Pride and Papercuts

by Staci Hart

  As I stood there facing her, something shattered, raining down on me like glittering glass. The girl in front of me with wild eyes and bared teeth was not the girl I knew.

  The girl I’d thought I knew. The girl I’d thought I loved.

  In that moment, the mirror broke, and I realized I didn’t know her at all. She was a stranger, unrecognizable in her anger and accusation.

  She’d already decided I was guilty.

  And so I built a wall, brick by brick, word by word.

  My hand fell to my side. I stepped back.

  “That’s not how this works,” I said, cold and detached. “These cases take years to build—federal agents don’t take over a building on a tip. Any number of people could have informed on her, and there’s no way for you to know how far that knowledge stretched. But none of that matters. Because if this is what you think of me, you don’t know me at all. You certainly don’t love me.”

  She shook her head, grappling with herself. “That’s not fair, Marcus.”

  “And this is?” I snapped.

  “Who else could it have been?”

  “Anyone. Her assistant. Her accountant. Someone else who knew. But you convinced yourself it was me when I’ve done nothing but prove my trust. I don’t know how to love someone and believe without question they’re capable of this level of mistrust.”

  “I suppose there’s not,” she answered shakily. “Because even now, you haven’t even denied it.”

  The pain of the blow slashed a cut in my heart so deep, I knew it would never be mended. “I shouldn’t have to.” We watched each other across a chasm of space. “I never thought you were like your mother. Not until right here, right now.”

  Her rage cracked, shooting her face open. Her skin paled, her anger withering and fading, erasing every trace of her mother until only Maisie remained.

  But the damage had been done.

  I gave her my back, carrying myself on unfeeling legs to the kitchen where I’d left my drink.

  She didn’t follow. “Marcus—” The word cracked.

  I didn’t let her finish whatever thought she had. “I think you should go,” I said to my scotch before draining it, unable to face her.

  There was only stillness behind me for a long moment, and as she hesitated, the air shifted from accusation to understanding, then regret.

  I listened to the sound of her walking away. Opening the door. Closing it again.

  For the last time.

  26

  Embers

  MAISIE

  What have I done?

  Through a sheet of tears, I navigated to the curb and into a cab.

  My mind was chaos, a screaming maelstrom of truth and lies and doubt.

  In the heat of his anger with my mother—had it only been a few precious minutes ago?—something in me had broken, tearing a tether, loosing a leash of shocking, white-hot fury. I’d become a churning storm, an unthinking and blind monster, and if I’d looked that monster in the eye, I’d have recognized her for the one who had raised me, who had bred and coaxed the creature in me to life.

  Who had released it with accusations of Marcus’s infidelity.

  Pieces clicked together, flying into each other too fast, with too much force.

  Every painful moment of opposition between my mother and I rose and fell in wave after wave of proof. Example after example of falsities and exploitations.

  I’d been so stupid, so naive, just like she’d said.

  I was a fool, unprepared to run a company. Unable to make the decisions she made, unable to face her choices, choices with consequences I’d shrink from in fear or disgust or both. I dug through the coals in my heart, looking for the one that had started the inferno. The image of my mother, teeth bared and eyes feral, when she discovered I’d told Marcus.

  And the seed she’d planted burst open exactly when she wanted.

  In that moment, in my grief and bellowing torment, there was no trust. I’d exploded with zealous certainty that he was the informer. Somehow, in my desperation to make sense of it all, to find someone to bear the hot brunt of my pain, I had convinced myself without question that it was him and only him.

  Blind. I had been blinded, possessed by the ghost of my mother, come to ruin me from beyond the veil.

  I pressed a hand over my lips, unable to hold back the wretchedness, the desolate tears, the anguished sobs as they seized me and didn’t let go.

  I hadn’t waited for his answer before condemning him. And it wasn’t until he’d turned his back on me that I realized just how deeply wrong I was.

  How had I gotten here?

  How had I, in my devastation, betrayed the one person I knew in my heart I could trust?

  The realization split me open, snapped a wire, leaving a gnarled, twisted barb in my heart.

  Perhaps it was years of manipulation that had driven me to assume something so egregious, the conditioning that even the woman who was supposed to protect me above all else was a liar and a thief. My mother had worn my ability to trust, worked it until a callus of suspicion stood between me and the world.

  Between me and Marcus.

  And I hadn’t even known it was there. Not until now, when it was too late.

  Trust. The commodity that he held above all, I’d defiled.

  In this one most crucial place, we would always contrast. His entire construct for life was built around the unwavering love of his family, and that love was founded in trust. To Marcus, love and trust were synonymous. They didn’t just go hand in hand—they were the sum and whole of each other.

  My construct for life and love was a convoluted knot of opposites. Trust and betrayal. Truth and lies. Where my father showed me what it meant to love and trust, my mother ripped the ideal to ribbons through years of control and manipulation. I thought I knew what it meant to trust. I thought I had my relationship with my mother tidily boxed up and dealt with. But at the very first sign of disloyalty, I turned on Marcus like a wild animal.

