I look at him for a long time.
“I’ll think about it,” I say.
Same words Marin used when I suggested she try something different with Charles.I didn’t plan the echo.But I hear it.Two people circling things they should walk away from.
I get in my truck.He gets in his Lexus.We pull out in opposite directions—him toward Ridgewood, me toward the county road.Toward an empty house.Toward the bottle.Toward names in my phone that should mean something but don’t.
The radio’s on.Still static.
My hands are shaking on the wheel.First time in two years.
Not from fear.From restraint.
Because what I wanted to do at that gas station is not what I did.And the distance between those two things is getting smaller every day.
50
Marin
The argument starts over water.
It doesn’t end over water.
“It was never about Vanessa,” Charles says.He’s not angry.That’s the worst part.“You know that.You’ve always known that.”
“I don’t want to hear about Vanessa.”
“But you need to, Marin.You need tohearwhat I’m telling you.”
He keeps going regardless of what I want.A match made in heaven as Luke would say.
“She takes what I give her.That’s it.She doesn’t need the rest.She doesn’t need every room in the house.Every hour.Every thought.She gets a ring and an apartment and she’s happy.She doesn’t ask where I was Thursday night.She doesn’t need me to be something I’m not.”
“She’s a doormat.”
“She’s realistic.There’s a difference.”
“There’s no difference.”
He leans his head back against the wall.Looks at the ceiling.“She’s pregnant, Marin.”
I stand there.Halfway up the basement stairs.Holding a glass of water that was too warm.
He’s lying.He has to be lying.Because if he’s not then everything I’ve done—the trailer, the restraints, the cover story, the town, the casseroles, the prayer beads, all of it—was to avoid a truth I could have faced at a dinner table for free.
I study his face.
He’s not lying.
“You could have told me that at any point, Charles.Any point.At the dinner.In the trailer.Any night I brought you food or adjusted your cuffs or sat on a concrete floor watching The fucking Notebook with you.You could have said it and I would have let you go.You know that.You know I would have let you go.”
“Marin—”
“I bought a ball gag for you, Charles.I told a Baptist minister you have a brain tumor.I tased you.I moved you to a basement.I have committed—I can’t even count how many felonies I have committed—and you sat there the whole time knowing one sentence would have ended all of it.”
“Because I knew how you’d take it.”
“How I’d TAKE it?I would have taken it by opening the goddamn door!”
