The Kept Woman

  Sara knew what was coming next before Tessa even said it.

  “You need to show him how you feel.”

  “Tess, I just—” She had to tell the truth, if only to her sister. “I know this sounds petty, but I don’t want to feel like I’m his second choice.”

  Tessa’s response was not immediate. “Will is your second choice.”

  She meant Jeffrey. “It’s not the same.”

  “In a lot of ways, it’s worse for Will. There’s no question that you’d still be with Jeffrey if he were alive. But in Will’s favor, Angie’s still alive, but he’s choosing to be with you. So it’s really more like a divorce, and you have to put up with his bitchy ex-wife, which puts you in line with exactly half the female population.”

  Sara leaned her head back against the cabinets. She stared out the windows in the living room. The sky was an almost painfully clear blue. She wondered how Will was spending his Saturday. Their perfunctory phone call last night had been filled with a lot of noises about future plans that neither one of them seemed too excited about.

  Tessa said, “Every person has baggage. You’ve got all your shit with Jeffrey. Lord knows I’ve got my shit. People have baggage. The next guy, if you move on, will have baggage. The pope has baggage. Jeffrey had baggage. You didn’t hold that against him.”

  “Because he belonged to me,” Sara said, and she understood that this was what hurt most. She was jealous. She didn’t want to have to share any part of Will with anybody else. His mind. His heart. His body. She wanted him all to herself.

  “Sissy, don’t cry.”

  “I’m not crying,” Sara lied. Fat, stupid tears were rolling down her face. In the abstract, she could logic out all of the reasons why Will was wrong for her. But then she thought about losing him and she could barely find a reason to get out of bed.

  The phone started beeping, giving them their thirty-second warning that time was running out.

  Tessa said, “Look, you know your choices. You can go find Will and tell him that you love him and that you want him in your life and that you’re miserable without him.”

  “Or?”

  “You can turn Dolly Parton back on and finish vacuuming out your kitchen cabinets.”

  Sara looked around the kitchen. She really should stop being so predictable. “Is there a third option?”

  “Fuck the hair off his balls.”

  Sara laughed.

  They both silently waited for the three quick beeps on the phone before the line was cut.

  Sara hung up the phone. She looked out the windows again. A bird floated through the air. Its wings fluttered in the breeze. Sara missed having bird feeders in her backyard. She thought about the open houses she had looked at with Will a lifetime ago. She had pictured her weekends spent filling up hummingbird feeders and doing laundry and reading on the back porch while Will worked on his car.

  When they were all standing in the waiting room in the Grady ICU, Angie had told Will that she wanted to give her daughter a happy ever after.

  Sara could give that to Will. She could give him everything if he would only let her.

  The dogs stirred from the couch. They wandered toward the door. Their tails wagged, because they knew the person on the other side.

  Sara’s first thoughts were purely instinctive. Her hair was packed into a granny bun. She was sweating from being inside of the cabinets. Her face was red from crying. She was wearing a ratty T-shirt and cutoff jeans. Even her bra was baggy. They had not been in a relationship long enough for Will to see her this way.

  She jumped down from the counter with the hope of making it to the bathroom before he opened the door.

  She made it to the living room.

  “Hey.”

  Sara turned around.

  He had a bunch of take-out menus in his hand. “These were in the hall.”

  “My neighbor is out of town.”

  He dropped the menus on the dining room table. He held up his key to her apartment. “Is using this still okay?”

  “Of course.” Sara pulled at the cutoffs. She straightened her shirt. Will had obviously come from home. He was in jeans and one of his running shirts. Tessa’s third option flittered through her mind.

  He said, “Faith just called me. Kip Kilpatrick died about twenty minutes ago.”

  Sara knew the man had been in the hospital for the last twenty-four hours. His symptoms were all over the place. “Did they ever figure out what was wrong with him?”

