The Whole Golden World

by Kristina Riggle

  Only that would be worse, wouldn’t it? The Runaway Grad. They’d be able to track her progress, hear the slapping of her shoes across the floor for several yards before she actually escaped.

  It was Peter Miller’s turn. Off he went, leaving the empty expanse of the stage in front of her to cross.

  Her chest was heaving under her gown, and stars were sparkling at the fringes of her vision. God, don’t let me faint.

  She never heard her own name, rather felt Linh poke her in the back. She crossed the stage at first with her head down, but then she raised her chin, remembering she came here because she deserved her graduation, if nothing else; she had earned this with her grades and studying and hard work; she was a good student, still. She always was.

  There was applause. Polite, restrained, as in golf. She heard one “Woo!” from a guy, not able to tell if it was sarcastic, a form of catcall, or if someone was genuinely happy. Ethan? One of the twins? No way to tell, and then she was in front of Principal Jackson.

  “Good for you,” he said quietly, with a wink so fast and subtle she might have imagined it. He gave her hand an extrafirm shake.

  “Thank you,” she whispered back, and she concentrated on getting off the stage without falling, as she imagined the entire Arbor Valley community exhaling, having endured that moment together.

  Walking along the side of the seated graduates, headed back to her row, she glanced at the crowd, with scant hope she’d actually see her family.

  Then she spotted the twins, who were leaping up and down like jackrabbits, waving their arms. Connor whistled with his fingers. Morgan waved and flushed at once, and Dinah and Joe yanked them down in tandem.

  She waved and mouthed, Thanks, Mork and Dork.

  Much as they drove her crazy most days, she would truly miss them once she turned eighteen and got the hell out.

  46

  JUNE 6, 2012

  Rain knew she should eat, for the sake of the baby, but here it was, lunch break in her husband’s trial, and she could no sooner eat a meal than she could run the Kentucky Derby.

  TJ seemed encouraged, happy, even, by the morning’s proceedings. He had a weird bounce in his step as they walked to the car, escorted by their attorney, who shouted comments to the press while Rain tried to pretend she was not aware of being photographed.

  Alex led them to a small conference room in her office, which was close enough to the courthouse they could get back quickly. She’d ordered sandwiches so they could eat in peace and privacy, without having to be hounded by the press or gawking public. “In the home stretch,” she’d said. “Hang tough.”

  Home stretch. The metaphor seemed appropriate for TJ, who was pacing with athletic energy as Alex pulled the door shut.

  “Did you see her sitting on our side of the room? She’s not on their side. And without her . . . And, man, Alex just took apart that cop on the stand, didn’t she? I think we’re gonna beat this,” he said, tucking into his sandwich with gusto. A piece of onion had fallen off and was clinging to his chin. Rain was primed to wipe it off, but part of her wanted to slap it off, too.

  She put a piece of pasta salad in her mouth and almost choked on it. No eating now. Sorry, baby, she thought.

  “Beat this, and then what?” Rain managed to ask.

  TJ smiled. “Then we sue to get reinstated at work, if they don’t just do it, which they should, because I’ll be innocent.”

  I will be innocent, Rain echoed in her head. Not that I am innocent, but I will be. Because the court said so.

  “I meant, then what for us?”

  TJ smiled. “Then we go and have this baby and resume our lives.”

  “What if we don’t?”

  “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t beat it.”

  TJ tossed down his sandwich. “Seriously? This is the first time I feel positive in weeks. I don’t need you turning on me like that prick brother of mine, who believes his old-ass crazy neighbor over his own brother. We are so done with them, by the way. Never speaking to them again, ever. And that includes you and Alessia. Done.” He brushed his hands together, bread crumbs scattering across the lacquered table.

  “But we have a niece now! Little Marjorie! And they’re paying our mortgage . . .”

