“Weather delay?” I look at the food in various stages of preparation in August’s kitchen, a veritable Louisiana feast. Etouffe, shrimp, beans and rice, and bread pudding. MiMi would be proud.
“It’s okay,” I tell August, my phone pressed between my shoulder and ear as I measure whiskey sauce for the bread pudding. “The food will keep. It’ll be here tomorrow. You will be home tomorrow, right?” Forget the food. I just miss him.
“You got me all Lou Rawls over here,” I joke, waiting for him to laugh back.
There’s just silence on the other end.
“‘You’re Gonna Miss My Loving’?” I sing a little part of it … badly. “Remember?”
“Yeah, I … I remember,” August finally says, his voice sounding as if it’s passing through a cheese grater. “Babe, there’s something I need to tell you. We don’t have much time.”
I tilt my head up to hold the phone properly. “Don’t have much time? Why?” I ask. “August, you sound weird. What’s going on?”
“Decker came to me a few minutes ago and told me …” He clears his throat. “He told me that Avery received a file at work today.”
“Avery, his girlfriend? The sports anchor?”
“Yeah. It was a file about … baby, it was a file about you.”
I drop the measuring cup, and shards of glass litter the floor.
“A file?” My breath is choppy. Blood surges in my veins like the Mississippi primed to overflow. “What kind of file?”
The question is superfluous. I already know. I’m as shattered inside as the glass at my feet realizing that the world will know what happened to me. What was done to me.
That August knows.
“It’s pictures of you,” he says, swallowing so hard I hear it over the phone. I hear the anguish in his voice before he says the words. “Beaten, Iris. He beat you?”
He beat me? No, I beat him at his own game. I escaped. I got away.
I survived!
But all anyone will see is a victim. Not Iris, but the black-eyed Susan in those pictures with her lips split open and her jaw swollen twice its normal size. All they’ll say is he beat you? You let him beat you? You stayed?
Weak.
Fool.
And they’ll have no idea who I am.
“August, I wanted to tell you.” I say, pressing down my shame. “I signed an NDA.”
“You could have told me, though. Iris, you should have—”
“Excuse me, but I don’t need a lecture from anyone on what I should have done.” I fight back tears of hurt and anger. Not at him. At Caleb, and whomever leaked this, and at the whole world. “My situation was complicated beyond what you can imagine. If I had just left Caleb, he would have gotten joint custody of Sarai, and that was never going to happen. I would die to prevent that from happening.”
I almost did.
“We’ll talk about that later,” he says. “I’m not mad at you. God, do you think I’m mad at you? For not telling me? No, baby. I’m mad at myself for not seeing it. For not … I’m furious at him for …” He pulls in a fortifying breath and goes on more calmly. “Right now, we need to get you out of there. Avery isn’t the only one who got this file. Every major news station has it.”
My knees buckle as the scope of my humiliation comes into full view. I grip the counter and raise a shaking hand to my mouth. “What? Oh, God.”
“A car’s on the way to my place,” August says, and I hear the deliberate calm of his voice trying to soothe me. “Grab a few things for you and Sarai, and the car will take you to the airport. Wherever you want to go.”
Spanish moss. The Mississippi River flowing through my veins.
MiMi left Lo and me her tiny house on the bayou. We haven’t sorted through what we want to do, so it’s just sitting there empty, waiting.