  “He ingested high amounts of ethylene glycol. It’s found in antifreeze and—”

  “Transmission fluid.” Sara remembered the distinctive red bottle in the back of Angie’s trunk. “She’ll get away with it, won’t she?”

  “I don’t care. I mean, I care because a man died. Even though he was a prick.” He shrugged. “Faith says it was the sports drink. It’s red, the same as the transmission fluid, and apparently, the taste is sweet, so Kilpatrick wouldn’t have noticed it. Half the bottles in his office minifridge were spiked.”

  “Clever.”

  “Yeah.”

  They both went silent.

  Sara felt like she had had some variation on this conversation for the last week and a half. They talked about something terrible that Angie had done. They talked about work. One of them said something about grabbing a meal, over which they would have an even more stilted conversation, then Will would make an excuse about needing to go home so that he could finish some paperwork, and Sara would go home and stare at the ceiling.

  She said, “So, what else? It’s lunchtime. Are you hungry?”

  “I could eat.”

  “There’s nothing in the house. I’ll need to shower if we go out.”

  “I miss you.”

  Sara was shocked by his directness.

  “I miss your voice. I miss your face.” He walked toward her. “I miss touching you. Talking to you. Being with you.” He stopped a few feet away. “I miss the way you rock your hips when I’m inside of you.”

  Sara chewed her lip.

  “I’ve been trying to give you some time, but I feel like that’s not working. Like I should just start kissing you until you forgive me.”

  If only it was that easy. “Babe, you know I’m not mad at you.”

  He put his hands in his pockets. He didn’t look at the floor. He didn’t look past her shoulder. “I’ve got a court date at the end of next month. There’s something called a divorce by publication. You put a notice in the newspaper, and if you don’t hear back in six weeks, the judge can grant you a divorce.”

  Sara felt her brow furrow. “Why didn’t you do this before?”

  “My lawyer said it would never happen. Judges don’t like to do it that way. They rarely sign off on it.” He said, “I asked Amanda to pull in a favor and find me a judge who would.”

  Sara knew how hard it was for Will to ask for help.

  He said, “I’m sorry I kept things from you. I know my not telling you stuff is a big thing. And I’m sorry.”

  She didn’t know what to say except, “Thank you.”

  He wasn’t finished. “The way I grew up, you had to hide the bad things. From everybody. It wasn’t just about people liking you or not liking you. If you acted out or said something wrong, it got passed onto your social worker and your social worker put it in a file and people—potential parents—they wanted normal kids. They didn’t want problems. So, you had a choice. You either let yourself be really bad, like to let them know that you didn’t care whether or not they chose you. Or you kept your problems to yourself and . . . hoped.”

  Sara didn’t dare answer. He so rarely talked about his childhood.

  He said, “With Angie, anything I told her, she would find a way to throw it back in my face. Find a way to hurt me with it or make me feel stupid or—” He shrugged, likely because the possibilities were endless. “So I kept it all inside, no matter how important or inconsequential, because that was how I protected myself.” He still did not loo
k away. “I know you’re not Angie, and I know I’m not a kid living at the home anymore, but what I’m saying is that it’s a habit I have, the not telling you things. It’s not a character trait. It’s a flaw. And it’s something I can change.”

  “Will.” Sara didn’t know what else to say. If he had told her all of this two weeks ago, she would’ve thrown herself into his arms.

  “I got you this.” He took a key out of his pocket. He slid it across the counter. “I changed the locks. I installed an alarm. I changed the combination on my safe. I took myself off everything that has to do with Angie.” He paused again. “I understand that you need time, but you need to understand that I am never, ever going to let you go. Not ever.”

  She shook her head at the pointlessness. “I appreciate the sentiment, but there’s more to it than that.”

  “There really isn’t,” he insisted, the same as he always did. “We don’t need to hash it out, because all that matters is how we feel about each other, and I know that you love me, and you know that I love you.”

