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“I think you know what it means,” I say. “Look, Ben, if you’re trying to protect me or something—”
I stop, my mind back in Beaufort again. On my father and the way he had looked at me, too. The way he had covered for me, lied for me, because the truth, he knew, would kill me. Maybe that’s why Ben has been so adamant about trying to get me to move on. Maybe that’s why he’s been trying to convince me to stop searching, stop hoping.
Because he knows it’s pointless. He knows the truth.
“If you know something about what happened and you’re just afraid to say it… please,” I say, pleading now. “I have to know. I can’t wonder like this forever. I can’t—”
Before he can respond, the door opens wide, and a woman appears behind him. She’s wearing one of his work shirts—a white button-up, the collar half popped—her dark hair tied into a bun on the top of her head. She’s smiling politely, barefaced and beautiful, as she puts her hand on his shoulder and pushes herself into view.
“Hi, Isabelle,” she says. “It’s good to see you.”
I stare at the woman in the doorframe and register Ben’s shoulders tighten at her touch. I wonder if he sees it, too. How alike we are. The Cupid’s bow of our lips; the angled cheekbones, the same shade of hair. I wonder if he sees it, if he’s embarrassed, or if it’s entirely subconscious. If he doesn’t even realize that I feel like I’m staring straight at us, half a decade ago, when I was the one wrapped in his clothes, making him breakfast. Making him laugh.
“Isabelle, this is Valerie,” he says at last. “Though I’ve heard you two have already been acquainted.”
“Valerie,” I repeat, taking in her dark eyes and open smile. At first, I don’t know what he’s talking about—I don’t know what he means byacquainted—but then I notice her dimples, those two identical chasms in her cheeks hugging her lips like a pair of parentheses. “From the church.”
I think back to the cathedral on the night of Mason’s vigil: thewanderers and worshipers, and the way I had closed my eyes and drifted away for a while. Opening them back up again and finding everyone gone before walking into the back room. The way the light from inside had spilled out onto the sidewalk like the moon on water, and the bargain coffee brewing in the corner making my eyes feel tight. Those cheap metal chairs arranged in a sad circle on the floor and the woman who had greeted me. Invited me to stay.
“I didn’t really get the chance to introduce myself before,” she says to me now, thrusting her hand out in my direction. “Properly, I mean.”
I look down at it, remembering the man who had interrupted us then, shuffling inside just as her lips had started to part. I can’t bring myself to take it.
“Valerie, hon, we’ll just be a second,” Ben says after a prolonged silence. I can tell that she wants to stay—she wants to make this right between us, whateverthisis—but instead, he gives her a kiss on the head and steps onto the stoop, closing the door behind him and leaving her inside.
“So,” I say at last, crossing my arms after a beat of uncomfortable quiet. “The therapist.”
“Isabelle, come on.” He sighs. “Not now.”
“I have to admit, I didn’t expect this cliché from you,” I continue, a glimpse of anger starting to surge in my chest. I can taste it again—blood, pennies, the metallic tang of rage forcing itself up my throat. “But then again, who am I to talk? I did marry my boss.”
“That’s enough,” he says. “I tried to get you to go with me. Itried.”
I think back to those chairs again, trying to imagine Ben sitting in one of them. The vulnerability of it. It seems so out-of-place for him, so wrong, and I feel a sudden pang of guilt at the thought of him entering that room for the first time alone. I picture the nervous fidget in his fingers as he tried to find the words; his voice, usually so commanding, starting to crack.
The realization lodges itself in my chest like a knife wedging into my rib cage, cold and sharp: I should have been there with him.
“So we were still together,” I say instead, imagining him leaving the house every Monday night and spending it with her, as I stayed seated at the dining room table, my rabid eyes consuming all those pictures on the wall. I had practically forced them together, driving him into the arms of someone who could actually help.
“We weren’t still together and you know it,” he says. “We hadn’t beentogetherfor a long time. Not really.”
“That’s news to me,” I say. “I guess it’s kind of like how you and Allison weren’t together, either.Not really.”
Ben stares at me, and I can tell that took him by surprise. I’ve never brought up Allison like this before. I’ve never insinuated that what he did to her—whatwedid to her, together, behind her back—was wrong on so many levels.
“So, what, did she hold you and let you cry and make you feel better when I couldn’t?” I ask. Ben is still silent, staring at me, but I can’t stop. I want to hurt him, even though it isn’t fair. Even though none of this would have happened—noneof it—if it weren’t for me.
“You should know that we didn’t get together until recently,” he says quietly. He’s matching my anger with pity, which makes it even worse. “That is the truth. Not until after I stopped going. After I moved out.”
“How kind of her to wait.”
“Ireached out toher,” Ben says. “Okay? She didn’t initiate anything. She didn’t do anything wrong.”
We’re both quiet, and I can feel my heart thumping hard against his ring, still dangling against my chest. I have the sudden urge to rip it off and throw it at him, but admitting that I’ve been holding on to it like this is something I still can’t bring myself to do.
“Would you have moved out if Mason wasn’t taken?” I ask instead. I need to get it out before I have the chance to reel the words back in; before I can change my mind and crawl back into the shadows,choosing ignorance over a truth that will surely kill me. “Or did you move outbecausehe was taken?”
“Isabelle, don’t do this to yourself.”
