Every Step She Takes

by K. L. Armstrong

  Her phone rings three times before going to voice mail, which means it’s sitting on her dining room table. Unless she’s expecting a call, she often leaves it behind for church lest even a vibration disturb others. I tell her that I’m in New York and we’ll talk this evening when she’s home.

  The next call is harder, and I hit the name twice…only to hang up before the first ring. What do I even say?

  Hey Marco, it’s me. So, first, I lied about why I’m in New York. Remember that package that came to Lucy Callahan, and I said I had no idea who that was? I lied there, too. In fact, I’ve been lying since I met you. I am Lucy Callahan. The name sounds vaguely familiar, you say? Ever heard of Colt Gordon? Er, yes, that Colt Gordon. Well…

  There is no way to give that conversation the space it needs before I meet Isabella. Even if I could, this isn’t a conversation for a hotel lobby. I want to at least video-call, so he can see my face when I give him the news.

  I start a text, saying we need to talk, and I’ll call in a few hours.

  “Ms. Callahan?” a voice says.

  I turn to see a stone-faced young woman. She’s midtwenties, immaculately dressed, with a straight black pageboy and bright red lips.

  “Ms. Callahan?” she repeats.

  I rise. “Yes.”

  “Follow me, please. Ms. Morales is waiting.”

  I look at my phone, text half-written. She stands there, her expression still as blank as a cyborg’s, but in that blankness, I feel judgment. She knows who I am, and the longer I dally, the more uncomfortable this will become.

  I glance up at a row of world clocks showing the time in Los Angeles, Sydney, Moscow and London.

  It’s already 9 p.m. in Rome. If anything does go wrong here, Marco will be asleep by the time it hits the news. No reason to worry him with another ominous “we need to talk” message.

  I delete my text, pocket the phone and follow the young woman to the elevators.

  * * *

  —

  The young woman escorts me to the penthouse suite—the same one Isabella rented all those years ago. Of course. Why bring me here and then pull her punch at the last second? Might as well follow through and hit me with all she has.

  The young woman raps on the door. A moment passes. Then it opens, the figure obscured behind the door.

  “Thank you, Bess.” That voice, with its trace of a Mexican accent, slams me in the gut.

  The young woman—Bess—says, “Is there anything else I can get you, ma’am?”

  “No, you have the rest of the day off.”

  “That isn’t necessary.”

  “I insist.” While Isabella’s tone stays warm, that steel thread is unmistakable. Bess tenses but only dips her chin and retreats without a glance my way.

  Isabella stays behind the door, and I brace for a click of camera shutters documenting my entry. Instead, there is only Isabella and she is…

  The word old springs to mind, but I reject it with a wince. I will not be cruel. I’ve hurt her enough. Old isn’t the word, anyway. Older is correct, and it was only a shock, as if I expected to confront the woman I last saw fourteen years ago.

  There’s frost in her hair, artfully threaded through, as if she has declared herself past the age where dying it jet black would flatter her aging face. She has let her face age. I would expect no less. She’s still beautiful, still bearing that impossible figure, if a little thicker through the middle.

  “Isabella,” I say stiffly.

  She doesn’t even seem to hear me, just stares, as if at a stranger.

  “Yes?” I say.

  I hear the bite in that word, like armor snapping around me. I shake it off. I need her to think I come defenseless, expecting a gentle, tear-and-apology-filled reunion.

  I want to try for something softer, but standing in front of her, there’s nothing soft in me.

  That’s a lie. There is softness—and every instinct screams to protect it. Shield myself before she can home in on my weak spots.

  Forget subtlety, then. I’m in no mood to manufacture it. Too angry and too anxious, and I must focus on the former.

  I stride past her and look around. “Where are you hiding the cameras?”

  “Cameras?” Her voice crackles, as if she has to dig to find it.

  I turn on her. “You sent a parcel bearing my old name into my new life. If you found me, you know I don’t go by Lucy anymore. That parcel was a grenade lobbed over the parapet.”

  She blinks. “No, that wasn’t—By using your old name, I only wanted to get your attention.”

  “Because otherwise I’d ignore a parcel addressed to me? Who does that? Someone else found that parcel. Someone I haven’t told about my past.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t think—”

  “You always think, Isabella.” I walk into the suite. “I’m here because I recognize a threat when I see one. By using my old name, you reminded me that you know who I am, so I damned well better accept your invitation. After I arrived, I realized this might be more than a personal takedown. Then I saw the hotel you’d chosen, and that left no doubt.”

  Isabella walks to a chair and lowers herself into it. “I’ve made a mess of this.”

  “Only if you expected I wouldn’t figure out what you were up to.”

  “There is no camera crew, Luc—Genevieve.”

  “Lucy to you.”

  She nods. “Look around all you like. If you’re worried about hidden cameras, I’ll phone down and ask for another room.”

  I almost say yes to call her bluff. But if we are being recorded, then she’s miked, and moving venues won’t help.

  “No one is recording this?” I say.

  “They are not.”

  “I have your word on that? The understanding that I’ve come in good faith, with no agenda of my own, simply to hear what you have to say?”

  “Yes.”

