He murmurs something that sounds like, “Forgive me, Glorious,” then turns the painting around.
I stare, taking the whole thing in.
Then I punch Remy in the stomach as hard as I can.
Chapter Thirty
Remy gasps and bends over. “What the—”
“You had this, the whole time, and you didn’t tell me?”
“She told me not to look!” he says, his voice full of the pain I’d caused. “I didn’t know what it was, and I still don’t.”
“Well, you should have,” I snap, so shocked by what I saw that I barely know what I’m saying.
He straightens up slowly. “Geez, you punch hard for such a skinny girl.”
My stunned mind jumps to another track. “This is where she was, right? She was coming home from here when that guy jumped her.”
He nods slowly. “She liked to stay late. I warned her to be careful, but to be honest this is a pretty safe neighborhood.”
“Yeah, it all turned out great,” I say, unable to keep my rage and pain out of my words.
He flinches back as if I’d swung at him again. “Don’t you think I’ve regretted that a million times? If I hadn’t let her use my space she’d still be alive. I know it, and I hate it. We used to hang out together all the time and paint, but she wanted to do this one alone so I didn’t come with her while she was working on it. I wish…”
I tune him out and study the back painting again. Though parts of it are just sketched, the whole is far too clear.
This time, she divided the canvas into two halves. The left part shows Anthony walking into the dining room, looking down at the beige carpet on which a single deflated red balloon lies.
I’m shown too, leaving through the other dining room door on my way upstairs to dress for lunch with my boyfriend, and so is the half-empty packet of balloons I’d thought I’d put safely atop the fireplace mantel.
It’s flat so it barely shows in the painting, but it’s definitely there on the mantel, exactly where I meant to put it.
But Gloria, our cordless phone pressed to her ear, is following me out of the room.
While a balloon falls from her jeans’ back pocket to join the one on the carpet.
I can hardly make myself look at the right side of the painting again, can’t believe I’ll really see the horrible thing I fear I saw.
But I do look, and I do see it.
Anthony lies on the floor, sketched but not yet painted, his hands beginning to move up to his throat.
The fireplace mantel is empty.
The packet of balloons is on the floor beside Anthony.
Gloria stands over it, her hand open as if she’s reaching out to her choking brother.
Or… as if she’s just dropped something.
I shut my eyes, my empty stomach churning. I can’t believe it, but the evidence is right here, in pencil and paint.
She made it look like I made the mistake. Like I killed Anthony.
She dropped the packet beside him, and then she screamed for help and ran away, falling into the glass curio cabinet and getting the scar she carried all her life.
But she carried more than that.
No wonder she fled the family after his funeral. Hiding her own guilt must have been a split-second decision. Maybe she figured he’d be fine and she just wanted to avoid getting in trouble for being careless. But then he died, and everyone thought I caused it, and how could she tell the truth then? She must have spent the rest of her life hating herself both for causing his death and for pinning it on me.
Her tears when I apologized for Anthony’s death as she lay in her hospital bed take on new and horrible meaning. She wasn’t refusing to forgive me. She was refusing to forgive herself.
If I’d known…
I can’t finish the thought.
What would have been different, if I’d known? If Gloria had told me in the hospital that her teenage self had framed mine, would even the tiniest thing have changed?
No. It would have made no difference.
Or it would have made all the difference in the world.
There’s no way to know.
I know only one thing.
I have no control.
I never have.
Unable to stay near the painting another second, I push past Remy and race for the door.
Chapter Thirty-One
Luck for once going my way, someone’s getting out of a taxi just outside. I throw myself into the car and gasp, “Ferry terminal, please. As fast as you can.”
The driver takes me more literally than I’d intended, peeling out of the driveway like a demon’s after him.
