Dirty Red

  “What happened to the box?” Why am I so interested?

  “I think Cammie has it.”

  I grab his arm. “Ask her.”

  He shakes himself free, his brow creased into three deep lines. I point to his forehead.

  “You should really consider Botox for that.”

  “I am not digging around in the Olivia obsession box for you.”

  “I’m not obsessed with her,” I counter. “I just want to revel in what made her upset.”

  “Don’t you and Nancy do enough Olivia bashing as it is?”

  I screw up my nose. Could there ever be enough Olivia bashing? That woman should have to wear a sign on her back that says ‘White Trash Boyfriend Stealer’.

  “Say what you like, Sam, but she didn’t try to destroy your life.”

  I am walking toward the living room when his voice catches up to me.

  “From what I hear, she saved yours.”

  I spin and glare. I can’t believe he just said that. How completely untrue. I am sick, sick, sick of being forced to feel grateful to that sly looking bitch for something anyone could have done. I could have hired any attorney I wanted. Olivia was forced on me.

  “Is that what Cammie told you?”

  He puts the last clean bottle in the cabinet and faces me.

  “Isn’t that what happened? She took your case and won it?”

  “For God’s sake! That was her job.”

  “Why did she take your case?”

  I am already pale, but when someone asks me that question, e.g., my mother, my sister, my friends … I can always feel the color in my skin peel back. Why did she take the case? Because Caleb asked her to. Why did Caleb ask her to? At first, I thought it was because she lied to him. He was collecting on her guilt, making her pay up for the deceit by defending his wife. But, then I intercepted a look. A look. How long can a look be … truly? A look can be a second long, a freaking, harmless second, and it can tell long, complicated stories. You can see three years in a second-long look. You can see longing, too. I hadn’t known that until I saw it for myself. I wish I hadn’t seen it. I wish I could never see another look transferred between two people with history.

  "It seems to me, you give loyalty to all of the wrong people," he says.

  "What are you talking about?" I snap.

  "Oh, I don't know. You almost take the fall for that father of yours, when he obviously treated you like crap, and then you shove your baby off to the side like she's an inconvenience to you."

  I balk.

  “You can have the rest of the day off.”

  Sam raises his eyebrows. “I’ll see you on Monday, then.”

  I don’t acknowledge him when he leaves. I go upstairs to check on Estella and then realize that she's gone. I'd been doing that lately, expecting to hear her or see her when I walk into a room. Unlike a few months ago, I don't feel relief that she's not here. I feel...

  What do I feel? I hate that. I definitely don't want to think about my feelings.

  I go to the freezer and pull out the lima beans. Weighing the bag in my hand for a few seconds, I suddenly toss them back like I'm pitching for the Marlins.

  I grab my car keys from the hook in the kitchen and head for the garage. My fast car is in the garage: my pre-baby, lots of fun, cherry red convertible. I pat the hood before I get in. Then I'm zipping past my mommy-mobile, past the mailboxes and down the street.

  I feel lost. I feel lost and incredibly angry. I jerk to a stop in the parking lot of the grocery store. Marching inside, I don't miss a beat as I snatch up a basket and head for the candy aisle. I empty the shelf of chocolate covered raisins and grab an armful of Twizzlers. When I dump everything on the belt at the register, the kid ringing me up looks at me with wide eyes.

  "Will that be — "

  "That's all," I shout. "Unless you want to give me a new life."

  He's still gaping at me when I snatch up my load and run for the car.

  The first thing I do when I get home is empty my freezer of vegetables. I cut the bags open, one by one, and send the colorful little niblets down the garbage disposal. I hum as I work. Then I take a swig of vodka, straight from the bottle, kick off my heels, and open the first box of chocolate covered raisins. It all goes downhill from there. I eat every last box until I am sick. I call Caleb at two A.M. His voice is slurred when he picks up.

  No two A.M. feeding, I think. Lucky him.

  "What is it, Leah?" he asks.

