And then, when I woke up hours later, my mouth so dry, it felt like my skin was tearing when I opened my lips to drink from the bathroom sink. The pain between my legs. The dried blood on my thighs. I was naked except for my gauzy pink top.
Back in Reed’s room, I tried not to wake him as I tugged on my underwear and my jeans next to the bed. It was late, past midnight. He opened his eyes as I was lacing up my first sneaker.
“Where you going?” he’d asked, sleepy, playful.
“Just … home.”
“What’s the matter?” He sounded grumpy now.
“Nothing, I need to go.” But my voice sounded like something was very wrong. I couldn’t help it. “They’ll notice I’m gone.”
Reed sat up as I focused on tying my sneakers. Then he reached out and grabbed my thigh, hard.
“Don’t get confused here,” he’d said. “About what happened.”
I’d tried to pull my leg away, but he squeezed it tighter. “You’re hurting me.”
“Tell me you understand.”
“Let me go.”
“I will when you say you understand: We were having fun.”
And then I saw the little knife next to the lime on his nightstand. The one he must have sliced up for a drink, or maybe to stick in the top of a beer. Maybe to celebrate while I was passed out cold.
“Let me go.”
And he did. His hand dropped from my leg. Maybe I could have even run then. Maybe I could have gotten away. Maybe.
“Stop being such a fucking bitch and—”
I grabbed the knife. Reed laughed and reached to grab it back. I swung for his arm. To stop him from touching me again. But when he lunged toward me, the knife ended up in the back of his neck. There was this slow-motion moment when we both realized what I’d done. I watched his face fall. And then all that blood.
But now here he was all these years later, in my kitchen. Furious.Cleo.Reed was still ranting about something. It seemed like he had been ranting for a while.
“My parents cut me off. Completely. No money. No contact. Nothing. Because they wanted an explanation for my dropping out of Yale, and I couldn’t give one. Even wrote me out of their will. I mean, they were always assholes—they went away to Paris for Christmas that last year,alone.Left me to fend for myself for the holiday, when I was only a sophomore in college. Without their money, I had to get a job waiting tables and finish up at Fairfield University—at night,” he said. “Fairfield University.Do you have any idea how long it took for me to claw my way back?” He was pointing the knife at my face now.
He was going to kill me. I felt sure he was going to try. I needed to get him talking, distracted. I needed to buy myself time.
“You seem like you’re doing all right,” I said. “Professor at NYU?”
He began to pace, gesticulating with the knife in his hand. “Assistantprofessor.” The cords in his neck strained. His face was flushed. “Do you know where I’d be right now if it weren’t foryou? I was derailed foryears.I killed it at Fairfield University, obviously. Eventually, got my master’s at a piece of shit state school that was basically free—but not my Ph.D., at Rutgers. That was on me,again.Then it was years and years of crap adjunct positions at Dumbass Community College and Blue-Collar State. And God forbid some girl makes some shit up about you at one of those places—you’re out, no questions asked. In the Ivy League, no one cares who you fuck!” He stopped pacing and turned to look at me. He was smiling now. “But I guess there was one big consolation prize. Who would have thought I’d look up during my very first lecture at NYU, my firstrealjob, and see …you? The person who ruined my life. God, for a minute I thought I was going crazy. That Cleo reallywasyou. You two look exactly the same. Exactly. And to be clear, it’s not like I was obsessing about you all these years or something. Don’t flatter yourself. I’ve had far better things to do with my time. I looked you up, once or twice over the years, sure. But there was nothing. You were a ghost. Then when I lookedherup, Cleo McHugh … boom, there you were with your good-looking husband and your fancy job and your brand-new married name.”
“What do you want, Reed?”
“What do Iwant?” He laughed. “I want you to make me whole. Give me the money. Three million dollars.”
“Three million dollars?”
“I know you have it. The court filings? When those relatives contested Gladys Greene’s will? They laid out all the details. Like I said, I spent some time googling you after I recognized Cleo. It was all right there,” he said. “I’m willing to bet you still have most of it. Somebody like you, coming from where you did—you’ve probably got it all squirreled away.”
He wasn’t wrong. And money was easy. Money I could do.
“You want money?”
“Sure,” Reed said, but the hatred in his eyes told me this wasn’tgoing to be that simple. “And I want you to know how much I enjoyed fucking your daughter. She was very … enthusiastic.”
I closed my eyes. It took everything in me not to lunge at him. But he’d use that knife on me. Happily. Maybe that was what he really wanted—an excuse.
