by Britney King
Not long after Greg returns, escorted by a nurse and a security guard, a doctor appears and delivers the news. Blair has a basilar skull fracture. She is leaking cerebrospinal fluid from both ears and one nostril. She fractured her tibial plateau on the growth plate, and her left arm is broken.
They will monitor her for several days to see if the CSF clears up on its own, otherwise surgery will be required. Just hearing the words “brain surgery” causes me to grip the elbow rest. The room spins. I am going to be sick.
The doctor goes on to explain how the surgery might work and our options, involving a synthetic graft using a piece of her own tissue, taken from either fat or muscle. If her brain continues to swell, he has not ruled out placing a lumbar drain in her lower back to decrease intracranial pressure. The tibial fracture will require surgical repair as well.
Later, after Blair is moved from the ER to a room, and Naomi has gotten the chance to see her sister, Greg takes her to stay the night with Dana in case things take a turn for the worse during the night.
When he returns, he looks weary. His shoulders slouch, and he doesn’t readily make eye contact when he hands over a bag of takeout. I set it aside. The smell makes me nauseous. I can’t even think of food. He plops down on the fold-out sofa beside me. “The bolts were removed from the swing set on purpose.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean what I said. It wasn’t an accident Blair fell. Someone did this on purpose.”
I rest my face in my hands. A knock at the door causes me to look up. Alex texted earlier, asking if I could talk. I texted back saying I was in the hospital with Blair and nothing more. He’s the last person I expect to see standing there. Clearly, my husband too. He doesn’t say it, but his body tenses, and his jaw twitches, and all the signs are there. When you've been with a person as long as I’ve been with Greg, you don’t have to look hard. Outside, he’s calm and mostly collected. Inside, he’s fuming.
He treads carefully, Alex does. Walking into the room as though on a tightrope. “I’m sorry to barge in like this.” He glances at Blair lying motionless and then at the monitors that display her vital signs. “How is she?”
I give a small shrug. “Okay, I guess.”
“I just wanted to let you know they picked Mooney up two days ago for public intoxication.”
“What a relief,” Greg says, glaring at me. His face conveys everything he’s thinking but not saying. He’s thinking, what is he doing here? And how does he know about Jack Mooney? And what else has my wife not been telling me?
Alex’s brow raises. “Except they let him go.”
I wish he hadn’t come. “They what?”
“Yeah. They questioned him about breaking into your house. He has an alibi.”
“Of course he does,” I snap. “But is it legit?”
“Probably not. Though it’s hard to say. And without fingerprints or any kind of evidence…”
Greg shakes his head and then stands and walks over to the bed, turning his back on me.
“Did they search the place where he’s staying?”
“No. He wasn’t picked up there. They’d have to get a warrant…and again, without evidence…it’s hard—”
“How are they supposed to get evidence if they aren’t looking for it?”
“They’d need probable cause.”
“Right.” Alex might as well be speaking gibberish. I hear what he’s saying, but that doesn’t mean it makes any sense.
Greg steals a glance over his shoulder. “I thought you were a divorce attorney.”
When Alex doesn’t respond, I thank him for coming. He stands and walks to the door. “I shouldn’t have interrupted,” he says, glancing at my husband, who is facing the other way. “I’ll keep in touch. And please let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”
“You’ve done plenty,” Greg remarks flatly, pivoting on his heel.
With a nod, Alex leaves just as quickly as he’d appeared.
Greg folds his hands across his chest, and through narrowed eyes he glares at me. He knows me better than I think he does, but clearly not as well as he thought. “Amy,” he hisses. “What have you done now?”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Greg paces back and forth across the room, eventually stopping at the window. He folds his arms across his chest and peers out. His reflection shines back at me. His nose is pressed so close to the glass that it might as well be touching it, as though he’s trying to get as far away as possible. “I just can’t imagine what you were thinking.”
“You want to know what I was thinking?” I feel my face get hot. Tears well up. “I was thinking I wanted to avoid something like this from happening. I was thinking I wanted Jack Mooney back in jail.”
“And you thought contacting Alex, of all people, would solve your problems?”
“Actually, yes.”
He crosses the room and sits next to me on the couch, his elbows balanced on his knees. He rests his head in his hands and presses his palms into his eye sockets. “I just don’t get it. Don’t you remember what a creep he was—what he put you through?”
I do remember. I’d been living with Alex when I met Greg. It was actually Alex who introduced the two of us. Back in college, they were study partners. But after we started dating, Alex developed a sudden distaste for Greg, which wasn’t surprising. He found fault with most of my friends. He didn’t think Greg was good enough for me, and he made it clear every chance he got. But he paid the bills on time. He split household tasks evenly, often taking on more than his fair share, and always without complaint. Until the end, he was the perfect roommate.
It was nice to find a member of the opposite sex that I could be completely comfortable and completely platonic with. It helped that he was gay. Or at least that’s what he’d said, and I had no reason not to believe him. Even now, I’m not sure what was a lie and what was the truth. We never made it that far.