  TJ shoved back from the table and folded his arms. “Oh, good for him. He’s just doing it to feel superior. He gets to hold something else over me. Believe me, he’s giggling like a little girl when he writes that check. Why are you doing this to me, now? Huh? I’m on trial here, and my career is in ruins because some little slut is in love with me.”

  Rain drew back. She saw, in her mind’s eye, the images of that red-painted word across Dinah’s business. Her imagination pulled up an image of him having sex in their bedroom with this girl—scarred and young and damaged.

  Rain rose. TJ looked up at her, still stormy and glowering. She’d seen that face of his so many times before: chin jutted out, eyes narrow, a crease between his brows. And right on schedule came the next phase. A flick of his eyes to the side of the room accompanied by a slight sigh. This was his shift from “angry” to “wounded.” He folded his arms and slumped slightly, dipping his chin toward his chest. He’d gone into “sad little boy” now. This was Rain’s cue to drop to her knees next to him, squeeze his arm, and apologize for upsetting him.

  Yes, this was her cue to apologize. Even after all he’d done—to her, to the girl, to all of their lives—it was her apology to make in the world according to TJ Hill.

  Rain thought, This is my forever. She’d earlier thought the trial was the “worse” in “for better or worse” but now she could see that wasn’t so. The “worse” would be the collective years of this. She would be forever cautioning their child not to disturb or upset Daddy, not take anything to heart, Daddy was just having a bad day . . .

  And when Daddy did snap at them, or sulk, or withdraw into his own emotional stew, Rain would still have to apologize, and she would not be alone. She pictured now a little girl in pigtails, saying “Sorry, Daddy, I didn’t mean to be loud,” and trying—like Rain had, countless times—to catch his gaze, to be assured her apology was worthy, and that the balance of their household on the fulcrum of his mood would once again right itself.

  These were the rules of their household, as laid down by her husband and upheld by her own tacit participation, rules allowing him to cheat on her with a teenage girl, turn their lives inside out for public ridicule, ask her to lie under oath to save him, then demand an apology from her with not even a whiff of awareness that a single part of the problem lay with him.

  Rain grounded her feet, pulled her shoulders back, and rooted herself to the earth as she’d done so many times in class. She laced her fingers across her stomach and said, “No.”

  “What?”

  “I said no.”

  “No to what?”

  “I will not testify you were at home. Because you were not.”

  His bravado melted away as the color drained out of his face. “No, baby, come on, I didn’t mean to get upset . . .” He clasped his hands like he was praying, or literally begging.

  “You never mean to get upset, but you always do. And then I am the one who has to bring you back. I’m not doing it anymore.”

  “I don’t understand . . .”

  “I know you did it. As soon as you tried to convince me that you were at home when you were not, you knocked out the last brick of my faith in your innocence.”

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “Of course I don’t. And you don’t, either. If you’d stop the posing and the defensiveness for five minutes. It’s time to plead guilty.”

  “I can’t, they’ll send me to jail . . .”

  “So they will.” At this, Rain’s voice shook, so she clenched her fists and pictured him with the girl, as portrayed in the police report. On the rehearsal room floor, in his car, in their own house. “And you deserve it.”

  “You want me to give up?”

&n
bsp; “I want you to admit what you did. I want you to stop putting that girl, her family, me, all of us, through this hell.”

  TJ frowned, his eyes starting to dart, panicked, as if police were going to bust down the door and haul him away right there. “Why do you care about her, anyway? Since you’re so convinced she screwed me, a married man.”

  “She’s just a kid. When we got married, she was wearing a training bra.”

  “You wouldn’t do this to me . . .”

  “You did this to you. And not only that, you did it to me.”

  Rain left her husband and her lunch behind, and she strode away, tears of rage making stinging tracks down her face, on her way to Alexandra’s office.

  Rain would have found Alexandra terrifying if she were the one in TJ’s chair. Rain stood along the far wall of the room, leaning with her tailbone resting on the wall.

  “Jesus H. Christ,” Alex had blurted when TJ confessed that the reason he wanted to change his plea was because he was, in fact, guilty. Then, “You are an idiot.”

