Good Girl Bad (20)
He feels sick again, his stomach churning with all the things he hasn’t allowed himself to think about since he left Rebecca.
Casey doesn’t waste any time.
“Why did you and Rebecca split up?”
She notices how Nate stiffens, but he looks her in the eye. “Rebecca…has very high standards about things. She…likes things done her way. She’s pretty controlling, to be honest. She has a bad temper. I just…couldn’t live like that anymore.”
Casey sits up straighter in her chair. “A bad temper with you? With the kids?”
“With me. I could never live up to her standards. It was just exhausting. I just woke up one day and decided to leave.”
Casey considers this with interest. She suspects that that is not the whole story, but wants to try to get a timeline for Sunday, and everyone keeps circling back to Saturday night.
“I noticed that Genevieve wanted you to be with her to talk to me, not her mother. Do you think the girls are scared of her?”
“What? No, I don’t think so,” Nate says, because that’s what he’s always told himself, and if he says yes, then what sort of father does that make him? But then he remembers Gen not wanting to stay with Rebecca the day before. And he remembers, with a start, Tabby asking to move in with him a couple of months ago. She’d been so offhand about it, like it didn’t matter at all, like it was just some little idea she’d had. And yet when he’d said no—his place was so small! The girls had to a share a room when they stayed with him. Ever since he lost his job, he’s been doing casual work, he can’t afford anything bigger—Tabby had collapsed into herself. She’d tried to hide it, and Nate had been uneasy. But he’d asked more questions, and she’d brushed it off as a silly idea, nothing to worry about, and he knew he should have pressed more, but the truth was, he didn’t really want to ask too many questions about Rebecca and that house.
If he didn’t ask questions, he couldn’t get answers he didn’t like, could he? a biting, scornful, disgusted part of himself pipes up, and Nate cringes in his chair.
“So what days do you usually have the girls?”
“Tuesday and Wednesday. And most of the school holidays. As they’ve gotten older they’ve wanted to have more of one base,” he adds defensively, wanting to shout that it wasn’t his idea to have them less.
Except it was his idea, wasn’t it? Saturdays were his idea. Tabby was at work all day anyway, and he could pick up some casual work on Saturdays, and it had very much been his idea.
“Why did you get fired?”
Nate sighs in exasperation. “Is this really important right now? Is it going to help you find my daughter?”
“Officers are looking for your daughter,” Casey reassures him. “I just want to try to get the whole picture.”
“I sent an inappropriate message to someone. It was stupid. She just wrote something stupid on Facebook, commented some stupid thing about men being violent. And I never get into these arguments online. Like, I know they’re stupid. I know cowards hide behind their keyboards. I know you should never, never get involved. But that day, I was just so angry. I was so fed up. And I sent her a very awful message, and she took a screenshot of it and sent it to my boss. And I got fired. Okay?”
He had apologized. He had nearly died of shame. He couldn’t believe he could be so stupid. He had never done anything like it before or since. It was just that day. At that moment. And even now, as he thinks about it, he can feel the rage rising in his chest, the unfairness of it, the childishness of it. That some stupid woman somewhere could make such stupid, blanket statements about men, without even knowing him!
Without knowing what he went through.
Just that morning, the day of the message, he’d been up early, getting the girls ready for school. He’d been in a good mood, humming to himself as he made their sandwiches. He hadn’t even resented that Rebecca was still in bed, not helping at all, which was becoming a pattern on school days. He used to think if he just did more, if he supported her more, if he took on more and more responsibility with the kids, then Rebecca would be happier. Less grumpy. Less on edge.
Less vile.
And he’d taken the kids to school, picked them up, taken them to tennis, helped them with their homework, and then, after dinner, he’d said something casual, offhand, about an early meeting he had the next day, and had joked perhaps it was Rebecca’s turn to do school drop-off. And of course there was a barb in there. Of course there was. But it was still mostly good-natured. He was mostly just looking for a laugh, an acknowledgement of how much he did, something a little more like how they used to tease each other. Because he really didn’t mind doing more, even doing most of the kid stuff. He didn’t mind if it made Rebecca happier.
But he should have known better.
There had been no good-natured teasing for quite some time.
The way she had reared back, like a snake about to strike. The ferociousness on her face.
The image still chills him.
“You do what I tell you to do with those children or I’ll eat them for breakfast,” she’d hissed, the rage and hatred palpable, and how could he explain it to people? It wasn’t the words, and he didn’t really believe she would do anything to hurt their children. It was her loss of control, however fleeting, however quickly she reined it back in. And it was her knowledge, and his knowledge, that he would do whatever she said because she was in charge, and she was terrifying.