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“No,” she hissed through gritted teeth, and slapped herself hard across the face.
There was already so much that was beyond her control. She was betrayed, humiliated; people were surely laughing at her behind her back. All those times that people had tilted their heads together as she passed, whispering to each other; all those looks of pity she’d never quite understood. She understood now. The most salacious story on the island, and she was the last to know. Her best friend had fucked her husband. Her husband had fathered Shelly’s bastard child. And Miriam, oblivious idiot, a prize fool, had let it all happen right under her nose.
These were things she could not change.
But she would be damned if she allowed herself to imagine the two of them together, their naked bodies intertwined. If that picture tried to worm its way into her brain, she would knock it back out with her fists, and she would do it as many times as it took to make it stay away.
It is after ten when he finally comes back. She sees his headlights sweep across the driveway, hears the front door open and close. His gait is unsteady as he crosses the foyer, his shoes scuffing on the tile.He must be drunk,she thinks, and the realization makes her feel slightly giddy despite her misery. Drunk means uninhibited, more easily provoked—and oh, she wants to provoke him. She wants him to get angry, to shout, to fight her, because a fight would mean there was still something left. Of the man he used to be, of the love they had together. It means there’s still hope for them yet. For the first time in years, she thinks again of a little house in town, the one she’s fantasized for too long about buying and moving the family into. Of all the impulses she’s chased over the years, why didn’t she ever chase that one? Why doesn’t she?
“You’re still awake,” he says, and she turns to look at him. He’s leaning against the doorway, his cheeks flushed, his hair mussed. She’d wondered if he might look different to her, uglier somehow now that she knows what he’s done, but he’s the same as ever—and as handsome as ever, she thinks, and shudders. It’s not just that she canstill want him after he betrayed her; it’s that she wants him more, and more desperately, her desire tainted by revulsion and heartbreak that somehow makes it all the more intoxicating.
“I wanted to talk to you,” she says.
He stands up straighter. “What about?”
“I’ve let Shelly go.”
The silence stretches between them, punctuated by the ticking of the clock. She stares at him, unblinking. Daring him to ask why, daring him to say anything at all.
He looks over his shoulder, down the hallway. “Is she—”
“Already gone.”
Another long pause. “I see,” he says, finally, and frustration gets the better of her.
“Aren’t you going to ask why?”
He takes a deep breath, holding her gaze, and lets it out with a sigh. “No. And not just because I know why. It’s all over your face, Miriam. I don’t know if she told you or if you guessed it, or... but it doesn’t matter.”
“That’s rich, coming from you. After what you’ve done.” She pauses. “Or what you’re still doing. How long, Theo? How long have you been making a fool of me?”
“That’s all over. It’s been over.”
“Don’t lie to me.” She makes a strangled sound, the breath caught in her throat. “My god. You were going to her at night, weren’t you? I thought I was crazy, hearing things, but I wasn’t. I heard you in there with her.”
His face twists. “Ayuh, you did. That night—it was the last time. Because I wanted her to leave. I begged her to leave, Miriam, and do you know what she did? She laughed in my face and said, ‘I don’t take orders from you.’ She said, ‘This here is your wife’s house. You and I, we just live in it.’”
“That’s not fair,” she says, and he lets out a little bark of laughter.
“Fair got nothing to do with it. She was right. So when you tell meyou let her go, what’s the point in asking why? You do what you want, don’t you? You get what you want. You take what you want. You always have. The only reason she was ever here in this house in the first place is because you insisted.”
“Don’t you dare,” she hisses, her voice rising. “Don’t you dare try to turn this around on me. This isn’t my fault.”
He shakes his head. “No, it surely isn’t. I don’t deny what I did. I did it and I have to live with it—but boy, have I been living with it. Living with it right here in this house, sitting down to dinner with it, staring it right in the face every single day. I was tested and I failed. But who put me to that test?” He pauses. “You did, Miriam, and I wonder if you didn’t do it on purpose. I think maybe you even wanted it to happen.”
“Why?” Her voice is small, barely a whisper. “Why on earth would I want this to happen?”
He shrugs. “It just proves what everyone already knew, doesn’t it? I’m no good. Never good enough. Never was. Not for the likes of you.”
Miriam stares at him, searching for words and finding none. The expression on his face is the most terrifying thing she’s ever seen because it’s no expression at all: not angry, not sad, but defeated, and resigned to the defeat. She will not be getting the fight she wanted, because there’s no fight left in Theo, and that’s her fault. She drained it out of him herself, indignity by indignity, over the course of sixteen years. The space between them seems suddenly huge and dangerous, as treacherous as the water that once stretched between them all those years ago when she’d been a girl on the pier, watching at sunset for his boat to pass by. If she reached for him now, would he still take her hand and pull her to him? Or would he only watch as she sank, arms outstretched, into the drowning emptiness?
There was a time when this question would have been no question at all, when the very notion would have made her laugh out loud.You’re wrong,she thinks desperately, and tears fill her eyes. She had never tested their bond in hopes that he might break it; she had never tested him at all. And that’s been her mistake. She puts her face in her hands.
When she looks up again, he’s gone.
Miriam cries for a long time then, sobbing between sips of the whiskey until both the glass and her eyes are dry. Then she pours herself another and sits quietly. Thinking—but she doesn’t think for long, and this is her next mistake. If she’d taken another moment, even had another drink, maybe she would have thought better or just fallen asleep before she could do her worst.
But then Miriam has never been one to think better.Always jumping into things, aren’t you?The man on the truck had said that, the day of the fire, and he was right: jumping into things is what she does, it’s who she is. A little impulsive, a little wild, a woman who follows her heart. Why not? Her heart has always been trustworthy, always steered her true.