  Alex had been standing, Amazon-like, with a wide stance, hands on her hips, in formidably tall shoes.

  Then, abruptly as if someone had cut her marionette strings, Alex dropped into a chair across from TJ. Their uneaten lunches remained on the table between them. Alex pushed them aside with her lips curled in mild disgust.

  “New plan. I’ll call Henry, ask the judge for a recess, and try to keep you out of jail. We’ll explain your earlier plea and story as fear based, and now you’ve come to realize the error of your ways blah blah blah. At least you did this now and not when you were on the stand or after you’d testified. Talk about eleventh hour.”

  She rose, and to Rain she suddenly looked old. The makeup around her eyes was caking into furrows she hadn’t noticed before. “Not that it matters,” Alex asked, through a weary sigh. “But why now? Why this sudden attack of conscience?”

  TJ did not reply, only looked across the table at Rain with wounded, sunken eyes.

  Alex shrugged. “Well. I’m going to my office to call Henry and the judge. Stay put until I come back for you.”

  Rain checked her watch. She wanted to drive away and disappear. She wanted to drive to Gran’s house and have her be there, give her a hug, bake her cookies, and put her to bed with a book. She even would have preferred driving to see Angie and Ricky and Fawn and the baby and ask Stone to play his acoustic guitar like he used to when they were kids, singing the sweet Simon and Garfunkel tunes she loved, just to humor her, because he hated them.

  TJ broke the silence. “You should sit. You’ll make your back hurt.”

  “I don’t feel like it.”

  “I’m really sorry,” he said, the words coming out thick and slow, as if he had to force them through layers of muck. He turned in his chair to face her. “I didn’t mean for any of this.”

  “I’m sure you didn’t.”

  “I . . . She . . .”

  Rain almost shouted, “Don’t bother,” but stopped herself. She was curious to hear what he’d say.

  He cleared his throat, hard, twice. “She tempted me. I swear, she was the one who . . .”

  “Stop,” she said then. “Just don’t.”

  When he spoke again, minutes later, as Rain watched the geese in the fake pond outside, his voice was lower, and tired. “She thought I was a hero.”

  The geese continued to spin their lazy ovals. The air-conditioning kicked in, filling the dead air with a white-noise rush Rain was grateful for. She walked closer to her husband, who sat slumped at the conference table, head in his hands. “And that made you happy? That was what you wanted?”

  He looked at her with a genuine tenderness she hadn’t seen in a long time, hadn’t even noticed when it disappeared. Right now, he wore the same look in the wedding picture in their bedroom. Rain remembered that day, and how beautiful everything was, and how she hadn’t known it in the moment, so caught up she was in the order of events and whether her stockings were itchy and whether her veil was falling off.

  As she looked back at the ruins of the person she used to love best, she vowed to recognize those moments when they happened. Be present in the moment, Beverly was always saying.

  TJ finally answered, “At least I didn’t feel like a failure.”

  Alex strode in with a sheaf of papers and a grave expression. Rain said, “And how do you feel now?”

  47

  Morgan had fled to the bathroom at lunch, not knowing where else to hide from reporters.

  She knew they weren’t supposed to name her in the paper, but they’d been bugging her parents and the prosecutor for a comment. Over lunch, it was only a matter of time that one, or maybe all of them, would start hounding her.

  She had slammed her way into a stall, slipped the lock into place, then plopped down on the toilet lid, pants up, head in hands.

  People came and went, using the other stalls, not noticing she was in there the whole time.

  She caught bits of gossip floating over the stall door.

  “She looks so young.”

  “I can’t believe she’s sitting on his side.”

  “That must be killing her parents. Can you imagine?”

  Then later, a new pair of women. “What do you suppose he was thinking?”

  “He wasn’t thinking. Except with his dick. Hey, did you notice? She looks like his wife.”

  “Creepy.”

  “You said it.”