One might as well be, I think when I see Remy rushing out of the locker waving at me. How dare he not tell me about the painting? Yes, Gloria didn’t want him to. But still. If he’d told, I’d have known why she was on Staten Island that night—
The taxi lurches around a corner, banging my un-seat-belted self against its door. The shock of the pain smartens me up on two fronts: I put my belt on and I feel the true weight of my uselessness.
Knowing would have done nothing. The only thing that might have changed anything would have been if I’d agreed to meet her that night, and even then she might still have gone back and painted afterward. She probably would have. If anything, talking to me about the anniversary party would have made her want to come paint even more.
Nothing I could have done could have changed what happened to Gloria.
And the incident that first made me lock down every aspect of my life? It wasn’t my fault.
I didn’t kill Anthony.
I’ve spent twenty years trying to be perfect to atone for something I didn’t even do.
After a few minutes of fighting to understand this, I snap forward then back again as the driver hits the brakes so hard I might have gone through the windshield from the back seat if I hadn’t put on my belt. “We’re here,” he says. “Seventeen bucks, please.”
My hands shaking from the sudden stop, I find a twenty in my wallet then scramble out of the car with the bagged painting still over my shoulder. The taxi takes off, and I go down the stairs into the shopping area near the terminal and stand there alone surrounded by people.
As they walk by me, chattering with their friends or on their phones or just walking in silence, I wonder if they know the truth about the world. Do they have any idea how horribly fragile their lives are? One mistake, one decision, and everything falls to pieces.
If Gloria had confessed when Anthony died, we might have come together as a family instead of being ripped apart. My parents had eventually managed to accept what they’d believed I’d done, after all. They’d even managed to let me stay in their lives. They could have done that for her too. But she’d run away, and stayed away until over a year had passed, and by that point there was no family left to come together, just four strangers. Well, my parents, closer to each other than ever, and two strangers.
I’d envied Gloria’s apparent happiness so many times, but now I know how much pain she hid beneath it. If she’d told us the truth, she might not have died the way she did, miserable and terrified and so guilty she couldn’t speak anything but Anthony’s name.
I can’t bear it, that she went through that, and I also can’t bear knowing that my only sister let me and everyone else spend the last two decades thinking I killed our brother, and my agony for her and fury at her spin through me until I’m spinning too, turning around and running toward the terminal. I can’t be here any more. I have to get home where I can be alone, where everything is organized and precise and soothing, where I can somehow manage to get my head around all of this.
But I’m not alone yet, and as I race toward the terminal turnstiles I prove that by smacking hard into a man.
“Damn it!”
As he speaks, I both feel and see what he’d already realized: his hot coffee is all over us both. The shock of the heat and the impact with him overwhelms me in an instant a
nd dizziness hits me so hard I have to grab his shoulder to keep myself upright.
“Hey, what the— are you all right?”
His tone changes from annoyance to worry and I feel an arm go around my waist. “You’re all pale and— I’ve got you. It’s okay.”
My vision blurs and I fall into him, and his other arm winds around me too. I drop my head against his shoulder, and feel the weirdest sensation, even weirder than everything else. Like I’ve been here before, in his arms. Like I’ve been here, and like I never want to leave.
He tightens his grip on me. “Still with me?”
I mumble a yes, knowing I should pull away but not wanting to because his hold on me feels so safe and right.
“Good.” He eases back but keeps one supportive arm around my waist. “Come on, let’s sit down.”
The dizziness isn’t going away, so I have no choice but to let this stranger guide me into a nearby café. A worker behind the counter gasps when we arrives and says, “Should I call 911?”
I shake my head, then wish I hadn’t as it makes the place spin around me.
“I think she’s okay,” the man says, easing me into a chair at an empty table. “Just shock from running into me.” He crouches down in front of me, and as he does I see the clearly high-quality fabric of what I can tell is an expensive and probably custom-made white dress shirt. White, of course, except where I splattered coffee all over it. “Is that right? I’m not burned, so with any luck you’re not either. Good thing I got that drink before getting on the ferry so it had time to cool down.”
