“What was it like?” I asked her finally. I wasn’t sure that I’d ever again catch her in this mood, in a place where she felt at home, in a room so dark we couldn’t see each other’s faces. She knew I wasn’t asking about prison.
“You mean, what was it like being an escort.”
“Yes.”
“Reenie! How dare you ask a thing like that?”
“I just do,” I said. “I’m very daring. Fortune favors the brave.”
I could hear, rather than see, her grin.
“Well, I had very specific rules. I was never with a man I foundrepulsive. I was never with a man I found unkind. I wasn’t attracted to any of them. Ever. But I could do it once a week for a lot of money.” She drew in a deep breath and sketched in the subscription plan I already knew something about: six clients, one hour a week each, three weeks a month, pay whether or not you chose to play, all special requests double or triple the price. “One of them, we had sex twice in a year. One, we never did. He couldn’t. He just really wanted...”
“A woman’s total attention, right?”
“Right. Loneliness is the greatest aphrodisiac.”
“That was one guy’s theory. We don’t have to talk about this forever, or even ever again. Just this one time about all of it. As if you were someone I was really investigating, not my friend. I want you to promise to answer every question I ask.” She started to shake her head no, out of either reluctance or reserve, or both. “But you said this was down to me because I never gave up. You said that. Now you want me to give up?”
“I want to put it behind me and you want me to go back there.” Her shadow ran fingers up through her tumult of dark hair, no longer the chaste, controlled court coif. “Okay. Quick, untraceable money. And revenge. I wanted men to pay me a ton of money to pretend I liked them. They would brag and strut and posture. They thought I was really impressed and just wished I could be with them all the time!” There was an unpleasant pleasure in her voice. “They were like him. The good reverend, the lying, cheating, stealing, preening, morally superior minister who took everything from Ruth and gave her nothing.”
“Do you hate men, Felicity? I could get it if you did.”
“No. I don’t. I hate a couple of men. In prison, I thought, if I ever got out, I would find a good man of my own someday. Like you have. I want Sparrow to have a real father. Maybe I’d have another child.”
“That must have been painful, that wish, at that time, I mean.”
“Not really. I think it kept me going.”
“Do you regret anything?”
“Sometimes, I regret everything.” She sat there for a while, and then, suddenly, eerily, she took my hand. I liked the new Felicity, easy with hugs, generous with gestures, but I still wasn’t used to her. “One thing I don’t regret is Sparrow. Whatever I did, it was for Sparrow.”
“But Ruth would say that what she did, she did for you?”
“Oh, Reenie, I hate Ruth for it.” Something else was coming, though, and I counted backward, the way Nell and I used to do: three, two, one... “And still, there is a part of me that understands it. She gave up her spirit. Her science. Everything her own father taught her. She had to nod and smile, yes, of course, evolution was only a theory. She did it for love and he wiped his shoes on that love. She finally lost her mind. She thought she was saving me and Sparrow from men who could have whatever they wanted.” Felicity asked me then, “Would you stop at anything to protect your children?”
“Yes,” I said. “I would stop before I hurt someone.”
In the next second, though, I realized that no, I would not stop. If I had to, I would do wrong. If anyone threatened Nelia or the twins, and if there was no other way, I would kill the person. I told Felicity as much and admitted that I’d then be no better than Ruth. In passing I wondered, what did Roman Wild think about all this? He probably felt lucky to still be alive. He easily could have been next.
Ruth’s acts were monstrous. And yet, as Felicity reminded me when she asked about my own limits, what Ruth did, she did for love. Ruth, oh Ruth, why could you see no other way? And how was it that no one ever noticed as you imploded? Did no one care? Or was it simply too gradual? Ruth could not have been the first eccentric teacher ever to walk a pea-soup-colored hallway as her fine mind fell apart.
Hell is murky, I thought.
“And, okay, I never understood. Why didn’t you say anything at the trial in your own defense? Didn’t you think that made you look guilty?”
“I absolutely did not,” she said.
What Sam said so long ago was correct. Until it was too late, Felicity literally put her faith in common sense. Hadn’t she pleaded not guilty? She had. She was telling the truth. Would she say she was not guilty if she was, in fact, guilty? Hadn’t she said that she wasn’t there? She was telling the truth. Hadn’t she already pointed out that she didn’t know what happened? She was telling the truth. This was entirely in keeping with her personality. She was telling the truth. Why should she have to repeat it?
The way she saw it, it would look even more suspicious if she kept yammering on about her innocence. You couldn’t prove you hadn’t done something!
Sam pleaded with her.
Any other person, he said, would be in a plane dragging a banner that read, I Did Not Do It. But Felicity didn’t know the rule of courtroom advocacy, which was to state your case, get other people to state your case for you, and finally, state your case again. How would she know? She didn’t watch crime dramas or read them. She’d never done anything that needed a legal defense, including now.
As the trial proceeded, Felicity realized that the physical evidence or lack of it, all the mistakes, all the erroneous beliefs, all that reflected back on her. She could have called a halt right then. She could have asked for time to tell the whole truth. But even if she were believed, in that truth was danger, and not just for herself. So she was trapped. She said nothing.