  All that Sara could see was a giant circle. He was apologizing for not talking about things, then saying that they should not talk about things.

  “Anyway,” he finally said. “I’m gonna leave now, give you some time to think about this, maybe start missing me, too.” His hand rested on the doorknob. “I’ll be here when you make up your mind.”

  The door clicked shut behind him.

  Sara stared at the door. She shook her head again. She couldn’t stop shaking her head. She was like a dog with a tick in its ear. He was so infuriatingly elliptical.

  “I’ll be here when you make up your mind.”

  What did that even mean?

  Here, as in the general “I’m here for you,” or here as in actually physically waiting right now in the hallway for her decision?

  And why was it solely her decision in the first place? Shouldn’t the future of their relationship be something they decided together?

  That was never going to happen.

  She turned back to the kitchen. Pots and pans were scattered on the floor. The vacuum hose was full of dog hair. She would have to clean it out before she let it touch the cabinets. Or she could just give up on today, take a shower, get on the couch, and wait for a reasonable hour to drink.

  The dogs followed her to the bathroom. She turned on the shower. She took off her clothes. She watched the water fall but didn’t get in.

  Will’s words played on an endless loop in her head. The memories worked at her irritation like a match striking flint. All that he’d offered her were Pyrrhic victories. He was finally divorcing Angie, but Angie would still be around. He had changed his locks, but Angie would find a way inside just like she had before. He had gotten an alarm. Angie would know the code, just like Will had known the code to unlock her cell phone. He’d said that he was never going to leave Sara. So what? Neither was Angie. This was just more of Will’s fairy-tale thinking that all he had to do was wait it out and everything would magically be okay.

  Sara turned off the shower. She was so frustrated that her hands were shaking. She put on her robe as she walked back into the bedroom. She picked up the phone to call Tessa, but then she remembered the outhouse. And then she realized that calling her sister was pointless because Tessa would only say the obvious: in his usual roundabout way, Will had just offered Sara everything that she had wanted from him for the last year, and her response was to let him walk out the door.

  Sara sat down on the bed.

  Dumbass, she thought, but she didn’t know whether she meant herself or Will.

  She had to look at this logically. Will’s earlier declarations could be interpreted one of two ways. One: he was going to try to be more open, but he would rather stick needles in his eyes than talk about their relationship. Two: Why would they talk about what they wanted when they already had everything that they needed?

  One and two. X and Y.

  “God dammit,” Sara muttered. The only thing worse than her mother being right was when her little sister was.

  Sara stood from the bed. She cinched her robe tight as she walked back up the hallway. She passed through the living room. The dogs followed her to the door. Their ears perked when Sara wrapped her hand around the knob.

  Her resolve started to slip.

  What if Will wasn’t standing there when she opened the door?

  Too much time had passed. Five minutes? Ten? He wouldn’t still be out there.

  What if here meant somewhere else?

  Logic had failed her, so she had to rely on fate. If Will wasn’t in the hallway, she would take his absence as a sign. That it wasn’t meant to be. That she was a fool. That Angie had won. That Sara had let her, because she was too busy obsessing about what she thought she wanted rather than stopping to appreciate what she had.

  Show him how you feel.

  Tessa had told her to be more vulnerable. There was nothing more vulnerable than opening a door without knowing what would be on the other side.

  Sara loosened her robe.

  She unpinned her hair.

  She opened the door.

  Epilogue

  Angie sat down on a wooden bench in the park. The slats were ice-cold. She should’ve worn her coat, but the January weather was that weird mix of freezing in the shadows and burning hot in the sun. Angie had purposefully chosen a bench shaded by the trees. She wasn’t hiding, but she didn’t want to be seen.

  Her vantage offered a clear view of Anthony on the other side of the park.

  Her grandson. Not for real, but technically.