  I let my mother’s programming override my father’s influence. I let her persuasion negate every good thing he ever gave me.

  And with that offense, I had forsaken Marcus in the gravest of ways.

  I swiped at my face when the taxi came to a stop in front of Dad’s apartment, paying with shaking hands before sliding out and slinking inside.

  Dad was on his feet and rushing me before the door closed. When his arms were around me, I sank into him and let the storm inside of me loose.

  I never stopped trembling, not even when I gained composure. Not with the help of a drink and certainly not as I told him what had happened. The guns and mayhem as my mother had been arrested. The sight of her fighting as they’d dragged her away. The accusations she’d laid on me, on Marcus. My fear I would somehow be indicted. That I’d have to testify against her.

  And then I told him about Marcus.

  His face was shadows and regret, understanding and sorrow as I recounted what I’d said and done. And by the time I was finished, I was as hollow as a jack-o’-lantern, deflated and rancid from being left outside too long.

  For a moment, he said nothing. “Your mother put this into your head. She threw her last grenade, and look at what it did.”

  “Maybe,” I said again, my voice as watery as my eyes. “Or maybe I am her. I became her without even realizing it, without knowing it until he noted it. Just before he asked me to leave.”

  “Maisie,” he started, “don’t—”

  “But I did. Please, don’t try to convince me I didn’t behave exactly as she would have. We’d both know it was a lie.”

  He didn’t.

  His silence was almost worse.

  I drew a shaky breath. “I can think of a dozen reasons for what I’ve done. But there’s no excuse.”

  “I don’t think I know a single person who would walk away from what you just witnessed without trauma.”

  “It doesn’t matter, don’t you see?” I stared at my fingers as if I’d never
seen them before. “What’s done is done. All that’s left is to sort through the wreckage.” I breathed for a moment. “What will happen to Mother? Do you know?”

  “Well,” he said on a sigh, “she’ll be out of jail as soon as she’s processed, questioned, and bail is paid.”

  “That’s all? They don’t keep her?”

  “The rich have privilege enough to escape nearly anything. But we can debate the unjustness of the judicial system another time and preferably with more booze.”

  I wished I could laugh at the joke. “Will they … I don’t know … put her under house arrest or something?”

  “No, I don’t think so. But she won’t go anywhere.”

  “I’d feel a whole lot better knowing she was confined to one place.”

  He frowned. “Are you worried she’ll confront you?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  Another sigh. “I don’t know. I hope she wouldn’t, but your mother somehow manages to be both predictable and utterly shocking.”

  “And what happens to Bower? Will she keep it? She can’t very well run it from jail.”

  “That I don’t know, honey. And I don’t know how to even find out. I suppose I’ll hear from her lawyer, and if I don’t, I should be able to figure something out. I’m still her husband after all. But until then, maybe we can focus on the things you can do something about. Like Marcus.”

  “I don’t know if there’s anything I can do. I have committed a cardinal sin. I’m afraid it’s unforgivable.”

  “But you don’t know that, not until you talk to him. Marcus doesn’t strike me as an unreasonable man.”

  “He’s not. But that’s what makes the rejection so much more painful—he doesn’t say anything he doesn’t mean. And he said … he said …” I swallowed a dry stone. “He said he doesn’t know me at all. He looked at me like a stranger and told me that there’s no way to love someone and believe them to be capable of something this damaging.”

  “That’s not fair—we’re human, and we make mistakes. Love is also about forgiveness.”

  “In his world, love is founded first in trust,” I explained.

  “But not only in trust.”

  “I’m sure he’d agree, but to him, it’s paramount.”

  “Then talk to him and plead your case.”

  I shook my head, unable to meet Dad’s eyes. “He doesn’t want to see me.”

  “He does even if he thinks he doesn’t,” Dad answered without hesitation. “Because he loves you even though you hurt him. I don’t care what your ideals are—you can’t just walk away from love without looking back. Without wondering what if. Because love is another important thing—it’s hope. Love hopes that things will get better. It looks for the best in those it loves and believes it can bring those best parts out for the world to see. In a lot of ways, love can change you. Take a look in the mirror. The girl you are now is not the girl you were just a few short months ago, and Marcus’s love nudged you on, gave you courage. Not only should you fight for that, but you should hope. Because if he loves you, he won’t give up as easily as he might have made it seem.”

  Every time I brushed tears from my cheeks, more came. So I gave up and let them roll in warm streams down my face, gathering at my chin, dropping to my hands.

  Hope. I found a spark of it somewhere deep in my chest and fanned it until it was embers, then a flame, slight and wan as it was. Because one undeniable truth in my heart rose above the rest, cupping that flame in its hands.

  I couldn’t imagine a future without Marcus.

  With all of my hope and all of my wishes, I shouldered the herculean task of earning back his trust.

  And I wouldn’t give up until I did.

  27

  No Questions, No lies.

  MARCUS

  I didn’t know how to erase her.

  Her clothes mingled with mine in the laundry basket. Her heels sat in wait under the window on her side of the bed. Her toothbrush leaned opposite mine. The scent of gardenias hung in the air of my bathroom.

