Shoppers glided obviously around us. So many girlfriends, comparing lip tints, yapping in a new-age Valley girl lilt, sporting pink paper bags.
My hand choked the sample bottle. “What did he tell you?”
“Everything.”
He’d told her that I came on to him, that I said,Milan doesn’t have to know.
The ground felt unstable. I thought I was going to fall. “And you believe that?”
“Why wouldn’t I? It sounds like you.”
Her words moved through me like a stake moving through someone’s chest.
She tucked a loose braid behind her ear. That’s when I saw it, the glimmer of stone on her finger latched to a thin gold band. I thought of Gentileschi’s fingers crushed at her trial.
She followed my gaze. “I didn’t tell you ’cause I knew you wouldn’t be happy.”
The man in the stairwell was going to be someone’s husband.
“Congratulations,” I said.
Perhaps remembering all the dizzy times we spent together—in our dorm watching rom-coms, eating doughnuts—before men broke down the door of our lives, she said softly, “How are you coping? I mean with Jay having a new girlfriend?”
I didn’t know Jay had a new girlfriend. I hadn’t spoken to him, hadn’t checked his Instagram, only looked through old pictures on my laptop, tears slipping over the hill of my nose, blubbering about heartbreak on the phone to my mom, who said in so many words she saw this coming.
“I didn’t know about that.”
“Oh. Well. I’m sure it’s not serious. You were always the love of his life.”
She let me take her ring finger in my hand, perhaps hoping I’d admire it. Instead, I pressed my thumb into the diamond’s edges until it made a deep, painful impression on my skin. I couldn’t tell if she was angry with me or if she pitied me too much for anger. For the first time, I didn’t see a way back to her or anyone else. I didn’t see a way forward either.
In the end, all I managed to say was “Let me know if you wanna buy anything. I’ll ring you up on the iPad.”
Saying nothing, she slipped her hand from mine, a scarf falling from a table, slow enough that I might’ve caught it.
Chapter 77
The house was dark and silent when I returned from my shift. The TV was off in the living room. I couldn’t remember the last time the TV was off. I wandered into the kitchen. It was empty. A faint murmur reached me from the backyard. I opened the screen door to find my dad and Brad dumping a bucket of live crawfish into a boiling pot. I hadn’t actually met Brad in the two weeks he’d lived there since I was working now. He looked exactly how I expected: blue eyes, blond hair, a white supremacist’s wet dream but wearing a gray “I Public Radio” T-shirt.
I eased into the yard, understanding there was a weird and delicate dynamic at play between the two of them that I didn’t understand. Carefully, I said, “Hey hey.”
“Oh, hey! You must be Cat.” Brad reached out his hand. “Nice to meet you.”
I shook it. “Yeah, you too.”
“Your dad was just saying you’re a writer. That’s cool.”
I was surprised my dad had said anything about my writing. Whenever I brought it up to him, he acted like he didn’t know what I was talking about. I found myself wishing I could’ve heard what exactly he said, wondering if there’d been a shimmer of pride in it.
I turned to my dad, who hadn’t said anything. “You’re making crawfish?”
He said, “Mm-hm,” like it hadn’t been over a decade since he boiled crawfish.
“Why?”
“Why not?”
I couldn’t argue with that. The three of us sat in lawn chairs, waiting for the crawfish to cook. My dad started telling us a strange story about how my grandma had killed my grandfather.
