Wicked Forest (DeBeers 2)

"I told her this last time that I was very much into our marriage, that you were pregnant, and that it had to end. I couldn't be there for her just because she had gotten herself into a bad marriage. I had a good marriage. We parted with that understanding.

'I owe you an apology, of course. I should wake up every morning with an 'I'm sorry' on my lips and beg your forgiveness until the day I die."

He was quiet. so I turned to him.

"All those times, dates, places listed on those pages? The pictures documenting them? It took you all those adulterous encounters, even on our honeymoon, before you reached this amazing conclusion that you had a wonderful marriage?" I asked, my voice rising.

"She was persistent. and I was weak. I admit that. but I'm stronger now You've made me stronger. Willow."

"Moi?" I said with grand exaggeration. "Little old me? The college girl, the girl with barely enough romantic experience to fill ten minutes of a soap opera? I was the one who was able to give you-- a man of the world who speaks three languages, sophisticated, elegant, traveled-- give you the strength you needed? To teach you the truths about a significant relationship?"

"Yes," he said firmly.

I shook my head, looked out at the sea, and laughed to myself. "It is the truth." he insisted.

I spun on him.

"The truth? Please, Thatcher. You, your sister, your mother, your whole family are so used to lying, to pretending, to dramatizing and fabricating, that none of you can even recognize the true and the real anymore, even if it was hoisted on a flag or set in neon lights on Worth Avenue. This entire place. the Palm Beach social world, your precious Season that you treat like some religious period with invitations considered as valuable as blessings, all of that nonsense has given birth to all this, made you all who you are."

"Being a bit condescending and superior, aren't you?" he quipped out of the side of his mouth.

"I don't think so. I'm not a saint. but I won't lie to myself."

"I thought you wanted to be a psychiatrist. I thought these things were valid to you, that you would be understanding," he wailed, his arms out.

"You thought very wrong."

He dropped his arms and let his shoulders sag with defeat. "Then everything I just told you doesn't matter?"

"No, it matters. It has helped me reach a verdict."

I turned and stared at him coldly, so coldly he actually took a step back.

"What verdict?" he asked.

"Guilty," I said sharply. "Guilty of being false, of betrayal, simply guilty of adultery with no mitigating- circumstances. Is that a clear enough verdict? You want me to pronounce sentence?"

He shook his head.

"Don't bother." he said, turned, and walked away. He looked more like he was fleeing. I watched until he disappeared, and then I closed my eyes and lay back on the warm sand so my eyes could swallow their tears.

By the time I went into the house nearly an hour later, he was already gone. He took most of his clothes, but left things behind, especially the folder and its contents, still spread on our bed, the remnants of a crumbled marriage. I gathered up the evidence and shoved it back into the folder, then sat on the bed and finally let the trapped tears streak down my face. I had my hands on my stomach as I wept.

Inside me. our baby was forming. A short time ago. I had thought of our baby as the product of love, thought that, no matter what the timing and the planning, she could never be thought of as a mistake. Our child would be too beautiful, too much a part of us to be thought of that way. But what was this child to be a part of now? A broken marriage? A series of deceits? A home built on a foundation of lies?

What would I think every time I looked at her? Would I see Thatcher and his betrayal? Would I be unable to separate all that from our child? How much of him would be in our baby? Would it be the stronger influence?

I hated myself for my first thoughts, for I was telling myself that I should seek an abortion. I should not permit the fraud to continue. This was not a child born of love, but a child born out of lust. I was just as guilty in that respect. I had no right to her.

I gazed at myself in the mirror.

Look at the world, the situation you would be bringing this child into, and ask yourself Willow De Beers-- for that's who you have returned to being Willow De Beers-- ask yourself do you want to do that?

The rage inside me was hat and wild enough to consume my fetus anyway. I thought, All that bile, that hot blood bailed by betrayal and disappointment, would restructure and remold the infant so that she inherited the bitterness if she did survive. I saw now what Mallon meant by offering the information before I had made too great an investment in this corrupt marriage. All of them had sat there and gazed at me, asking with their eyes: Do you want to give birth to this man's child?

I sobbed louder, my body shaking as I racked back and forth, holding myself.

There was a knock on my door, so gentle at first that I didn't hear or realize someone was there. The knock grew more intense and made me jump. My gasp put a cork in the bottle of my tears. I sucked in my breath and managed a "Yes?'"