by CD Reiss
“Cath—”
She was gone, pushed off the branch, landing on her feet, knees bent, arms out for balance. Looking up at me, the dots of light glint off her tears.
“You’re not shit.” I wished I could eat those words, because they’re the bare minimum and she deserves the maximum. They’re a denial, not a declaration.
“I know.”
I dropped to the ground, but by the time I hit the grass, she’d already run away.
Chapter 27
CATHERINE
I’d meant what I said about the raw place, but the words I’d used didn’t do it justice. It was a picture in my head, a taste in my mouth, a deep throbbing beat in my ears. I felt that raw place throbbing pink, pulsing with anger and self-loathing. It was where I was powerless and the place I’d tried to forget all those years. The only thing that silenced the throb and washed away the taste was sealing away other people’s raw places.
I was aware that made a decade of philanthropy selfish and vain, but it was the only way to soothe my own hurt.
The garden path was dotted with lights on either side like an airplane runway. I’d been defying gravity for years and I’d suddenly skidded to the earth.
I heard Chris running behind me. I couldn’t outrun him and I didn’t want to. He caught up, came slightly in front of me, and turned so I could see him.
“You said you hadn’t thought about me in years.”
“What do you want me to say? That I had? Or that I hadn’t? What’s going to make you feel better?”
“What’s going to make you feel better?”
I wanted to punch him and run into his arms. “I stopped waiting for you.” I articulated each word as if that would keep me from being misunderstood. “I never forgot how you made me feel.”
He took half a step toward me with his hands out, assuming he knew what I meant. He didn’t.
“You made me feel worthless and forgettable. And I know it was all a misunderstanding, but that was how I felt. You can’t take that away from me, because I carry it everywhere. But also…” I sighed.
My words bent him. Shoulders drooping, hands retreated to his sides, he looked damaged and small with his own exposed, raw places.
“But also…” I continued. “You made me feel loved and whole. I felt passionate and alive, and no one I’ve met since has made me feel like that. So I don’t… I don’t know what to do. I want to seize this thing with you and never let it go, and I want to throw it away to save myself.”
“If I’d stayed, you wouldn’t be who you are. I don’t know how this will sound, but who you are makes me ashamed of who I’ve become.”
“Who is that? I don’t even know.”
He paused as if gathering strength to confess a sin. “A man obsessed with money, and not sense enough to be ashamed of it.”
I started down the path but slowly, inviting him to walk next to me. He fell into line and we walked shoulder to shoulder.
“In my line of work, we solve problems in the stock market and we use these processes called algorithms. They—”
“I know what an algorithm is.”
“You do?”
“Harper rubs off on people.”
“Right. So we use them to assess risk. How much to invest. Where to invest. How long to hold, when to sell. It can get complicated, but they work until they don’t.”
“Is that what happened to your hedge fund?”
He took a long time to answer, walking slowly. “What happened to the fund was that I changed the weighting. I weighted the making money too far over the potential loss, and I made bets without enough data. The scale tipped. And the more I think about it, the more I wonder if I did it on purpose.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Because maybe I knew I needed to be completely miserable before I came back to my roots, and you.”
“It wasn’t about me, Chris. Don’t say that.”
We passed though the garden gate, toward his car.
“I can’t help but think you were the last person who loved me for me. No more and no less. I weight that pretty heavily.”
“I’m just an algorithm then?” I tried not to sound as if I was accusing him of something, because I wasn’t. I was egging him to talk more.
“We all are, but we kid ourselves into thinking we have enough data to run it.” We got to the car, and he unlocked it. “You make me feel like a man with a chance. You made me feel like that when I was sixteen, and I feel like that right now. With you, my future is mine to write, but I need more data. And so do you.”
“You sure know how to make a girl feel all warm and fuzzy.”
“The lights on the tree didn’t work, so I recalibrated.” He opened the passenger door.
“They worked. That’s why I reacted the way I did.” I got in the car before he could answer.
* * *
We didn’t talk much on the drive back to my house, but as he got off at the Barrington exit, he grabbed my hand and held it. I let him, because his grip was exactly what I needed.
He walked me up the porch.
“I’m sorry I ruined your surprise,” I said. “It was beautiful.”
He slid his hands down my arms and linked his fingers in mine. “I should have come back. Fuck Frank.”
“You can’t. He’s married to a nice guy in San Francisco.”
My resistance was no match for his smile.
“I took years from you,” he said. “We could have been together. I could have taken you back to New York, away from here and this”—he looked for the word and found it— “devastation.”