  "I want my baby back." I chew on a Twizzler and wait.

  He's quiet for about ten seconds.

  "Why?"

  I sniff.

  "Because, I want her to know that it's all right to eat candy."

  "What?" His voice is clipped.

  "Don't you 'what' me. Bring my baby back. First thing tomorrow." I hang up the phone.

  I want my damn baby. I want my damn baby.

  Chapter ThirtyThe Past

  The trial was the most surreal experience of my life — not just because my husband’s ex-girlfriend was my attorney, but also because I had never been called out on anything before. I was in real trouble for the first time in my life.

  I didn’t agree to Olivia being my attorney. I fought it until Caleb got right in my face and said, “Do you want to win or not?”

  “Why are you so sure she can win this case? And why would you think she’d want to? Are you forgetting how she pretended not to know you when you lost your memory? She wants you back — she'll probably lose on purpose.”

  “I know her,” he said. “She’ll fight hard … especially if I ask her to.”

  That was it. Case closed. Except mine was still open and dangling like a glass Christmas ornament from my archrival’s fingertip. I had to trust him via her; there was no one else. My father was usually the one to get me out of trouble, and this time he was the one who had put me there before dying of a heart attack.

  I didn’t trust her. She was snappy with me. Attorneys were supposed to make you feel good — even if they were lying about your chances at winning. Olivia made it her sole mission in life to make me believe I was going down. It was not lost on me, that whenever my husband was around, she was sour and tense. She wouldn’t look at him either, even when he directed a question at her, she’d pretend to do something else when she answered him. I hated her. I hated her every day for the year it took her to clear me of the charges. There was only one day during the entire thing when I did not hate her.

  The day she put me on the stand was the worst day of my life. No one wanted her to do it — they thought it would ruin the case.

  Let her plead the fifth was the consensus at the firm. Olivia had gone against every piece of advice offered as she prepped me for the stand. I saw the looks that were being exchanged at my expense. Even when Bernie, the senior attorney, had approached her, Olivia had shot her down.

  “Damn it, Bernie! She can handle herself,” she’d said. “This is my case and I’m putting her on the stand.”

  I was terrified. My fate was in the hands of an evil, conniving woman. I couldn’t decide if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Most of me was convinced that she was trying to lose the case on purpose. When I told Caleb my theory, he was sorting mail in the kitchen. He barely glanced up at me.

  “Do what she says.”

  What?

  “What do you mean, do what she says? You’re not even listening to me.”

  He tossed the mail down and walked to the fridge.

  “I heard you, Leah.”

  “I don’t trust her.”

  He had a beer in his hand when he turned toward me, but he was looking at the floor.

  “I do.”

  And that was it. My only ally was the woman who would gain the most from my imprisonment. She prepped me for the stand by drilling me with questions that the Prosecution would ask, drilled me with her own, yelled at me when I wasn’t sedate enough, swore at me when I faltered in my answers. She was hard and she was tough, and a part of
me appreciated that. A very, very small — I hate this bitch and I want her to die — part. But, I trusted Caleb. Caleb trusted Olivia. I was either going to go down in flames or walk out of the courtroom a free woman.

  The day I took the stand, I was threadbare. I wore what Olivia brought for me: a dress with soft peaches and lilacs, my hair in a low ponytail, pearl stud earrings. As I secured them in my ears, I wondered if they belonged to her. They were fake pearls, so probably. My hands were shaking as I smoothed out my dress and looked at myself in the mirror. I looked vulnerable. I felt vulnerable. Maybe that was her plan. Caleb said to trust her.

  I searched for her eyes as I took my seat on the bench, my knees weak beneath my folded hands. In the weeks of prepping, I’d learned to read her eyes. I’d learned that if she held them wide, her eyebrows slightly raised — I was doing well. If she stared right through me, she was mentally cussing me out, and I needed to change course, quickly. I hated that I knew her so well. I hated it, and I was grateful for it. I often found myself wondering if Caleb knew how to read her eyes like I did. Probably. I didn’t know what was worse — being able to read Olivia so well, or actually feeling proud that I could do it.