“I’ll pay for your dry cleaning,” I say, then feel even worse at the weakness of my voice. I shut my eyes, trying to get myself under control.
“Not right now you won’t. But you didn’t answer me. Are you burned?”
“No,” I murmur.
“Good. You just need some sugar then. And caffeine too. Tea or coffee?”
Sugar? “Coffee. Just sweetener though.” I open my eyes and reach for my wallet in my purse, but he’s pushed himself to his feet and walked away.
I want to do the same, but even sitting down I feel like I might pass out so I can’t risk it. Instead, I scribble my name and phone number on an abandoned receipt so I can insist on paying for the damage I’ve done and wait, my mind feeling as blank as Gloria’s last canvas before she began painting her truth, until he returns with a paper coffee cup and small white paper bag in each hand.
“Sweetener?”
He shakes his head and takes a seat beside me. “You need real sugar, not that fake stuff. Can’t have you fainting on the ferry.”
I stare at the cup like it holds poison, my mind struggling to think and decide what to do.
“And you need this too.”
I look over to see him pulling a chocolate chip cookie out of one of the paper bags. The aroma of it hits me, I see the molten chips glistening on its surface, and my mouth waters so much I’m afraid I’ll drool. I swallow hard. “Really?”
He doesn’t respond for a second, and I look up to see him studying me like he’s never seen something like me before.
Then he gives me a gentle smile, little crinkles forming at the corners of his brown eyes, and I notice for the first time that I plowed into a seriously attractive man. “I’m Nico, by the way. What’s your name?”
I tell him, then point at the receipt where I’d written it and my number. “Take that. I am paying for your cleaning. And the coffee and…”
He’s shaking his head. “I’m not worried. May I suggest you eat the cookie before it cools? They bake them fresh here.”
The cookie looks amazing. I can’t make my hand move toward it. Breaking the diet with something like this? I can’t.
But I do pick up the coffee because I’m still shaky and it might help. The warm cup feels so good in my hand that I wrap both hands around it, then I take a tentative sip and feel my mouth water again as pure unadulterated sugar hits my taste buds for the first time in I don’t know how long. My coffee syrup had sugar, thanks to Andrea the bitch, but it was chemical-laden and I can taste the difference. I swallow, wondering how to determine how many calories I’ve just taken in, and set the cup down while still keeping my hands curved around it.
“You’re looking better,” he says, smiling again. “The color’s coming back to your face.”
And it’ll keep doing that as long as he keeps smiling at me. I’m sure I’ve never seen him before but there’s still something so familiar about him, and it soothes me as much as his good looks and care for me attract me.
“So what do you do, Valerie? What’s brought you to Staten Island?”
Suddenly I don’t feel quite so soothed. Or attracted. “I’m currently unemployed,” I say, “and nothing good, I can tell you that.”
A faint frown creases his forehead. “Ah.”
I laugh. It hurts. “All you say is ‘ah’? What are you, a shrink?”
He gives me a half smile and a full nod.
I blink. “Really?”
“Yup. I’m a clinical psychologist, with a joint practice in Manhattan.” He clears his throat. “I’m a generalist, but one of my partners focuses on substance abuse and the other on eating disorders.”
He speaks calmly, but his eyes are locked to my face in a way that makes me uncomfortable. “Good for you,” I say, hating that he seems to be connecting me to eating disorders.
He gives a single nod, then without looking away from me he pulls his own cookie from its bag and pushes mine a little closer to me. “Go ahead. I’ll join you.”
My gaze falls to the cookie and I try to do the mental math. How many calories does the whole thing have? How many nibbles of it do I need to take to make Nico back off?
My hand jolts out toward the cookie before I know it’s going to. Shocked and embarrassed, I jerk it back, then feel a sudden fierce rage that burns away every other emotion. “No, you know what? I didn’t ask for it and you don’t get to decide what I eat. I’m not hungry now, that’s all, and where do you get off making a big deal of it? I don’t even know you.”
