The Shadow Box(46)

“You have to give me another chance. You’re the best woman I’ve ever known, nothing like the others.”

“What others?”

When he didn’t reply at first, I took my chance: “Griffin, I think we should go to counseling.”

Dead silence for a minute. He dropped his arms, stepped back. “I can’t,” he said. “I’m in a position where I can’t show weakness. Claire, I have to be tough, so the police and detectives respect me, so the defense lawyers are afraid of me. You know, other state’s attorneys have cops who laugh at them, don’t respect them. But not me. My cops go to the mat for me. They want to make me happy and bring me everything they’ve got—they’re loyal. That could change if they saw me as weak.”

“But therapy is private. Doctor-patient confidentiality,” I said.

“I know you believe that, but people talk. Word gets around. If there’s one thing I know from my work, no secret can be kept forever. People, doctors included, gossip. When they have a high-profile client, they love to talk. I can’t do it.”

He made some sense, but his words made me feel helpless. Twelve months into the marriage, I was losing hope. And as I said before, every time I relented, went back, I chipped away a little more of myself—but it would take more time for me to realize it.

That day, I said, “When you said I’m the best woman you know, not like the others . . .”

“You are,” he said.

“Who are the others?”

He sighed. “Margot, of course. You know what a nightmare it became with her.”

He had told me, but as his second wife, I knew there was another side to the story. Even if the choice to start drinking was hers, I could understand how despair over Griffin’s rages might have fueled her alcoholism. I’d found a photo of her one time, tucked between books in the children’s library. They loved and missed her so much. Sometimes I wanted to track her down, ask what had happened to make her leave.

“And my mother,” he said.

“Your mother?” I asked. I was eager to hear more; he hardly spoke about her or of his family at all.

“She was the great lady of Catamount Bluff,” he said. “She wore pearls every day, even while swimming in the Sound. She gave parties that people still talk about, volunteered at the Art Academy and our church food bank, was on bank and nonprofit boards. Everyone loved her.”

“And you?”

“I loved her too. Except when I didn’t.”

“Why, Griffin?”

“Because when I made her mad, she locked me in the basement. Burned the back of my knees with her cigarette. She would buy my favorite chocolates and bottles of Coca-Cola . . . this might seem trivial, but she would hide them from me, then eat and drink them herself, right in front of me, telling me how delicious they were and if I were a better boy, I could have them too. But she almost never gave me any.”

“Griffin, that’s horrible,” I said.

He nodded his head. “When I was ten she beat me so hard I had to go to the emergency room. I was black and blue, and she told me to lie and say I’d fallen while rock climbing.”

“What about your father? Why didn’t he protect you?”

Griffin laughed. “No one went against my mother. He found out it was easier to pretend he was Hemingway—go fishing off Bimini or grouse shooting in Scotland or to Paris with his mistress.”

“Griffin, I had no idea,” I said.

“You’re the only one I’ve ever told,” he said, pulling me close again. “I’ve never trusted anyone this much.”

And I took that to heart: grieving the fact my husband had survived an abusive childhood, cherishing his words telling me I was the only one he could talk to, the only one he trusted. It had taken an entire year of marriage to get to the point when he could tell me—and I felt it was the secret decoder ring to his behavior.

Back then I thought that now that I knew, I had something to work with. It would make me more understanding. It would help me avoid his triggers.

What an idiot I was.

Now, lying in my sleeping bag and listening to the person get closer to my cabin, I pushed myself up from the floor and stood ready to defend myself when he entered. I was picturing Griffin. Our last fight, the night before the art opening I never got to attend, had been about Ellen.

“I don’t want what happened to Ellen to happen to you,” he’d said through gritted teeth.

“Don’t worry, it won’t,” I whispered to myself in the cabin. I was ready to battle for my life.

I heard my name being called. “Claire! Can you hear me?” Then the sound of fabric ripping. “Jesus Christ!”

Someone had just snagged pants or a jacket on thorns in the thicket. I stood very still. More ripping, as if the garment were being torn free from the brambles. Then footsteps retreating, going back in the direction the person had come—toward Catamount Bluff.

I had recognized the voice.

It wasn’t Griffin outside my cabin.

It was Conor Reid.

My eyes stung with tears—that’s how badly I wanted to call for help. But Griffin’s words about “his” cops came back to me: “My cops go to the mat for me. They want to make me happy and bring me everything they’ve got—they’re loyal.”