Reputation(54)
He sets his mouth in a wobbly line. My brain goes dark.
“Why, Laura?” Ollie’s gaze is pointed toward the front wall. His hands look huge against our child’s tiny body. “Why is it our license plate in one of the images?”
I open my mouth, but no sound comes out. My body feels hot with shame and terror. I don’t want this to be the way I break the news. I wanted to do it on my terms, not with it forced upon me. But here it is, and here we are, and I have to.
“Because I was there,” I admit.
Ollie’s brown eyes blink rapidly, as if I’ve spit in his face. “You?”
“It’s not what you think!” I cry.
“Then what was it?”
Years from now, I will see this moment as a great divide separating our relationship from what it once was to the muckish mess it becomes. Years from now, I’ll also wonder why I didn’t just say I was suffering from postpartum depression, or that I’d been seized with a bout of mania, or, hell, that I had a split personality and it was the other Laura who did what she did that night. But the truth was also polluting me, stabbing at me, scooping me hollow.
“J-Just a second,” I say. And then I turn up the stairs. Ollie lurches toward me as though afraid I’m going to use this as an opportunity to escape. Is this how he sees me now? As a criminal? “I’m going into the office,” I protest. “I just need to get something.”
The office desk drawer groans as I pull it open. Through tear-streaked vision, I fumble to the very back and find the scrunched-up piece of paper I’ve hidden there. I’d hoped to never read this again.
The afternoon before the Aldrich benefit, I’d received three directives from Greg in my work locker. The first was about the pitfalls of co-sleeping. The second the benefits of a stay-at-home parent. And the third was an unsigned, typewritten missive that read, I want to have more of a role.
Like a goddamn ransom note. It felt like a death sentence.
I’d stood there, paralytic. If I denied Greg contact with Freddie, he would tell Ollie. He would demand a paternity test. When the test came back positive, he would go to the court and ask for fifty-fifty custody. Hell, maybe he could make a case for getting full custody. I didn’t know how family court worked. Maybe judges favored the wealthier parent. Maybe judges favored the parent who didn’t lie. I needed to talk some sense into Greg. We couldn’t keep communicating through these messages; I needed to confront him and make him stop this.
And so I’d written him that text the morning of the benefit about talking face-to-face. I’d explain to him that he was scaring the shit out of me. He’d understand he was being irrational.
I remember walking into the benefit alone. It might have been the party of the year, but I was too anxious to notice. I barely took my gaze off the door, wanting to know the exact moment Greg entered so that I could immediately corner him. After about thirty minutes of anticipation, my stomach in knots, there was a flurry of activity at the entrance. Kit Manning-Strasser entered wearing a gray dress and perfect makeup. People surrounded her as though she was a celebrity, and Kit smiled and trilled and chirped, but her eyes seemed distracted. I thought of Greg’s e-mails, that thing with Lolita. Little do you know, I’d thought with disdain. That’s only the tip of the iceberg of the secrets he’s been keeping.
Kit made a zigzag across the floor, dazzling donors, speaking privately to an older man in a tux, gulping down a martini. I kept my gaze pinned to the front doors, but Greg never appeared. And then it hit me: He stayed home. I was so stupid. Greg wouldn’t want to come to this after the Lolita bullshit. He wouldn’t want to face the whispers.
I felt like I was drowning in guilt and doom. And so I decided: If Greg wouldn’t come to me, then I would go to him. I knew where he lived. I would leave the benefit and go.
I felt sudden, revived courage. Yes. Yes. It was good to have a plan.
I gave the valet my ticket and was inside my car. My head felt fuzzy, but there was no way I was going to wait an hour or two to sober up. Luckily, the drive wasn’t long: Hazel Lane, the street where Greg lived, was just five minutes from the museum. I rolled slowly around the cul-de-sac, my heart like a gong in my chest. The moon glowed directly over the top point of Greg’s roof. A light shone into an empty front room. Greg’s car was parked in the driveway. A dim light shone in a top window.
Come on, a voice in me goaded. Just do it. Just go and ring the doorbell.
My dress felt heavy around my body. My shoes were suddenly too tight. I thought, too, about the ultimatum I would give Greg . . . and how he might not accept it. Then what? What if, after all this effort, Ollie still found out I’d been here?
I rolled away from the curb, the sobs rocking my chest. I drove blindly, talking to myself, feeling like I was going mad. I found myself taking the ramp for the Liberty Bridge to the suburbs. Traffic was sparse, and with the fog in the air, the bridge took on a ghostly feel. At the traffic light before the tunnel, I suddenly felt a rush of despair so forceful I let out a muffled scream into my fist. This night, this hell, it was never going to end. I couldn’t bear it any longer.
The turn signal indicator made a ticking sound through the cabin. When the light turned green, I veered to the left and pulled onto the shoulder across from the bridge. In the glove compartment, I found the small notebook I always kept there, and a ballpoint pen. What did I write on that scrap of paper? I remembered writing Ollie’s name at the top. The words I’m sorry. The confession spilled from me, but I didn’t bother checking my punctuation or spelling or even if the letter made sense. Yet when I was finished, I felt even worse than I had before. The tears dripped onto my nose and into my mouth. My chest hurt from crying.