His word did its job, sending pictures of Barrington through my mind. The closed factory. The boarded-up stores. Jonah Wright born with a hole in his heart and no insurance. The Bordens living in a house with a roof like a sieve. Brooke Frazier, impregnated by a rapist she wouldn’t name.
I’d helped them. I gave them money, time, a ride to far away doctors. Small things.
If I’d been in New York, what would have happened to them?
“I need to think,” I said. “Get data, like you say.”
“Can I see you tomorrow night? At the playground?”
“It’s still there,” I confirmed.
“I’ll pick you up at seven.”
“No. I’ll get there the way I got there the first time.”
“No way. You are not—”
Because I wasn’t getting into an argument about my safety in a town of people who loved me, I interrupted him with a kiss.
I’d never taken a kiss before, so I was clumsy. My focus on my objective overrode my passion. My lips were too stiff and my head pushed forward too hard, but once Chris gave up on finishing his sentence, he came to me, giving willingly what I took from him.
A simple, sweet good night kiss between two kids who had their entire lives in front of them and the weight of the world on their shoulders.
Chapter 28
catherine
I couldn’t sleep. I stayed up for hours, lying on my back, watching the moonlight shift over the ceiling mural.
Every option seemed like a possibility. Go to him. Risk everything. Undo the damage of the past thirteen years. It seemed so easy.
The other option, stay in Barrington. I’d found meaning in being needed and loved. The rewards of my efforts. Stay for the people who need me most. Let them take care of me.
As the night went on, shades of both options appeared. Tell Chris he had to stay here part time. Take Harper with us. Sell the last of everything and put it back into the community and split. Tell Chris maybe. Tell him I wanted more time.
Yes to all. Yes to some, no to some. I wasn’t used to weighing so many options and internal negotiations. I didn’t feel capable of handling it.
* * *
I am a grown woman.
* * *
Those five words came to me about two in the morning. I rolled them around in my head.
* * *
I am a grow
n woman.
I am a young woman.
I can do anything I want.
I am trapped.
I am free.
I am ashamed that people will
know what he does to me.
I am a grown woman.
I am afraid to leave here.
I am afraid to stay.
I want him.
I want him.
He’ll hurt me. He’s hurt me already.
This is a game to him.
This is a game to him.
You’ll give up everything you work for,
and for what?
Mommy and Daddy won’t
love me anymore.
They’re long gone.
Does he still love me?
Do I still love him?
What’s it like to not love him?
I am a grown woman.
I know my own mind.
I know my own heart.
I’ll do what I want.
I’ll take my own risks.
I will own my own failings.
I’m terrified.
I can do what I want, and he
can join me in that or not.
He’s a grown man.
I don’t have to love him,
not now, not ever.
I can just do what I want.
You’re scaring me.
What will I do if I am left alone again?
What’s going to happen to me?
This can’t happen again.
Do you understand?
This cannot happen again.
It might happen again.
You can’t let it.
I can’t control him.
And it might not be him to
blame in the end.
He might be offering something I don’t want.
Do you blame me for being scared?
Do you blame me for wanting to run away?
What if this happens again?
I’ll take care of you.
Chapter 29
CATHERINE
My room went from black, gray, blue, to the yellow light of morning angling through the windows. I got up when I was too hungry to stay there.
Physically, I was a wreck. But mentally, the sunlight had brought a clarity that brought my emotions to heel. I had seen real human suffering, and I had seen people survive real pain. I was afraid of a broken heart, but what was a broken heart in the face of losing a child or going hungry?
A part of me wanted to run toward the risk, saying “bring it on,” while opening my arms to whatever Chris Carmichael had in store for me. And the other part of me was very clear, very firm, and spoke in a voice years older.
It said I would not do a single thing that didn’t serve me. If I made a sacrifice, it would be because that sacrifice would make me happy. If I made a demand of him, it would be because I couldn’t live without the thing I was demanding.
I didn’t know what any of that meant. Specifically, I didn’t know what to demand, but when I came to it, I would know. I’d opened the door to my needs, and I trusted they would walk through when they needed to. I was not going to rely on Chris to figure this out for me, nor was I going to second-guess him. I was going to take him at his word, and he was going to take me at mine.
I came downstairs to find Harper at the folding table in the dining room. She was scribbling in a notebook, and I expected to see a bunch of unintelligible signs, symbols, and codes. Instead, it was her uneven script with cross-outs, arrows, and lines across sentences.
“Good morning,” she said, not slowing her pencil one bit.
