The Girls I've Been(38)
“Did your sister take these photos?” he demands. “Is she around here, too?” He looks over his shoulder, nervous for the first time.
“I took the photos. Lee doesn’t know anything about your after-work activities. Just me.”
His expression shifts, and even though I’ve been waiting for that, adrenaline has my heart knocking against my ribs as he steps forward, going from I’m fucked to fuck her up in a blink.
“Uh-uh.” I press my thumb down on the stun gun that I take out of my pocket. Does he even recognize the jacket as Wes’s? Probably not. I wore it as a reminder. I wore it for strength.
Electricity sparks, the zap crackle of it filling the space between us, and just like a dog brought to heel, he stops.
His eyes narrow. He’s thinking it through. Putting it together. That afternoon in the kitchen when I stopped him from checking on Wes. All the little moments before that. What kind of girl would anticipate his every move? What kind of girl would do this? He’s getting there.
“I’ve got backups of the photos,” I continue. “I hacked into your email, so I have all of those, too. You need better answers to the security questions. Now it’s all triggered to get sent to local news sources—and the sheriff—unless I enter a password every day. So you’re not going to do anything stupid right now, like try to kill me and bury me in the woods.”
“You’re talking ridiculous, Nora. I think you’ve been watching too much television,” he says, and the ice in his voice is all cornered politician. He’ll try to wriggle out of this, but he can’t.
There were a few things to choose from when it came to him. But I chose the one that would hurt him the most.
Money is power. Mrs. Prentiss inherited a lot of it last year when her father died. If there is ever a time for a woman to leave her abusive husband, it’s when she has a lot of cash, right? It has to have crossed his mind.
So I went with his cheating. And let me tell you, I couldn’t have come up with a better story if I’d written it myself.
“This isn’t TV,” I say. “This is real life.”
“This is ridiculous,” he declares, like it’s the only word he knows.
“You know what gets me about you?” I ask, but I don’t even wait for an answer, I just forge ahead. “I bet you tell yourself it’s discipline. Am I right?”
He goes a dull, middle-aged sort of tomato red as a vein in his temple pulses, telling me I am. It’s horrifying instead of satisfying. I wish he’d just have a heart attack and save me the trouble, and maybe I should be ashamed of that thought, but I’m not. Because you can’t rehabilitate a man like him, steeped in his privilege and his rage and all the shit he’s gotten away with for decades because that’s the way he is.
Well, this is the way I am. He’s going to have to deal.
“I bet you think it makes you better,” I continue, wishing my words were weapons or poison or something more than just words. “But guess what? It’s always been abuse. You’ve always been an abuser. You’ve just been better at hiding it than some people. But I see you.”
“You do not get to tell me how to parent my son. You are a child,” he hisses, eyes narrowed.
“I mean, I did ride my bike over here,” I say, and I’m playing so brave and flippant. I sound so confident when I feel like shaking, but over the years, I’ve tricked my body, just like I’ve tricked him. “But I do get to tell you what to do now. That’s why I went to all the trouble of gathering the blackmail material. Catch up.”
“What do you want?” he asks. “What the fuck are you up to?”
My laugh comes harsh and hard. It echoes in the branches of the trees, and birds scatter at the soulless noise. His confusion doesn’t bring me any satisfaction. It just makes me angrier.
It makes me want to kill him. It’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last. Because we’d be so much better off without him. But I can’t be that. I won’t let him be the making of me into something new.
I have become so many things for so many people. The daughter they never had. The wide-eyed adoration they always craved. The dangled temptation they didn’t even try to resist because the world told them I was fodder.
I am done being fodder. I’ve become the cannon instead.
“I want one thing,” I say. “It’s simple. You ready?”
His hand twitches like he’s longing to wrap it around my throat. I’m grateful the deer blind’s so high up. I don’t think my warning about not killing me would be enough if I was on ground level with him.
“I want you to stop beating your son.”
“I do not—”
“I have photos of Wes’s back.” It’s a complete lie. I would never do something like that. But I’ve been right about the mayor’s secrets, and that allows me to press into the power of his belief. Into the power I’m showing him. “They would be a useful tool in court for Mrs. Prentiss if she decided to divorce your cheating ass.”
“She would never.”
“You’d be surprised what public humiliation and ruination does to a woman,” I say. “And all of you should get tested. Your girlfriend isn’t the only one wandering outside the Thompkins marriage. Pastor Thompkins has been treated for gonorrhea twice in the last year. So I hope you’re practicing safe adulterous sex, because neither of the ladies deserve to get second-or third-hand infected with an STI.”