  That’s enough for me, considering my phone is also recording this conversation in case I need to prove I wasn’t the doe-eyed idiot who bounded into her trap unaware.

  “Why here, then?” I say.

  She looks around the suite. “It was a good memory. I wanted to recapture that, to remind us both of a better time.”

  “I am well aware of the fact that you were kind to me, and you were generous, and I betrayed you. Bringing me here only salts the wound.”

  “Then I apologize. That was not my intention.” She watches me as I take a seat. “You’ve changed.”

  I laugh. I don’t want to—not this kind of laugh, harsh and bitter. I bite it off and say simply, “I had to. But if you truly wish to extend an olive branch, Isabella, then I’d like to begin by saying that I don’t want to compare war wounds. You may accept the dubious honor of most-injured.”

  “I don’t want it,” she says softly. “I’m not sure I’ve earned it.”

  “Then let’s put that aside. I’m fine. This is about you—what you need from this conversation.”

  She rises and pours coffee without a word. When she hands me a cup, I pretend not to notice her hands trembling as I take the bone-china mug with thanks.

  “I spent a very long time hating you, Lucy,” she says as she settles back into her seat. “I was hurt, obviously. Devastated. In my position, it’s difficult to allow anyone into my house, around my family.”

  “You trusted me. I betrayed you. I understand that. I have never not understood it.”

  She nods. “Then perhaps you were the more mature one. I apportioned blame, and I gave you the lion’s share. I took some, too, for allowing you in based only on Karla’s recommendation. And I gave some to Colt, but not nearly as much as he deserved.”

  She tugs her skirt over her knees. “I made excuses for him. He was going through a rough patch. Roles were drying up. His body wasn’t what it used to be.
He was feeling old, and I brought a pretty girl into our home. What did I expect?”

  “That he’d act like a forty-year-old husband and father and not see a teenage employee as a potential conquest?”

  She flinches at that, but I don’t withdraw the words.

  “Yes,” she says slowly. “I blamed myself for putting temptation in his way. I blamed you for falling under his spell. That’s what we do, isn’t it? Blame women for treating men like rational beings capable of controlling sexual impulses. Even in my bitterest anger, I realized Colt had done the seducing, and yet it was easier to blame you.”

  “You needed someone to hold accountable for your husband’s infidelity, and I was the disposable person in your life.”

  She leans back in her chair. “There was no ‘infidelity,’ Lucy. Colt and I had an open marriage. For him, life has always included an all-access pass to sex. I used to joke that expecting monogamy was like expecting a man of appetite to refuse a buffet. I don’t make that joke anymore. Appetite is an excuse. The truth is that he’s a glutton, and he cannot look at the buffet and tell himself that he has better food at home.”

  She sips her coffee. “I offered him nonmonogamy because I knew he’d cheat. I had other reasons to be with Colt. We were good friends and good partners, and I knew we’d make good parents. Refusing his proposal because I couldn’t expect fidelity would be like finding the perfect house and walking away because it lacked a master bath.”

  “Perhaps,” I say. “But you could always add the master bath. Or you could ask your husband to look inside himself and figure out why he couldn’t walk away from the buffet, what need it satisfied and how that hole could be otherwise filled.”

  Isabella’s burst of a laugh flings me into the past. “I used to think you were someone I’d like to know when you got older. You’ve grown into a woman who is much, much wiser than I was at her age.”

  “Don’t,” I say and then add, softer, “Please.”

  She nods. “You are painfully correct about Colt, but at the time, I felt like such a progressive and modern woman, granting his sexual freedom to lift that specter from our marriage. Sex, then, was not the issue. The issue was that, when I married him, I had the wisdom to protect my future family and, yes, my heart. There were rules. Strict rules. He had to be discreet. He could have flings but not full-blown affairs. He would never bring that side of his life home—he wouldn’t mention the women to me, and his children would not find out. Distance and discretion.”

  “A one-night stand with a fellow actor who would maintain his privacy,” I say. “Not a fling with an eighteen-year-old tutor at your summer house.”

  After a moment, she says, quietly, “Yes.”

  “And that’s why he did it, isn’t it? Giving a child all the cookies doesn’t mean he’ll stop stealing them.”

  “Because it isn’t just about the cookies,” she says. “It’s about the thrill and challenge of the theft.”

  I shrug and lift my coffee cup. “I won’t presume to analyze your husband and your marriage, but you threw me into a position where I had to do that if only for my own understanding. Colt loved you very much. That was obvious. But he was bored and feeling old. I was a diversion. It had nothing to do with either of us. It was all about Colt.”

  “He’s told me that many times. He accepted responsibility, but I still felt responsible. I was busy that summer, and he felt neglected.”

  “As if it was your wifely duty to surrender your dreams to nurse him through his midlife crisis.”

  Her lips twitch. “I could have saved myself a lot of money on therapists and just talked with you.”

  “I wish you had talked with me,” I say, my voice low as I set my coffee down untouched. “That was what I wanted more than anything. To talk to you.”

  Tears glisten. Then she blinks them back and straightens. “I understand, but I also hope you understand why you couldn’t. You were having sex with my husband.”