  She stood in front of me, instead of pacing back and forth like they did in the movies. She looked relaxed in her tan suit. She was wearing a striking, cobalt blue necklace that made her eyes glow.

  I took a breath and answered her first question.

  “I worked at OPI Gem for three years.”

  “And what was your active job title?”

  I looked at the necklace, then her eyes, the necklace, then her eyes…

  It wasn’t really cobalt. What was that shade?

  “I was Vice President of Internal Affairs…”

  It carried on like that for forty minutes. Toward the end, she started asking me questions that made every sweat gland on my body weep. Questions about my father. My mother was sitting next to Caleb, watching me intently, her hands pressed beneath her chin in what looked like a silent prayer. I knew it to be a silent warning.

  Don’t humiliate your family, Leah. Don’t tell them where you come from. She was begging the gods of misbehaving, illegitimate, fucked up daughters.

  Olivia hadn’t wanted her there for fear of her intimidating me into not telling the truth. But, she had insisted on coming.

  “What was your relationship like with your father, outside of work, Ms. Smith?”

  My mother’s chin dropped to her chest. My sister swiped her hair behind her ears and gave my mother a sideways glance. Caleb pressed his lips together and looked at the ground. The gods of illegitimate, fucked-up daughters rumbled in the clouds.

  I straightened up, pressing back the tears — those hateful tears that exposed my weakness.

  I recalled what Olivia had said to me when we were arguing about some of her questions just a week ago. I told her that I wasn’t going to blacken my father’s name from the witness stand. She’d gotten grey in the face and her dime-sized hands had balled into fists.

  “Where is he, Leah? He fucking threw blood at you and died! You tell the truth or you go to prison.”

  Then she’d sidled up close to me so no one else could hear and said, “Use your anger. Remember how it felt to destroy my things when I was trying to steal something from you? If you lose this case, I might take him from you again.”

  That had done the trick. I had been so angry I’d answered all of her questions — even the hard ones. She’d had a smug look on her face for the rest of the day.

  Now, I had to channel some of the anger back. I pictured her with Caleb. That was all I needed.

  She repeated her question. “What was your relationship like with your father, Leah, outside of work?”

  “It was nonexistent. He only interacted with me at work. At home he considered me somewhat of a nuisance.”

  It all went downhill from there.

  “Your father had a reputation for never hiring a member of his family, is that correct?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I was the first.”

  I risked a glance at my mother. She wasn’t looking at me.

  Olivia’s opening argument had included this information. She had stood in front of the jury with her hands behind her back and warned them that the Prosecution was going to paint me as cunning and manipulative, but really all I was, was a pawn in my father’s desperate plan to save his company from going bankrupt. “He used and manipulated his own daughter for financial gain,” she’d asserted.

  Those words had unzipped my controlled exterior. I started crying immediately.

  She cleared her throat, bringing me back to the present.

  “Did your father ever ask you to sign documents without you looking at them?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did he say to prevent you from looking at the documents?”

  There was an objection from the Prosecution. Olivia rephrased her question.

  “What was the typical procedure your father used in obtaining your signature?”

  “He would tell me that he needed the signatures quickly, and then wait in the room until I had signed everything.”

  “Did you ever mention to your father that you were uncomfortable signing the documents without reading them?”

  Another objection. Leading the witness.

  Olivia looked annoyed. The judge allowed it. She repeated her question, one eyebrow arched. I didn’t want to answer that question. It made me look irresponsible and foolish. Better a fool than an inmate, Olivia had snapped, when I’d voiced my concern the previous day. I swallowed my pride.

  “No.”

  I wiggled around in my seat, darting my gaze to Caleb to see what his reaction was. He was staring at me stoically.

