One-third to a PTSD group. The rest was anonymous gifts to people who needed it, mostly around the base.”

“Rob from the rich, give to the veterans?”

He smiles, but I shake my head vehemently, my eyes filling with tears.

“Don’t,” I say. “I was young. I was angry. I was stupid. I didn’t do it for others. That’s just how I used the money, because it wasn’t about the money. Young. Angry. Stupid. That’s all.”

He nods. “Okay.”

I resume pulling vines. “I knew the statute of limitations had run out before I married you, Paul. No one suspected me. I wasn’t fleeing anything but my own mistakes.” I look up at him. “I wasn’t looking for safe haven.”

He shifts, as uncomfortable as I was discussing the money. He opens his mouth, and I know he’s going to tell me not to pursue this, so I quickly say, “I left because I thought you were unhappy. We were drifting apart, and that’s a lousy reason for ending a marriage, but I didn’t want it to get worse. I thought if I mentioned the problem, and you agreed that it wasn’t fixable, then I’d leave. I took the risk that you’d agree. I felt like I had to. For you and for Charlie. Now I know why you weren’t happy, and I wish to God I could go back to the day we met and tell you the truth, but I can’t.”

I rip off another vine, my attention back on that.

“You couldn’t,” he says after a moment. “Not when you’d first met me. It was too soon. But I wish you had, at some point. At any point.”

“I know. I just . . . the further it went, the more afraid I got. The easier it seemed to just become someone else.”

“Were you?” he asks softly. “Were you actually someone else, Bree? Or were you just pretending to be?”

“Was I pretending to be your wife? Charlie’s mommy? No.” I look at him. “Pretending to be happy? No. But the person you fell in love with, the one you married, you had a child with, that wasn’t the whole me, and I’m sorry.”

He says nothing. I bend and snake out a last bit of vine.

“So, MIT, huh?” he says, and when I look over, he’s smiling. It’s not his usual smile—it’s a little sad, a little confused—so I just nod.

“When you’re done with the AC, my desktop has been acting up,” he says. “Think you can fix that, too?”

I find a half smile for him. “Probably.” I straighten. “Let’s see if this works.”

“It should.” A long pause. “Will you stay for coffee?”

“I will, but only because all this isn’t what I came to talk to you about. Let’s go inside.”





Chapter Twenty-Six





We sit at the kitchen table, and I tell him everything, as succinctly as I can. I explain how I identified Kim Mikhailov, linked her to Denis Zima, went to Zima’s club and overheard that conversation . . . and then had Zima’s thug menace me on my jog tonight.