  “No, I wasn’t. I was a virgin when I arrived at your home and a virgin when I left.” I manage a wry smile. “I even went to the doctor afterward to see if my hymen was intact. Now we know that’s bullshit, but at the time, I thought it was what I needed to clear my name. Yes, it was intact, but my mother rightfully convinced me that going public with that would only make things worse.”

  “Just because you didn’t have penetrative sex—”

  “There was no sex of any kind. Unfortunately, a doctor’s note wouldn’t prove that. My only hope was that you would believe me when I explained it in my letter. Obviously, you didn’t.”

  She goes still, and something in her eyes…

  “You did read my letter, right?” I say. “You must have. You sure as hell replied.”

  She flinches at the profanity, however mild, but then that look returns. Discomfort and dismay.

  “You didn’t read it,” I say. “Not past a line or two. You didn’t give a damn what I had to say. You had something to say. You had a lot to say.”

  “I…”

  “You presumed my letter was excuses and apologies. I’m so sorry, Isabella. I didn’t mean to screw your husband. I just couldn’t control myself. Please accept my deepest apologies…and is there any chance I can come back next year, maybe get an internship on your new show?”

  I look at her. “The letter was an explanation. Not an excuse. I wrote it and rewrote it until I’d erased any hint of self-pity or blame-laying. I made a mistake. But my mistake was not what you saw in the papers, and I needed you to know that. I would think you already did, considering you were still with Colt. Whatever he intended that night, he’d have made damn sure you knew he never got it.”

  Silence.

  “What did he tell you, Isabella?”

  She fusses with the coffee cup, and I’m about to prod again when she says, “We separated briefly after that night. I needed to get the children away before the media circus began in earnest, and I needed to make rational decisions, not emotional ones. Colt tried to contact me, of course. Tried many times in many ways until I said, if he kept trying, I’d respond with divorce papers. After that, he gave me my space. We reconciled. I suspect you know that.”

  “Kinda hard to miss,” I say, “when every move you two made brought a fresh invasion of paparazzi…and a fresh tsunami of vitriol from your fans.”

  God, that sounds bitter. Sarcasm sharpened on fourteen years of pain, and I am ashamed of myself. I want to be stronger, want to tell her none of it affected me.

  How could it not affect me?

  “You reconciled,” I say. “Presumably then, he told you what actually happened.”

  “He said the papers got it wrong, that there hadn’t been anything more than what I saw in those pictures. Which seemed convenient. He couldn’t deny the photos, and clearly, nothing happened after you two realized you were being photographed, but the chance that some paparazzi just happened to be there to record your one and only encounter?” She shakes her head. “I wasn’t that stupid. I told him that I wanted to set it aside and move on.”

  “And he wasn’t going to insist on clarifying and jeopardize the reunion.”

  She says nothing.

  “As for the chance that someone recorded our first and only encounter? It was a party. There were paparazzi skulking in the bushes and getting their long-range shots from the water. They certainly caught me swimming with Justice Kane. The guy who took those shots saw Colt sneak off with the nanny. Of course, he followed. Of course, he got the shots. That was our only encounter, Isabella. While I no longer care whether you believe that, at the time, I wanted nothing more than for you to understand…and you tossed out my letter and wrote me a reply that had me with a bottle of pills—”

  I stop, biting off the words and shaking my head fiercely.

  “Oh, Lucy,” she says, and she stands and makes a move as if to cross the space
between us.

  I raise my hands, almost falling back in my haste to ward her off.

  She settles into her seat again and says, “Will you tell me now?”

  I lift my gaze to hers, my face as impassive as I can make it.

  “Will you tell me what happened that night?” she says. “I would like to know, and I’d like to hear it from you.”

  TWELVE

  The Hamptons 2005

  Isabella kept stressing that the party would be a casual affair. As I discovered, that meant a whole other thing for celebrities. The patio and yard were transformed into a fairy wonderland of sparkling lights so expertly entwined that the trees and bushes seemed to glitter with fireflies. Our dresses may have been summer casual, but we had our hair, nails and makeup done by the same women who’d pampered us in the city, brought in for the day.

  At six, the guests began arriving in a procession of chauffeured luxury cars and self-driven sports cars. Valets whisked vehicles off to some unknown location where they wouldn’t clog the residential street.

  Isabella had invited fifty guests. I counted sixty, presumably some unable to resist sneaking in a friend. Everyone was A-list. Actors, directors, musicians, producers, all flying from around the world to celebrate Colt and Isabella’s anniversary.

  The impulse to run and hide nearly overwhelmed me. It might have, too, if I hadn’t kept reminding myself that, to them, I was the hired help. If Isabella took pains to introduce me, they assumed she was simply being kind, and they were kind in return, but they’d forget my name a minute later, and I was okay with that.

  I mostly hung out with the children. Hid with them, really, taking refuge in my job. There were a few other kids to keep Tiana and Jamison company, and I played hostess to their corner of the party.

  There were two guys my age. One was Parker Harmon, an actor in a hit TV series and the son of a director. The other was Justice Kane, lead singer of the Indigo Kings, the hottest boy band around, and the nephew of a family friend.