“What the hell are you talking about?” I’m not that man anymore. I wasn’t allowed to be. But with her, I hoped I could be.
“I listened as you told me how Ardeo began. I tried to put myself in your place, watching your friends suffer, no longer fighting for their country but fighting for their place in the world. Some of them fighting for their lives still, and some their sanity. I told myself you did an admirable thing, that you gave them an income and a purpose, or even just giving them one more day where they wouldn’t crash their cars or blow out their brains.
“But this. This I can’t understand. There is no way to make this anything other than sordid and wrong. You, Carson.” Her gaze sweeps me up then down. “How . . .”
The answers I have, the things I could tell her, turn to dust on my tongue.
“How could you possibly explain how you cheated me out of the lease on my apartment?” She swipes angrily at her tears, her voice suddenly stronger despite them. “How could you justify lying to my face while manipulating the situation to suit you?”
“That’s not what that was. You don’t know the Aarons. They’re fucking ruthless.”
“You’re right. I don’t know them. And I don’t know you.”
“You do. You know I love you. You know I’d do anything for you.”
“Except tell me the truth. Maybe you only love the idea of love. And while we’re on the subject of the Aarons, they certainly seem to know you. One of them in particular.”
Dread suddenly clings to me like a wet towel.
Tess Aaron.
I fucked her last fall. The fuck of her life, as she later described it. The bidding reached fever pitch, and after a month of bids and counterbids, she won. The deed was done over the course of a couple of hours, and as a consequence, Rose’s foundation got a substantial donation. Anonymously, obviously.
“Please. Just sit down and let me explain.”
“I thought you didn’t kiss and tell. It’s against the rules, isn’t it? Did you really think those rules would protect you? That they’d hide your shame?”
“Fuck you.”
“No, I don’t think I will anymore. I can’t afford you.”
32
Fee
I come slowly to consciousness, wrapped in warmth, the backs of my eyelids coloured pink and gold as stained by the sun, almost like I’m waking from a nap in the garden in France.
I stretch my feet to the end of the bed, the cold sheets a shock to my bare legs and toes. Then a car horn honks somewhere in the distance, another louder and more angry following. A garbage truck trundles under the window, tyres wet against the road. Plastic scrapes, tin and glass clattering, pulling me from my pleasant dreams. Sand, sunshine, and Carson.
“Oof!” I take a sock to the gut and, when I reach for the cause, find Lulu’s heel embed in my abdomen. It’s the last straw, the thing that jerks me awake, pulling me from sleep, pushing away my dreams and replacing them with a not so pleasant reality.
I groan as I roll over, peeling my swollen eyelids from eyeballs that feel the size and texture of tennis balls. It wasn’t sunshine that coloured my lids but the pendant light hanging above the bed that I hadn’t switched off. And the warmth cosseting me was the heat of my daughter.
But today is different because at least I haven’t jerked awake with panic, my heart beating out of my chest and the sheets slicked in a cold sweat. Does that mean things are getting better? What stage of grief am I at now? Past denial, I think. Still swimming in anger, sadness. Fighting futility.
My feet touch the floorboards, the air around my bare legs frigid as I make my way to the bathroom, grabbing a sweater on the way and resolving to avoid my reflection in the mirror. I made the mistake of looking yesterday. It wasn’t pretty, and it just made me want to cry more. And without meaning to sound clichéd, this last week I have cried a river. Mostly in the privacy of this cold bathroom so as not to make Lulu worry any more than she has. I’ve never felt more foolish or more wretched.
Or more alone.
I pee. Wash my hands. Go back to the bedroom to shove some clothes on, remembering to switch off the light this time. I fill a cup with water in the tiny kitchen and shove it into the microwave because my kettle is still at Carson’s.
I almost can’t believe I thought I’d be happy here in Beth’s sister’s apartment. Not that I can muster any cheerful thoughts as far as this move is concerned. The thermostat is on the blink, and November in New York is no bloody joke. But it’s not even that. I’d accused Carson of manipulating me, of being the worst kind of human, yet I’d still taken the keys for this place from his hand when he’d proffered them. It had felt like the final nail in the coffin of our relationship as I’d curled my hand around them.