Nico’s eyes widen, but the rest of his face keeps that calm professional expression. “You’re right, you don’t.”
“Damn straight.” I push back my chair and get to my feet, then the awful dizziness sweeps through me again and I have to grab the edge of the table.
He reaches out for me, but I pull away. “I’m fine. I don’t need anyone’s help.” I dig in my purse and find my wallet then throw a five on the table. “For the coffee.”
“Valerie—”
I take off before he can finish his sentence and I don’t let myself look back. I go straight to the ferry terminal and lose myself in the crowd waiting by the huge glass sliding doors for the next trip to Manhattan.
In front of me is a fat woman, at least a size sixteen, facing sideways to talk to a friend while sucking down potato chips like it’s her job. I watch for a bit, fascinated that she doesn’t even seem to be chewing them, then begin to feel sick at the thought of how many calories she’s taking in with each handful she shoves into her mouth.
I haven’t eaten chips for years, since eating just one is far harder than eating none of them, and I certainly won’t start now, but a little part of me wonders what it feels like to be that free with food. Most of me, though, thinks it’s horrific. Isn’t she embarrassed? How can she stand there and eat in front of everyone? And not just eat, but eat like that, letting crumbs fall onto her huge chest and down over her bulging stomach to the floor. She doesn’t even seem to care what people think.
She raises her eyebrows and sticks out her chip-coated tongue, and I realize with shock that she’s noticed me looking at her. Embarrassed, I flick my gaze past her and try to look like I’ve been studying the view out the glass doors the whole time.
Though I’m not watching her any more, I can still see her in my mind, eating those chips without a single thought of the calories. My mouth fills with the imagined taste of salt and fat, a
nd I have to grab a piece of sugar-free gum from my purse to stop it watering.
Busy with all this, it isn’t until my ferry’s halfway to Manhattan that I remember the receipt I left Nico with my name and number. He won’t call, though. He obviously has money given the quality of his clothes, so he can afford his own dry cleaning, and he won’t want to reach out to someone as crazy as me. Yelling at him over a cookie?
I raise my face to the sky, and tell myself the wind is the sole cause of the tears in my eyes.
*****
Finally safely home, I change out of my coffee-stained clothes and throw them in the laundry hamper then take a long hot shower since I haven’t felt warm all day. Even after that, though, in my coziest pajamas with a thick cardigan over top, my feet and hands are freezing.
I make a cup of tea from the food Andy left behind in the back of my cabinet, hoping it’ll help me recover, but wrapping my hands around the hot mug just makes me think of holding the coffee Nico gave me. He’d been sweet to me, at least until he pressured me, and he’d definitely been easy to look at.
Should I have eaten his cookie?
I stare down into the black tea as if the answer might be floating in there. It isn’t, and I don’t have it either. The thing had looked delicious, no question, but I really hadn’t been hungry.
I’m still not.
When, exactly, did I eat last? I think back. And back and back. I honestly can’t remember.
But I must have done, right? Or I’d be dead.
But the fact that I don’t know when I last took in food bothers me.
The image of that woman with the potato chips returns to me, and it repels me. I don’t want to be her, stuffing myself and not even considering the consequences. And I don’t want to be fat like her, gross and bulgy and hardly able to walk.
But I do need to eat. Even though I don’t feel hungry, I probably do need to. I was okay on two hundred calories a day before so I ought to make sure I take in at least that much.
I get off the couch, wait for the dizziness to subside, and go to the fridge. The first thing I see inside is the white paper bag containing the sandwich Mom insisted I take from the reception after Gloria’s funeral, and that reminds me of how awful it had been walking around listening to people telling their memories of Gloria. I’d wanted to leave, but I’d known it wouldn’t look right, and so I’d survived by seeing all the food and refusing to eat any of it.
Holding Out for a Zero Page 16