  He was on the swing set, surrounded by at least ten other kids. His legs were straight out, his head leaned back. He was giggling as he tried to climb higher and higher. Angie was far from an expert, but she knew that this was how a six-year-old was supposed to behave. Not sitting against the wall, watching other kids have fun, but out there in the middle of it, running around, happy like the rest of them.

  She hoped the boy would hold on to his happiness for a good long while. Six months had passed since Reuben Figaroa had killed himself. Anthony’s mother had almost died. He had been held by a stone cold bitch for two days. They had moved away from Atlanta, back to Thomaston, where his mother’s people were. He was in a new school. He had to make new friends. His father was still in the news as more and more of Reuben Figaroa’s sins emerged.

  But here Anthony was, kicking it on the swing. Kids were like rubber bands. They snapped back quickly. It was only when the years started to roll by that they retracted from the memories.

  Was Jo still retracting?

  Angie looked past the swing set. She studied the group of mothers at their usual picnic table.

  Jo was sitting with them, but on the periphery. Her arm was in a sling strapped low on her waist. Angie didn’t know the prognosis, but she took it as a good sign that Jo’s hand was still attached. She also took it as a good sign that Jo had finally joined the other women. The park was a regular afternoon event. Jo had held herself apart for months, politely smiling, nodding over a newspaper or a book from several picnic tables away. That she was actually sitting at their table now, that she was looking at them, talking to them, had to be progress.

  Angie hadn’t talked to her daughter since the night Delilah had tried to murder her. At least not so Jo could hear. The last thing Angie had told Jo as she dropped her off at Grady was a list of instructions. Angie had already called Denny on the way to the hospital. Ng was there, too, so they had to come up with a script for Jo that would pass for credible: that Jo’s boyfriend had hurt her, that he had disappeared, that she would not give his name, that she didn’t want to press charges, that her name was Delilah Palmer.

  Jo had played her part well, but she didn’t know about the other things that Angie had done, like cleaning up the mess at the crime scene, using her cop training to hide everything in plain sight. Like taking Delilah on the last, most miserable ride of her life.

  Angie still
shuddered if she thought too long about the things she had done to Delilah’s body. Not letting her die, because the bitch deserved that, but the cutting.

  Sure, Angie was dangerous, but she wasn’t sick.

  The important thing was that the ends justified the means. Jo was living proof of this. Literally—she was living. The rest of it, Angie didn’t know. Jo’s hand would hopefully heal, but some wounds stayed open no matter what balm you tried.

  Angie could only guess what was going on in her daughter’s head right now. Jo would still be feeling guilty about Reuben. Guiltier still that she was relieved to have him gone. She would be worried about Anthony, the short-term damage, the long-term damage. She wouldn’t yet be worrying about herself, but she would be feeling exposed, because the entire world knew what her husband had done to her. To Anthony. To Keisha Miscavage. To other women, because in the ensuing months, victims had started coming out of the woodwork. Marcus Rippy and Reuben Figaroa had taken their show on the road, drugging and raping women across the country. There might be as many as thirty victims.

  Angie wondered if Jo took some kind of comfort in knowing that Reuben never beat the women he raped. That was only something special he saved for Jo.

  If you were keeping score, and Angie was the type to do just that, Keisha Miscavage was the real winner. The fact that any person with a computer could Google her gang rape had not cowed the girl. Angie had followed Keisha’s story in the news. She was back in school. She was staying clean. She was on the lecture circuit, talking to other students about assault. People believed her now, or at least more people did than not. One woman accusing a man of rape was a crazy bitch. Two women, three women, a few dozen women—they might have a point.

  Anthony jumped off the swing. His feet landed wrong. He fell flat on his ass. Jo sprang to her feet, but so did Anthony. He wiped the sand off his butt. He hopped four times in a jagged line, and then he was off.

  Jo didn’t sit back down until her son had settled on the rope climb. She had her hand to her chest. The other mothers were clearly teasing her about her concern. Jo smiled, but she kept her head down, wary of even this small amount of attention.