  “So you just signed the documents? Documents that would potentially release a deadly drug onto the market and kill three people?”

  I opened and closed my mouth. We hadn’t rehearsed this. I was on the verge of tears.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I wanted to please him,” I said softly.

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Smith, can you speak louder so the jury can hear you.”

  Her eyes are glowing like her goddamn necklace.

  “I wanted to please him,” I said louder.

  She turned toward the jury so they could see the Wow, that’s fucking important look on her face.

  By the time Olivia took her seat, my mother had a hand covering her mouth and she was crying.

  She was probably never going to talk to me again. At least I had my sister. She had been a daddy’s girl, but she wasn’t blind to the strained relationship my father and I had. As I stepped down from the stand, I sought out my attorney’s eyes. They weren’t glowing any more. They just looked tired. I realized how hard it must have been to do what she just did — especially when she wanted me behind bars so she could score my husband.

  Fierce, she was so fierce. It was probably the white trash background that made her such a good fighter. I gazed at her earnestly to see if she approved. She did. I had a second — no — a fraction of a second where I wanted to hug her. Then, it was gone and I wanted her to die and rot in the ground.

  I wanted to gloat after I won the trial. I wanted her to know that he was mine and always would be. She needed to know. We were celebrating the win at a restaurant. Olivia arrived late. Honestly, I don’t even know why she came. Whatever debt she felt that she owed Caleb was paid. She’d won me my freedom and I would have gladly parted ways, content to never see her again. Yet, here she was, at my celebration, walking on my happy home with her short dress and spiked heels.

  I made my way over to her, intent on expressing my displeasure with her being there. I glanced at Caleb who was preoccupied across the room. I didn’t want him to see me speaking to her. I wanted her to leave before he saw that she was there.

  When she saw me coming, the smile dropped from her face. I had to give it to her — the bitch was exotic. One dark eyebrow rose as I strolled up, champagn
e in hand. Her mouth pulled into a pucker. She looked down her nose at me. I’d gotten used to it during the trial, but tonight it made me furious. Tonight was mine … and Caleb’s.

  I hadn’t gotten four sentences in when she looked at me and said, “Go back to your husband, before he realizes that he’s still in love with me.”

  Shock.

  Why

  Did

  She

  Think

  That?

  It wasn’t true. She was hung up on him. Who could blame her? I looked at Caleb. He was everything I wanted to be. He protected me. He stood with me. He was the only man who said he’d never hurt me.

  He laughed at something someone in his group said. My heart swelled at the sight of him. Olivia was jaded, and he was mine. I looked at my Caleb, so sure in that moment of our strength as a couple. It was as if he could sense my eyes on him. I felt the beating of butterfly wings in my stomach, just as his head came up. I smiled. We’d shared intimate looks like this in the courtroom. When I was afraid I looked at him, and he’d meet my eyes and I would feel better immediately. This time was different. I felt a groundswell of confusion. The room tilted. The beating wings stilled. He wasn’t looking at me.

  As suddenly as he looked up, the smile was gone from his face. I could see his chest rising and falling beneath his suit like he was taking deep breaths. In those five seconds, I saw every piece of Caleb’s mind splayed across his face like someone had made a thousand little cuts and everything was coming out at once: anguish, love, belief. I turned to see where he looked. I knew I shouldn’t. But, how could I not? The answer was too bright for me. It made me want to shield my eyes and duck back into the cover of darkness. Olivia was the target of his eyes. I felt like he’d dropped me from the highest building. Shattered. Every part of me. He was a liar. He was a thief. I wanted to crumble to the ground right there, admit my defeat. Die and die again. Die and take Olivia with me. Die.

  I opened my mouth to scream at her. To regale her with every insult and name I’d collected over my twenty-nine years. They sat on the tip of my tongue, ready to hurl toward her. I was going to throw my champagne in her face and rip at her eyes until they bled. Until Caleb thought she was so ugly and deformed, he would never look at her like that again.