One drunken night as we were lying together on a mattress on his bedroom floor, he let something slip. He’d just learned he’d passed the Bar exam, and we were celebrating, talking about everything and nothing, the way inebriated people tend to do. He’d mentioned something that had happened at a party, a party he hadn’t been invited to. When I asked him how he knew about the incident, he was evasive. The way I saw it, it wasn’t a big deal. I saw my questions as harmless. Mostly I was joking. He saw it as an interrogation. Sure, I might have accused him of following me. I thought it was cute. I was admittedly a little honored that he cared that much. I saw Alex as the big brother I never had. Protective and all-knowing. But as I continued to rib him, he grew defensive and angry. He grabbed me by the wrist, yanked me off the bed, shoved me out of his room, and slammed the door shut. He didn’t speak to me for two weeks.
Fourteen days is a long time when you share a tiny apartment with only a thin wall separating your beds. After that night, things were awkward. More so, when I found the photos in his bedroom of me. Me sleeping. Me laughing. Me at various angles, making it obvious I wasn’t aware the photos were being taken.
I moved out the same day and in with Greg. I had nowhere else to go, not on such short notice. I’d left the photos on the kitchen counter with a note that said: this is not okay.
I’m not sure what I had expected to come of it. But it wasn’t silence. Truthfully, I thought he’d reach out with some sort of explanation. What kind of explanation, I can’t say, but our friendship was important to me. Secretly, and naively, I hoped he’d beg me to come back. I hoped that things would go back to the way they’d been before. It didn’t help that he had driven a wedge between me and the rest of my friends with his frequent antics. It was always something. Even so, I’m almost sure that, with the proper apology, I would have forgiven him. I never got the chance. He ghosted me.
At the time, I was hurt. Now I can see that it was for the best. It’s clear that our friendship was a concept, a fantasy. Something I had gotten swept up in. By the time I realiz
ed what was happening, it took drastic measures to find my way out. Hindsight being twenty-twenty, I understand how I led him on. Thinking he batted for the other team, I saw it as harmless. But it wasn’t harmless.
I reach out and touch Greg’s thigh. “Please don’t be mad.”
He looks up at me and shakes his head. “I’m not mad, Amy. I’m disappointed.”
“I understand. But right now we need to focus on Blair.”
“Why do I get the feeling there’s more you’re not telling me?”
“Because there is.”
He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath in. On the exhale, he opens them and puts me in my place. “For fuck’s sake. What?”
“I bought a gun.”
“Of course you did.”
“It’s missing.”
His head cocks to the side. “What do you mean it’s missing?”
“After the break-in, it was—” I shrug. “It was just gone.”
“And you didn’t think mentioning this to the police was worth it?”
“I didn’t know until after they were gone. I had it hidden. And at the time I didn’t think to look.”
“Did Alex help with that, too?”
“With what?”
“With the purchase of the gun?” He rolls his eyes. “I can’t see you just waltzing into the gun store.”
I rear back. “Well, I did.”
It takes a second for the incongruous mental image to land. His eyes narrow. “There’s something else you’re not telling me.”
One of Blair’s alarms sounds. “Yes,” I say, glancing at the small window in the door, watching for a nurse who should appear any moment. “But we can’t discuss it here.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Blair spends three days in the hospital. Three long and arduous, soul-sucking days. Three days is also the amount of time Greg and I hardly speak, unless medically necessary. It’s a tense time revolving around Blair’s prognosis and recovery. Factor in shuffling back and forth between the hospital to care for Naomi, plus babysit our jobs, and well, there’s not much left over for the two of us.
Thankfully, we get a lucky break. The CSF leak clears up on its own, and Blair’s knee surgery goes as well as expected. She suffers headaches daily, and she sleeps a lot, but by the time we are released we’re all just happy to get to go home. To be able to sleep in our own beds, and shower in our own shower, to not be woken up every hour by well-meaning nurses, makes the joy palpable. It feels like Christmas, almost.
Before we are released from the hospital, a group of colleagues, including my entire realty office, banded together. They disassembled the old swing set and purchased and reassembled a brand-new one. They stocked our pantry and our refrigerator and had the guest room downstairs transformed into a temporary bedroom for Blair and me.
Some of our neighbors dropped off wrapped Christmas gifts. Their generosity took a lot off my plate, and for that I am indelibly grateful. Dana and Sarah arranged a meal calendar for the next few weeks. It almost makes up for what they said about me behind my back. In that way, I suppose guilt has its perks.
While I was in the hospital with Blair, an officer met with Greg about the missing bolts from the swing set. He took his statement and several photos. I don’t hold out much hope that anything will come of it, but at least it has been documented.
Word has spread among our circles about Jack Mooney and the harassment. Our neighbors have been told what to look for. Talk is cheap, though, and rumors spread. I’ve heard gossip that is true, although much of it isn’t. While I appreciate the goodwill, this is not the kind of attention I’d wish upon our family. It feels like we're a twenty-car pileup in the middle of an otherwise empty roadway, and neighbors crane their collective neck to catch a glimpse as they move forward.
Once we are settled at home, Greg comes into the makeshift bedroom where Blair is sleeping and I am perched on the floor with my laptop on my knees. He tells me we need to talk.