  Her ring sat on my dresser, watching me.

  I could pack her things, put them away. But she wouldn’t be gone. Not from my home. Not from my thoughts. And never from my heart. Her name was etched in the muscle, and though it might someday heal, there would always be a scar to shape the letters once shaped by my lips.

  Yesterday had been gruesome, a timeless stretch of suffering. Telling my family what happened had been unbearable. Home had been painfully, tangibly empty.

  And the night had been unending.

  I gave up the fight for sleep sometime around five in the morning, my eyes stinging and bleary. I made coffee because that was what I was supposed to do. I took the cup to my room, sat in the chair in the dark. Stared at those heels where they stood, innocuous and empty, as the sun rose. And when my coffee cooled, full and forgotten, I stood and dressed for the day.

  All the while, my thoughts blurred together, indistinct and without purpose. There was nothing to decide. No action to take. There was nothing to piece together, no question to answer. Only the echoes of what had been said and the companionship of my heartbreak.

  I’d tried to distinguish what hurt the worst. Her shocking fury. Her certainty—absolute and irrefutable. Her instinct not to trust me even though I’d given her no reason to doubt. Her unwillingness to listen to me.

  She blamed and condemned without question, unshakable in her rightness.

  That. That was the most painful of all.

  She hadn’t even given me a chance.

  And I wasn’t willing to fight her faithlessness to change her mind.

  If this was what she thought of me, our troubles ran deeper than this fight. I’d known the second I saw her hysteria. I knew what she’d seen, what she’d lost, the magnitude of which had torn her in two. I even knew she didn’t mean what she’d said, not really. When she calmed down, she’d realize she was wrong.

  But the damage had been done. The rosy haze we’d floated through since we met cleared in the span of just a few moments, moments that could never be taken back or redrawn. Words that couldn’t be reeled in or erased. And in those moments, I saw another woman, one I didn’t recognize. One who reminded me very much of her mother, a bond I hadn’t believed existed until right then.

  Maybe her mother had done this to her, conditioned her. Perhaps that likeness had been there all along, and I was too blinded by my feelings for her and her rejection of her mother to acknowledge it. But in the end, she’d turned on me at the very first opportunity and in such a savage way that I instantly doubted every emotion I’d felt, questioned every minute with her.

  Our trust had been shattered, and there wasn’t enough glue in the world to put it back together.

  If she mistrusted me so immediately, so deeply, then I didn’t know what we were doing together. I didn’t know how to go on, and I didn’t know what she could say.

  I did know that I missed her. I knew that I loved her even though I no longer trusted her. I wished wishes came true so I could take us back in time, so I could recapture that magic when we were still pure and untainted.

  But we couldn’t go back, and the path before us was a soupy wall of fog so thick, it had become an impasse. The only thing that could break it up was sunshine, and I had a feeling we wouldn’t see that for a long, long time.

  I walked to the window, stood for a long moment with my eyes on those empty shoes. And then I picked them up and placed them in the bottom of my closet, right next to her suitcase.

  As I closed the door, I knew this was the only way to erase her. One little thing at a time until she was gone.

  I shoved my mind in the direction of my day, listing the things I would do to occupy myself. My only hope was to exhaust myself enough to fall into bed when I finally came home. Though somehow I knew that no amount of exhaustion would stop me from spending the sleepless night thinking about her.

  When the doorbell rang, I stopped, my heart staggering, her na
me on my lips.

  As I walked to the door and pulled it open, I knew without question I would find her standing there.

  She was too small, too colorless. Pale hair and skin, dark eyes smudged with shadows from a sleepless night of her own.

  A flare of pink rose in her cheeks when our eyes met.

  The instinct to reach for her sent a blazing streak of pain through my chest.

  Neither of us spoke.

  “I …” she started, instantly fumbling. “May I come in?”

  I moved out of the way, watching her as she passed.

  We didn’t make a move beyond the entryway. I didn’t invite her in further.

  She watched me with those starless, sad eyes. “Would you believe me if I said I was sorry?”

  “Yes. But I don’t know what it would change.”

  Her throat worked. “It doesn’t seem like enough, those words. They can’t explain the depth of what it means to be sorry, too common and shallow for how I regret what I said yesterday, what I did. I could tell you all the reasons, but I think you know them already. Mostly, I wasn’t myself.”

  “No, you weren’t. Or maybe you were. I’m not sure I know anymore.”

  “Please, don’t say that. On some fundamental level, you and I know one another. You said so yourself.”

  “I remember,” I said softly.

  “I don’t know what possessed me yesterday. It was all so much, and I just … it made sense. In my mind, in that moment, it made sense—your pushing me to come clean, the math of it all, even the possibility of you getting her out of the way. But I was wrong. I know you’d never have betrayed my trust. Instead, I betrayed yours.”

  “It wasn’t just a betrayal of trust. You defaulted to accusations. You defaulted to blaming me. Without thought, without reason, you put my head on the block and swung the ax.”