“What are you writing?”
“College essay.”
I looked over her shoulder and saw my name. “What’s the question?”
“I have to describe someone I admire.” She covered her paper and continued scribbling. “Don’t let it go to your head.”
I put my hand on her shoulder and squeezed it. I didn’t have any words of gratitude, and I knew she didn’t want them anyway. “Can I make you something to eat?”
“I’m good.”
“It’s nice to see you not crying.”
“Same for you.” She put her pencil down and cracked her knuckles. “Reggie came by last night.”
“He owes you an apology. Don’t you dare speak to him until he apologizes to you.”
“I sliced his head open with a garbage pail lid,” she said incredulously.
I put my hands on my hips. “There was no excuse for him speaking to me like that in front of you. I’ll get my own apology, and you’ll get yours. In the meantime, I don’t want him coming around here, and I don’t want him to be alone with either one of us.”
“Oh my God, do you think he came here alone? You should’ve seen the team of assholes he was with. And I say asshole in the most affectionate way.” She counted on her fingers. “Johnny. Kyle. Pat. Even Juanita came with him to make sure he didn’t start calling anybody names or getting violent. It was kind of weird.”
I wanted to accept his apology so that I could move on with my life, but I was still kind of mad. I surprised myself. I’d never thought I was much of a grudge holder. But maybe Chris brought that out in me.
I went to make breakfast.
“Chris called,” Harper shouted from the dining room. “I left the message behind the phone.”
I whipped around with the coffeepot in my hand, turning so quickly the torque almost sent coffee flying. Behind the wall phone, on a little pad we kept for such a purpose, was a note in Harper’s handwriting.
* * *
Chris says he will be at the playground at 7 PM.
Doesn’t want you coming in the dark.
Please drive. Or call him to pick you up.
PS - I have condoms in my nightstand. Take them if you want.
* * *
There was a number underneath, the area code from Doverton. The club.
Reggie had apologized, and this was my town. I wasn’t getting in the car and wasting gas to go a mile. I’d come and go as I pleased.
I was a grown woman.
Chapter 30
CHRIS
I didn’t think of my efforts with the tree as a complete failure. I hadn’t gotten what I wanted, which was my mouth and hands on her chest, and her promise to continue seeing me.
But I woke up feeling as if I’d gotten something. I didn’t know what that was. I couldn’t define it or count it. Couldn’t draw a conclusion from it. But it was good, and it was enough. She’d given me the idea.
The idea couldn’t be quantified or counted. I didn’t have an exact string of words to describe what it was. But it involved a result, and I could build a formula from that.
Catherine would continue to be who she was. She would continue to give of herself to others. And she would be with me. All that equaled our happiness and the end of my wandering around in the wrong world.
Again, I didn’t know what that meant as far as the future. She needed personal connection. She would never be one of New York’s charity mavens, only partly because I wouldn’t be a billionaire hedge fund manager for much longer. But after last night, I felt as if I knew her better, knew what she needed to live her life, and I was eager to provide it.
I got a text from Brian over breakfast.
* * *
— What are you doing? —
— Eating eggs and toast. —
— In Barrington USA? —
— Yes —
* * *
The phone rang. It was Brian. I’d obviously said something to piss him off. Maybe he didn’t like toast.
I answered the phone and stepped outside into the rose garden that I used to tend. “What’s your problem?”
“Barrington?” he snapped. “With the glass factory?”
“Yes?”
“And you don’t know about the new talk over in Silicon Valley? About the Barrington factory? This is bullshit. You told me you were out, but you’re just getting out to start something el
se. You going to just take the money and not cut me in.”
“Brian, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure, asshole. You think I don’t know you by now?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Dude, you take everything and close the door behind you. That’s how you operate. I never thought you’d do it with me. But you are.”
“I was born and raised here. It’s perfectly natural for me to show up to see the people I grew up with.”
“That just makes me think you’re the one who spearheaded the deal. Not cool. Not okay. And possibly a breach of contract.”
I took a deep breath, then another. The fall sky was flat blue, the morning sun was shining, and I was not going to let him think I was fogging him over. “I came here to bury Lance, and I’m staying for a while. I am not here to secretly team up with some venture capitalists opening the fucking factory. Given the choice, I would burn the factory to the ground. I understand why you don’t trust me. I understand why you think I’m going to take all of the money you’re paying for the fund and leave. But if there’s a loyal bone in my body, and there are a few, at least one of them has your name on it.”
“I want in.”
“There’s nothing to be in on.”