“You always hate it when I say that.”
He looks away and out the window, and with a heavy sigh, tells me he didn’t come to fight. His expression and the slump of his shoulders allow me to drop my guard too.
“Why didn’t you tell me you’d contacted him?”
“I don’t know. I was handling it.”
“And you knew I’d be mad.”
My bottom lip juts out. “And I knew you’d be mad.”
“We can’t keep secrets from each other. It’s not healthy.”
“You lied to me about the money. You lie to me about your work; I know things are worse off than you let on and still you lie.”
He opens his mouth to speak and then thinks better of it.
“But Alex? Really?”
Somehow I don’t think this is a good time to offer up the information about Benny and what he plans to do. “You’re right. It was probably a mistake.”
“The guy’s a creep. Remember what he put you through?”
“He was your friend.”
“Keyword. Was. And my God, how easily you forget.”
“I’m sorry. I should have told you.”
“No,” he says. “You shouldn’t have done it in the first place.”
“You’re probably right. But we need help.”
A grin slides across his face. “What’s the difference between a good lawyer and a bad lawyer?”
I roll my eyes. My husband solves issues in one of two ways. Sex and humor. “I don’t know. What?”
“A bad lawyer might let a case drag on for several years. A good lawyer knows how to make it last even longer.”
The second night we are home, I put Blair to bed downstairs and turn on the old baby monitor Greg dug out of the garage, bringing it to the bathroom with me while I shower. Greg sends me a text from upstairs. I need you. And we need to talk.
I respond with a thumbs-up emoji. And then I type out, I’ll be up in a minute.
His response is immediate. Are you in the mood to play?
Am I in the mood to play? Such a loaded question. I am actually exhausted in every way. Although I know what he is asking, and I know that we need to talk. For weeks now we have been like two parallel roads that never cross. It’s impossible to sustain a marriage like that over the long haul, and who really knows where the line is drawn. This is not my first rodeo. I understand that with what I have to lay on him, so to speak, I’m better off just giving him what he wants.
Chapter Thirty
He was frozen. Straight-up paralyzed. An ever-present sense of panic gnawed at him. When he placed the cameras, this is not what he was expecting to see. He only wanted to know the children were all right. Yes, he’d wanted proof that they needed more supervision and confirmation that their parents needed to do better, but what he has now is bigger than that. It’s a situation, and now he cannot turn away.
She entered the room like an angel, dressed in a thin robe with a towel framing her head like a halo. The husband had been seated on the bed, his hands folded in his lap, his gaze fixed on the floor as though he were thinking, or waiting, or both. He looked up when she appeared and stood immediately, his shoulders squared off.
He moved toward her, and then they moved out of range. For several moments, all he could hear were sounds. At first, grunts, and then smacking followed by an abrupt silence. It felt like forever before he heard anything again. He went to the window and searched for their shadows. He peered through binoculars. Outside, the sky was peppered with stars, enveloped by a bitter cold. He wished he could float away. He wished he could see them again. And then, finally, he did.
“It’s time you learned who’s in charge,” his neighbor said. “And surprise, Amy. It isn’t you.”
He was the first to come back into frame. Him in his flat-fronted khakis and fancy sweater. It reminded Theo of something his mother would have bought and forced him to wear. Greg Stone led his wife by the hand, stopping in the perfect position as though on cue, directly in front of the camera
. Their eyes met briefly before hers fell to the floor. Theo watched as he slipped her silky robe from her shoulders. He placed his hand under her chin and lifted her face, forcing her to look at him. “You haven’t listened very well, have you?”
“If you thought otherwise, you wouldn’t have asked the question.”
“It’s considered consent, darling.” He laughed, dropped her face, turned and shook his head. “God, could you be anymore ignorant?”
Quickly, he shuffled back, grabbing her chin once more. When she attempted to twist away, he tightened his grip. Once again, he belted out a laugh. It sounded nothing short of evil. “We are going to come to an agreement, aren’t we?”
Amy Stone looked resigned and as fragile as Theo had ever seen her. It was as though she knew something terrible was going to happen, and she was powerless to stop it. It was as though her thoughts couldn’t keep up with her fear, as though she, too, were paralyzed by what she was seeing.
“You see,” Greg Stone said. “Every action has its consequences.”
He backed away and took her in, eyeing her from head to toe.
“Now, I know—” he told her, his mouth twisting into a firm knot. “I know you didn’t mean for any of this to happen. But that doesn’t change it, now does it?”
There’s just a stifled silence that serves as her reply. He appears unsure whether his wife hears him, whether her mind is present in the same room, or whether it is far off and she is patently ignoring every word of his scolding.
His mouth curled into a grim smile. He tied her hands and then shoved a washcloth into her mouth. Finally, he wrapped duct tape around her head, lodging the towel in place. This reminded Theo of his mother’s crime shows, and he squeezed his eyes shut because he was afraid of what comes next.
When he opened them again the man’s face was expressionless. A somber look passed across Amy Stone’s face and then nothing. Theo knows that look. He’s offered it himself countless times. It’s what happens when he checks out.