Mother May I(98)

I didn’t want to think about that. That was the kind of thought a woman had when she was about to leave her husband. I looked at my girls, my baby. I wasn’t going to do that, was I? Not over a fraction of a fraction of a second—but this was Trey’s argument. I didn’t find it any more compelling when I made it to myself.

Perhaps he’d softened. After all, I’d sprung so much on him yesterday. Perhaps with time, and thought, and my support, he would accept that his experiences and memories of that night had been quite different from Lexie’s. He wanted to talk. That was good. He was reaching out. And God, he loved me. I wanted to believe he’d do the right thing in the end. I wanted to believe we’d find a way to keep each other.

I left the night-shift bodyguards at the house with Mom and the kids. Mills and Maxwell were staying with me, earning overtime so a peace talk or a negotiation or a marriage-ending silence could play out. Maxwell parked in the huge garage. It had a pretty stone fa?ade and an elevator lobby with sparkling-clean glass doors. Here, in Trey’s world, even the garages were quite lovely.

Brick walkways with covered awnings ran around the courtyard, three paths cutting across the green. Maxwell and I took the most direct route, straight from the garage’s glass doors to the restaurant. Mills took the longer path to Trey’s office building, going to escort him down.

The hostess seated me at the table I’d reserved, while Maxwell took a seat at the outdoor bar. From there he had a good view of the whole courtyard. A Regina Spektor song played softly through the subtly placed speakers. The other full tables were across the bocce-ball court. If Trey and I stayed calm, we would be able to talk quite privately.

I wanted no interruptions, but I set my phone faceup on the table anyway, the sound still on. If my mother or my girls texted or called, I had to see immediately.

A young waiter with a swooping 1950s hairdo came over, and I ordered an old-fashioned for Trey and for me a pale Viognier, sister to the wine Trey had bought for me all those years ago at the High Museum. I should have coffee, I thought. My eyes felt full of sand, and my whole body hurt. But I wanted that honeysuckle taste in my mouth, sweet and rich, reminding me of our good history.

Across the courtyard the garage’s glass doors swished open, and a middle-aged couple holding hands came out. They headed toward Haven. Behind them I caught a glimpse of yellow hair and wide eyes watching me, predatory, so cold for one so young. I closed my eyes. The doors swished closed. When I looked again, there was no one behind the glass.

Yet I could still feel her gaze, haunted and haunting, waiting for me to betray her. Waiting for me to take any olive branch Trey offered even if it meant forgetting I had ever seen that picture.

I shook my head no. I was playing a role, being the same Bree I’d shown my children today, elegant and secure. The one who now knew exactly how to pronounce the name of the wine I’d just ordered. She was a true person. She was me. Still, I knew better than anyone that the human body could hold two truths at once. Inside, the girl Coral had recognized lived on. Betsy’s best friend. My mother’s daughter.

Both could accept what Trey had done. Both could forgive him. But the girl I had long been at the root of me could not live with his denial of it. I made a silent vow to the ghost of Lexie’s youth and promise, the one I could still feel watching. I would never ask Marshall to burn the other copies. I would not forget.

The drinks came. I took a sip of wine. Trey and Mills came out of his tall office building, splitting so Mills could go join his partner at the bar. Trey came to my table, his face unreadable. He sat down across from me.

I could still feel Lexie’s gaze. I closed my eyes. Drank again, more deeply. I’d spent a lot of time on my makeup, but I wanted to scrub hard at my grainy, heated eyes. I made myself keep one hand on my napkin, the other on my wine. The last time I’d taken such care with my appearance, I’d been heading to his firm’s Spring Gala to murder his old friend.

“Hi,” my husband said.

“Hi.”

The waiter was back. Trey told him we might order dinner later. “For now bring us a cheese plate and some of those marinated olives.” The waiter whooshed away. I looked at my husband, and he looked back. He spoke first.

“I overreacted last night. I’m sorry, Bree. We’re both flayed, so neither of us handled things well. But I need you to believe me. I didn’t do a damn thing to Lexie Pine that she didn’t start. That she didn’t want. It kills me, just kills me, to think you can’t believe me.”

I thought he said these things because his own belief was shaken. He looked pale and as wrung out as I felt. I stared into his sincere eyes, open wide, true blue, begging me to believe that he was not a rapist. But he was. His gaze begged me to believe he was a good man. He was that as well. For the first time, it occurred to me that Trey could not be an anomaly.

I’d always thought of rapists, especially the college kind, in terms of serial criminals. Predators, with something black and broken at the heart of them. At Georgia State, Betsy and I had gone to dorm seminars where we learned how to not get raped. There we learned we must use the buddy system, open our own drinks, and never leave them unattended. They told us, Most men are nice. But there are a few bad apples out there who will hurt you. They come to parties specifically to find that girl who is alone and drunk and vulnerable. The one they can peel away from the edge of the herd. Don’t be that girl.