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Summer sits back hard against her chair, her arms crossed, her eyes narrowed. I am dying. I clench my jaw, my nostrils flaring.Don’t you dare.But I’m painfully aware that if Summer thinks she’s being suspected, this changes everything. I am one small, petulant sentence away from getting arrested.
I saw her.
Bruno asks us to sign prepared affidavits where we get to swear we know nothing about the robbery, nothing about what happened to the artwork, we have no idea who was involved, and if we ever find out we will report this information to the police as well as alert the insurance company. Andrew Dore pulls them out of his briefcase and hands them out, telling us in a stern tone that withholding information is a criminal offense. I have no idea if that’s true, and I wonder if everyone can see, as I do, Summer’s hesitation in signing hers. My own pen shudders when I sign mine and it barely looks like my signature. And then the meeting is over.
They leave clutching our affidavits that are not worth the paper they’re printed on. After they’ve gone, Summer turns to me. “You could have said something!”
“I did,” I blurt. “I told them we trusted you.” I couldn’t even bring myself to sayItrusted you.
“They think I took it!The Inverted Garden!”
“No, they don’t,” I insist. And I’m thinking, if only. It would solve a lot of my problems if they put her in jail for it. Maybe I should consider it. “Of course they don’t.”
“Bullshit! You saw the way that guy was looking at me! You have to tell them, Laura! You have to tell them what you did!”
She’s so upset it takes me an hour to convince her it’s not so bad. We signed the affidavits. That’s all they want. Everything is fine.
She presses her lips, shakes her head, sits down to work at the computer and I can feel the resentment oozing out of her. It’s in the way she chews on her bottom lip, the quick jerks of her head, the muscles in her neck like cords.
“What should we do now?” she snapped.
I excuse myself to go to the bathroom and stand at the basin, my face gray. I throw water on my face. I stare at my reflection and rehearse excuses to get away. I’ll say I’m sick, I have to go home, she’ll probably put it down to the fact I’ve been ditched like yesterday’s trash. There won’t be a wedding after all, not mine anyway. My mind goes off on its own journey and I follow along. I thought we were in love, we had problems, sure but show me a couple who doesn’t. I thought we were happy, happy enough anyway. I was happy. I was the happiest I’ve ever been. I think about Charlie. What’s going to happen to her now? Jack will be off with Summer, who knows? Maybe they’ll get married! After all, he’ll be free in a few days.
I spent the rest of the day interacting with visitors while pushing down the rage I felt at Summer’s betrayal which was not unlike swallowing razor blades. She kept tugging at my sleeve, asking me in hushed whispers, her eyes swimming with fear, what would happen to her if I didn’t confess, and I winced every time she used that word. I did my best to reassure her, soothing her in dulcet tones thateverything will be okay!until I couldn’t take it anymore and said I was going home early.
“Again?” she snapped. Because screwing Jack was not enough. She had to be rude too. “So what if Bruno and that guy come back? What if they want more information? What should I tell them?”
“They won’t come back,” I said, and still she argued, so that I spent the next twenty minutes cajoling the woman who was screwing my fiancé behind my back into not sending me to prison.
THIRTY-TWO
Jack is in the backyard with Charlie, pulling at weeds. The remnants of their wildlife monitoring project laying untouched on the dining room table, looking sad and forlorn. After that initial burst of enthusiasm, Jack had simply lost interest.
“You okay?” Bronwyn asks from the doorway of the living room.
I wish she wouldn’t ask me that all the time. No, I’m not okay. I want to tattoo it on my face.I’m not okay!“Yes! Thank you,” I chirp, but the back of my eyes are burning with repressed tears. “I’m just going upstairs for a minute.”
In my bathroom I throw water on my face, stare at my reflection in the mirror. I look so old, ugly. An old prune. No wonder Jack wants to fuck other women. My hair is thick in all the wrong places, strands of gray like bits of old wire. I grab a pair of scissors and start hacking at every bit of gray I can see, biting the inside of my cheek so hard I can taste blood, and suddenly Bronwyn is there and I breathe through my nose hard and I wish she would go away, leave me alone, just once.
“What on earth are you doing?”
I stare at my reflection again and burst into tears.
“Jesus, Laura. Don’t quit your day job. Give me that.” She takes the scissors from my hand. I expect her to put them in the trash or somewhere out of my reach, but instead she guides me to the edge of the bathtub and sits me down, puts a towel around my shoulders.
“What’s going on?” she asks, gently running her fingers through my hair. Her fingers are cool against my hot scalp.
Even if I wanted to keep it in, I couldn’t. I just don’t have the energy anymore, so I blurt it all out.
“Oh, honey,” she says. “That’s terrible. I thought something was going between those two.”
“Yeah,” I snort. “You want to know how they got together? Because that’s a story too!” I’m unstoppable now. I tell her of my bright idea to get Summer to flirt with Jack because I was afraid Bronwyn was making a move on him.
She clicks her tongue. “God, you’re a character, Laura. Seriously who thinks like that? You should have asked me straight up! I would have told you I’m not remotely interested in Jack! Jesus, he’s all yours, I mean that.”
“Yeah, well, I’m an idiot, so…”
“I promise you, I don’t love Jack anymore. I haven’t for years. I don’t want him.”
