I roll over, give him my back, and let him take that as an answer.
I didn’t think I would, but I sleep, deep and dreamlessly. What feels like ten hours later, Pearl wakes me up, pedaling her feet into my calves, whispering, “Mommy. Mommy.”
“Good morning, baby,” I rasp as I check Winnie. She’sstill out cold, arms thrown above her head like she’s guiding a plane down a runway.
“Where is here?” Pearl whispers. She’s wriggled close to my side. Her stinky little girl breath is hot in my face.
“We’re at an apartment in Daddy’s building. It was too late to drive home last night. Are you ready to go home now?”
She nods and crawls out of bed backward, lowering herself over the side. It’s a tall bed. A sharp pang of guilt pierces my chest. I should have left the kids at home. I clung to the wool over my eyes and almost walked them into that apartment with that woman and her red-soled shoes.
Never again. I don’t know exactly what I’m going to do, but they’re not going to live the kind of life where they get to watch their mother fall to pieces in front of their eyes. Adrian Maddox is the past. He goes into the box in the back of my head where I shove all the bad stuff.
Luckily, Winnie is awake by the time I’ve helped Pearl use the bathroom and get her shoes on. I change Winnie and put her in the spare onesie from Schmidt’s diaper satchel. If I walk with my weight on the balls of my feet, the pain is tolerable. It feels like my soles have road burn.
I’ve dealt with worse, and as they say, anything you do once, you can do again. I strap Winnie to my chest and take Pearl’s hand. I’ve collected myself. I understand the game I’m playing now.
I walk out the door and smile at Martinez and Johnson. They must’ve relieved Tiller and Schmidt while we slept.
“Coffee, Mrs. Maddox?” Johnson asks. They’re both sipping from mugs in the immaculate kitchen.
“No, thank you. I’d like to go home now.” Home. Yesterday, I thought it was. I thought I’d gotten my reward for all the hard times I’d survived, and it was better than I could have ever imagined when I was a kid back in Baltimore.
I should’ve known better. I do now.
“Yes, ma’am,” Martinez says. “Let me get the baby’s bag, and we’ll get going.”
Johnson calls for the car, and when the driver rings up that he’s ready, we shuffle out of the apartment at half speed, neither of the men reacting to the fact that I’m moving at an unusually slow pace.
The farther I walk, the more my feet burn. They hadn’t bled through the bandages when I looked this morning, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they are now. I’m slipping a little in my shoes.
I keep my face blank and focused straight ahead. The pain is good. It’s a tether.
I feel like I’m doing the walk of shame, wearing yesterday’s clothes as I stroll through the lobby full of businesspeople going about their day. I’m recognized, of course, and I get a few nods and polite smiles, but no one is bold enough to approach me. Johnson is my biggest bodyguard. He’s in his late fifties, but he’s built like a tank, and his neck is almost as thick as his head, like a hippo.
Yesterday doesn’t fully hit me until we’re in the car on 95, and then it all collapses on me at once.
Red soles.
Red hair.
Adrian scrolling his phone, fully dressed, while a naked woman rides him like it’s her job.
Like it’s atransaction.
It wasmyjob, wasn’t it? I didn’t know to see it like that, but it was, although it wasn’t my main responsibility. That was giving him children.
This is the easy life I get in return. A wave of something horrible, something boiling and dark and sticky as tar, threatens to crash over me. I press my fist against my mouth and curl my toes until the pain throbs.
The driver glances at me in the rearview mirror. Martinez and Johnson are better trained. They both stare out their respective windows. I turn my head, too, my eyes sliding over the sights until one catches my eyes.
A billboard.
A handsome man in a navy-blue suit with his arms crossed.
Above his head, it readsI’ll fight for you. Under his feet it says Drake Chambers, Attorney at Law. Drake Chambers sounds like a fake name.
The Maddoxes employ Nicolet and Burgess, the best lawyers in the city, if not the world. My lawyer, Brian, wouldn’t shut up about Nicolet and Burgess and how he was a summer associate with them, and how bummed he was when they didn’t pick him up as a first-year associate, but that Winthrop, Winthrop, and Blount was a better fit and still in the Am Law top 10.