  The door of the stall was a dull polished steel, an attempt to foil graffiti. Morgan could see a muddy reflection of herself. She could almost see this blurry image morph back and forth from herself to his wife. His wife, Rain, who was having a baby.

  Morgan had snuck a peek at her just before the lunch break, while turning around and pretending to be fishing for something in her purse. Rain’s hair had been falling around her face as she drooped forward like a wilting flower. She was alone—a barrier of empty space existed around her even in the crowded court. Then she’d shifted in her seat and looked up, brushing her hair back from her face. Her hand was shaking.

  Then Morgan remembered the beautiful bride in the wedding picture on the wall, how he practically rammed her through the wall having sex right there, the slippers under the bed, the nightgown peeking from the drawer, getting dumped off in the parking lot like a hooker.

  Rain did look like her, that long sweep of dark hair. They were both thin. Of course, Morgan had that scar. Maybe that’s in the end why he was still with his wife . . . Morgan was damaged.

  All morning, she’d kept trying to tell herself that the lawyer would say anything to get him out of trouble, that’s all. He’d smiled at her; he loved her. This was all just a game to get this over with, without him going to jail . . .

  At the price of this painful spectacle with her family at the center, her mother’s business trashed and in fact ruined forever because her mother had sold it. The boys in trouble at school because Jared fell in with the potheads, and Connor getting in fights for her sake.

  Her whole life she never wanted to cause trouble—all she ever tried to do was stay out of the way—and here she caused the most trouble possible, short of going to jail herself.

  She knew he was going to testify soon. He would get up and tell his version of a story with her starring as a crazy Lolita, with her mother sitting right there in court. He would say these things so he wouldn’t have to go to jail, wouldn’t have to admit he’d done anything wrong. He was going to serve her up on a platter to save his own ass, truth be told. She’d been telling herself it didn’t matter. She just wanted him out of trouble, whatever it took.

  But as she listened to those people tell lies about her in front of her family and the whole town, she’d begun to wonder why he couldn’t have just admitted it. To protect her. To protect his wife. She’d been squeezing her hands into fists all morning, as if she could hold on to the memories of being with him, of being in love. But like water, it was all running through her fingers, faste
r the harder she gripped.

  Morgan jumped off the toilet and slammed her way out of the stall, sprinting back toward the courtroom and asking the first uniform she saw where to find the prosecutor.

  Henry nodded on his side of the desk in a small conference room somewhere in the back of the courthouse. Morgan had just explained to him that she would testify if he needed her to.

  She didn’t want him to ask why, because she couldn’t have answered with any kind of logic. A rhythmic headache was pounding behind her eyes, and she just wanted it all to be over, so she could be somewhere else, someone else, with normal problems.

  Morgan’s parents were sitting behind her, looking at her askance with wary hope. It made her sick to see their expressions, so she focused on the prosecutor’s reassuring calm with his lightly folded hands and smooth voice.

  “I am very glad to hear this, Morgan, and not just because I’m glad you feel able to tell the truth under oath. I’m glad because it looks like you won’t have to.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean his lawyer just called to say he’s changing his plea to guilty.”

  Her mother shouted, “Oh, thank God,” at the same moment her father demanded to know why.

  Henry continued, “I can’t say why, and I don’t much care. I got the impression from reading between the lines of his attorney’s phrasing that his wife may have had something to do with his sudden honesty. But this is still important that you’ve said this, Morgan, because we have some more leverage now. I guarantee you the number one thing on his mind is staying out of jail and off the sex offender registry. His lawyer will act like we’re desperate to get a guilty plea and hold out for a slap on the wrist. Now, we can hold his feet to the fire with your willingness to testify.”

  “But . . . I mean, I want to say what really happened. I want to be honest. But . . . does he have to go to jail? He didn’t hurt me, I swear. He never forced me to do anything.”

  Her eyes filled up, and she put her fists to her eyes, trying to force the tears back in, muttering, “Dammit.”