Save Me from Dangerous Men (Nikki Griffin #1)(11)
I impulsively put my hand over hers and gave it a light squeeze. “A lot of the women there have had bad days, too. Think it over.”
* * *
Down the block from the coffee shop there was a small city park. A boy in a red jacket went back and forth on a swing while two little girls played hopscotch. Motes of colorful chalk dusted up from the asphalt and swirled in the afternoon sun. Overhead traffic rumbled from freeways that looped up in gray circles. The Bay Bridge stretched toward San Francisco.
“Your husband is having an affair,” I said. There wasn’t really a good way to start.
She put her hands to her mouth. “Oh my God. You’re sure?”
I thought about the man and woman in the window. “I’m sure.”
“I can’t believe it.” She ran a hand through her hair. “You think you must be crazy. You hope you’re crazy. I mean, I did all the crazy things people do. I made a secret copy of his office keys, as though I was going to break in and catch them on his desk. I checked his clothes for I don’t even know what—lipstick stains or stray earrings. I hired you.” She laughed. The kind of laugh someone might make when realizing they had just spent five hours accidentally driving north instead of south. “But then … you learn you’re not crazy. And somehow it’s worse.” She set the coffee down on the ground. “He’s a lawyer, always doing this top-secret work for all these stupid tech firms, treating it like national security. Always running around or shutting himself up in his office until late at night. And now I don’t even know if he’s been lying about all of that the whole time…”
“I understand.” I felt badly for her. People who had affairs embarked on all the usual deceit, never really thinking that it could start to make their spouses feel like they were in Gogol’s Diary of a Madman. “You didn’t do anything unusual,” I added. “You had a right to know.”
“Who is she, anyway?”
I took a second to answer. It was no good blurting out everything at once. I’d learned that early on from a case. After being told that her husband was sleeping with his secretary, a client had walked into the office, by all accounts calm as could be, chatting and smiling, before hitting the unlucky secretary over the head with a three-hole punch. The police had found her at home in bed an hour later, drinking rosé and watching Grey’s Anatomy reruns. She had been charged with aggravated battery and narrowly avoided a felony.
So now I was cautious about giving out too much information too quickly.
“A personal trainer,” I finally said. “From his gym.”
Her eyes flashed with anger. “That son of a bitch! I got that out-of-shape prick a personal training package so he wouldn’t die of a heart attack at sixty-five like his father. And he goes and screws her?”
I put my hand over hers, reminded yet again that it was impossible to know which words would provoke which emotions. “I know. It’s not nice hearing it.” This was part of the job. It was impossible to only be a messenger. Not after delivering news that often changed the trajectory of a life. Therapist, friends, family—eventually my clients would reach out to people. But initially? It was just me.
Brenda stood up and tried to take off her jacket. The belt knot got stuck and she cursed and threw the jacket onto the sidewalk. Her arms were toned and firm. Her voice was neither. “I’m going to get that son of a bitch. He’s not going to believe what hit him. You can prove it?”
There was a loud metallic grinding as a BART train passed. The tracks ran mostly underground but here they rose overhead briefly before plunging down under the Bay to connect Oakland to San Francisco. I waited until the noise faded. “I have photographs.”
“I want to see them.”
“I’ll have them to you in the next day or two.”
“I want to see them now!”
“Soon. I promise.” I thought again about the hole-punch woman. I intentionally kept a gap between delivering news and pictures. Photographs could be incendiary.
She was pacing; short, pent-up steps. One of the hopscotch girls watched curiously. “We’re going to find him right now, him and his whore, and we’re going to teach them a lesson.”
“Why don’t you sit down?” I suggested.
“I’m not in a sitting mood,” Brenda snapped. “I’ve heard stories about you, Nikki. My niece referred you, remember? The one who works at the Brighter Futures shelter. I need you to teach my husband a lesson. I don’t care how much it costs, I’ll pay. Isn’t that what you do?”
“You’re upset. I understand. But I can’t do that.”
“I need—”
“Brenda. Listen.” She heard the difference edged in my tone and quieted. “I’m not in the lesson-teaching business,” I continued more gently. “Save the drama for the soaps. It doesn’t end well, talk like that. What you need right now is a stiff drink, a hot shower, and a good divorce lawyer.”
“But, as one woman to another, Nikki … you have to help me.”
“That wouldn’t help you. Honest. You’d be trading a bit of short-term satisfaction for all kinds of long-term problems. It’s better this way, believe me.”
Brenda slowly bent down and picked up her coat. The hopscotch girls were gone and the swing was empty. Her cotton candy–colored manicure had started to flake away, leaving bits of bare nail, and there were dark circles under her eyes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get angry.” She rubbed her hands across her head, massaging her temple. “I haven’t been sleeping well.”