And I realize she still doesn’t know. She still hasn’t made the connection.
“Because I was there.”
“In Cabo? On the shoot? Yes.”
“Not just on the shoot, Anouk. I was there. Right beside you. Until I wasn’t.”
She is still looking at me, searching for something in the recesses of her mind. And I see her almost find it. Almost. “You were there? You left?”
I nod, slow. “I left. I’m sorry. He sent me away, and I should have known what he was doing. I should have stayed and protected you. But I was… I don’t know. Young, I guess. That’s not an excuse, I know… I’m sorry.”
“Yourememberit?” She is nonplussed now. Piecing it together. Or not. But realizing I’ve kept this from her. I have kept it from her all this time.
“Some. Not all. I didn’t see anything. He sent me away, and when I came back it was over. And I think you were in shock, but he wouldn’t let me talk to you. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Anouk. I’m sorry.”
“Youknewthis??? All along,you knew this?”
“Not really. No. I’d forgotten. Or I guessIblocked it. And then it started returning in bits, in dreams, and I couldn’t be certain what was real and what I’d made up. But this tape in the news. It triggered something.”
For a second, Anouk says nothing. Her face reddens, and her eyes threaten to brim, but she manages to hold it back. With the exception of that one day in Cabo, I have never seen her cry.
“I don’t understand. You knew something. Even if you didn’t know all. You knewsomething. And you never mentioned it.”
“I’m sorry,” I repeat, but hearing myself say it for the umpteenth time feels somehow empty. Even to me.
“I think maybe you should leave, Cecilia.”
“Anouk—”
“I think that would be best.” She stands. Tall. Taller than me. “I need some time to digest this.”
“Okay,” I say. “Okay.”
It takes everything I have to make it out of their modern museum of a home without falling apart.
I’m not even at Sunset before I pull over, and vomit at the side of the road. Like some amateur rock star the morning after a regrettable night of debauchery. At some point I catch my reflection in the rearview mirror. Tears and snot and sick, and I marvel at how it is I got here. And how, if ever, I would come back to myself.
For three days Anouk doesn’t respond to my calls or texts. The entire time, I remain in bed. I blame it on a virus, and Fran and the kids allow me my space. To wallow. To grieve.
Twice at night, I awake to a coyote baying, and I use what little energy I can gather to head out to the courtyard and call Leelou’s name. As if she will come home. As if she somehow just took a wrong turn and had been hiding near the creek all this time. I am just as tempted to call out for Anouk. Knowing the gesture will be equally futile.
I keep picturing her face, distraught, bewildered. Trying to piece together the puzzle. To reconcile what happened to her all those years ago and realizing that if I’d said something, done something, perhaps it could have been prevented. At the very least she would have had a witness. An ally. And to make matters worse, I’d been such an integral part of her life these past twenty months and had never once brought it up.
I am wracked with guilt and shame and regret, and I have no one to unburden me. And maybe that is my cross to bear. Maybe this is what François felt in that year or so following his affair. Maybe this is why he caved that night at the Vietnamese restaurant and told me about his transgression. Did it ease his pain? Did he sleep more soundly then? Did destroying me lighten his load?
And if I’d had the option, would I have rather not known?
In the end, I decide, it doesn’t matter. I could have done something. I should have done something. I did not. And that is what she will take with her.
And even though that shoot with Didier was what led to her booking the Dea di Varenna fragrance campaign. Even though it led to her face being plastered on billboards across multiple continents. To numerous magazine covers, and advertising campaigns, and appearances on everything from David Letterman toThe Tonight Show. Even though it led to her marriage and the life she has now, I am certain that if she could have avoided the humiliation and indignity of that day at the beach, she would have.
On Friday, a full week after the release of the groping-politician tapes, I head back to the studio. I had spent enough time in bed convalescing,watching mindless television, and licking my wounds. Anouk would reach out when she was ready.
Or so I hoped.
I allow the frustration to feed my art. The selected photos that are not a part of the slideshow, those that I’ve put aside to be mounted in the anteroom—large-scale images of pristine faces—I destroy strategically. Burning the edges of one, folding and crumpling another, tearing one into myriad pieces, dipping yet another in acid. All to be reassembled and affixed against white mountboards and placed in white frames. There’s something very powerful in the act of taking something beautiful and destroying it. I’ve become good at it.
I don’t hear from Anouk for another nine days, when she texts out of the blue:
