But this was not the time to indulge that kind of pettiness. “Be respectful of your elders,” Tiffany reminded her daughter. Then added silently, even when they don’t deserve it.
The talk with Tiffany the night of Brian’s accident had done Abbey an unbelievable amount of good. Once she’d finally told her story to another human being, she felt better, and she’d felt a lightness in her step for days now.
Of course, it was better still that Tiffany had not thought Abbey was the monster that Abbey had felt herself to be.
But, truly, the best of it was that after she spilled all the squalid details, she felt the proverbial weight had been lifted from her chest.
So she sat on it for a few days, knowing she had to come up with just the right plan to deflect Damon. Ultimately she realized there was only one way to confront Damon, and that was to take away any power from the one thing he was holding over her head: telling Brian.
So she had to take that power away from him. It was a chance she was taking, because she was only going to confront him the one time, and if he didn’t accept what she had to say, she was going to have to call the police and get involved in a trial and everything.
But at this point, she’d decided that she had no choice. She couldn’t live under his threats any longer.
“He’s blackmailing you for ten thousand dollars?” Tiffany asked when Abbey finally opened up to her. She’d decided she ought to, just in case things went wrong and someone needed to know who the culprit was. “Then he’ll leave you alone?”
Abbey had nodded, pretty sure Damon was simple enough for that to be the truth. “It’s what he says. And I think he’s done enough rudimentary Googling to know I’m not Miss Gotrocks or anything. He’s not going to be able to squeeze millions out of me.”
“But you gave this necklace to charity.”
Abbey nodded again. “It’s how Brian and I met. He’d come to the hospital when I had the accident and given me his card, so when I needed a charity to give the necklace to, he was the first one I thought of. He thought it was too valuable for me to give away. At the time, I think he figured it was a personal vendetta against some man, rather than, well, you know. Penance.”
Tiffany had nodded right away, looking as if she really, truly did understand. Like it was normal. “I don’t like the idea of you giving him the money, though,” she said.
“But it’s his lot,” Abbey had argued. “In a way, he’s right, he gave it to me to hold on to for him, and I didn’t. That sort of makes me responsible. Doesn’t it?”
“Unless you’re FDIC insured, I don’t think so.”
Abbey’s inclination was to agree with that, yet something in her said she owed a debt.
When she told Tiffany that, they’d come up with a solution that felt right to Abbey.
The first thing she needed to do was find Damon. Once that was over with, she’d tell her bigger truth to Brian.
So she contacted Gerald Parks, as everyone had suggested, and Parks had been able to locate Damon in less than an hour just by checking his parole records.
Damon was living in Bethesda, Maryland, his old stomping grounds. Her old stomping grounds, too. For some reason she’d expected he was a full-time Las Vegas resident, trying to rip people off there, but as it turned out, it had been just a sheer lack of luck that she’d run into him when she did.
He lived within twenty miles of her.
Well, fine. She’d been to hell and back—or at least purgatory—and she flat-out refused to let Damon ruin the rest of her life, blackmailing her over some stupid necklace that wasn’t even worth significant blackmail money when you came right down to it. Seriously, ten thousand? That was nothing in Damon’s circles.
Abbey asked Tiffany to get Parker after school; then she drove to the address Gerald had given her. It was a crummy old apartment building off Arlington Road, a line of residences that looked more like an old abandoned hotel than anything else.
She gathered her courage and went straight up to his door and knocked, fully expecting that he wouldn’t be there.
So when he was, she was momentarily stunned.
So was he.
“Got my money?” he asked as soon as he recovered from the apparent surprise of seeing her. If he was curious about how she’d found him—and he had to be—he resisted the urge to ask.
Abbey lifted her chin and her left brow. “Eight thousand dollars,” she said, holding an envelope out to him.
“I said ten—even nine. Never eight.”
“Repeatedly. But I decided you weren’t worth the interest.” She shook the envelope at him. “Take it or leave it.”
He took it. “This is awfully thin,” he said. “I hope it’s a cashier’s check.”
She said nothing, but stood there watching as he tore open the envelope, took out the contents, and looked puzzled.
“What the fuck is this?” he demanded.
“What does it say?”
He shot her a hostile look and read, “A donation has been made in your name to the Arthritis Foundation.”
Abbey nodded. “Eight thousand dollars. Exactly what you said the necklace was worth. Nothing more, nothing less.”
“You gave my fucking money to a fucking charity?”
She was unfazed by his anger. “I did. I figured with all the bones you’d broken, the Arthritis Foundation made sense.”
“This better be a joke.”
“Oh, no, Damon, it’s no joke.” She slid the words at him like an arrow, swooshing out of its sheath. She wasn’t afraid of anything he could do to her now. He had no power over her. “I gave the necklace to charity years ago, but when you came back to demand remuneration—” She saw his baffled look. “—in other words, payback, you did manage to make me nervous for a few weeks.”
“You should be.”
She gave a small shrug. “I’ll give you that: I was. So I figured, the necklace was your responsibility in a way, so in a way it was right that you got credit for it. That’s the result in your hands.” She didn’t tell him it was only $5,000 that she’d donated, but that was all she’d been offered for the necklace in the first place, all those years back. Under those circumstances, it didn’t matter what something was worth retail; it only mattered what the black market would bear.
Damon’s features gathered into a dark storm of fury. “You’re going to be sorry.”
“I don’t think so.” Abbey was blasé. “You can’t do a thing to me. As a matter of fact, you’re lucky I donated that money in your name, because it might be your only shot at not being perceived as a completely evil person for your entire life.”
He gave a fake, hard spike of a laugh. “I wonder if your husband will think so.”
Never mind that it didn’t make sense. Abbey got what he was saying, and responded with a laugh of her own. “My husband couldn’t care less about you. And this great truth you think you can tell him about me? This truth that’s going to change everything and ruin my life because of the damn necklace you stole?” She shook her head. “He already knows it all. You can’t touch me.”
Strictly speaking, it wasn’t true. Brian didn’t know the truth yet. It made more sense for her to take care of the problem that was Damon before talking to him, so she could lay it all on the table at once. But Damon didn’t need to know that. It wasn’t as if he could get to Brian before she could, and turn him against her.
“I’ve got a receipt,” she went on. “So, no matter how you decide to approach this—if you’re stupid enough to approach this again at all—there will be no indication that I ever had the necklace and that, in fact, I made this donation in cash.”
“But you did have the necklace.”
“Prove it.”
His face grew blotchy and pale as he blustered, “But you did.”
“And you’re going to what? Call the police and tell them I won’t give you your stolen necklace back?”
The blotches left his face, leaving only paleness. “You know godda
mn well I can’t do that.”
She nodded. “In fact, if you contact the police with any of this, you’re liable to get your butt thrown back in the slammer for another ten years. Maybe more. I don’t think they ever got you on that particular grand theft, did they? And yet”—she shook her head—“I can prove you took it. And on top of that, blackmail is a federal offense. I’m not sure your parole officer, William Minor, would be pleased to hear what you’ve been up to.”
“You’re a fucking bitch.”
She was so glad to hear it because it meant Damon definitely knew he was powerless, and now he’d slink off into the darkness like one of those huge D.C. rats.
It was over. At least as far as Damon was concerned.
Now she had only to tell the truth to Brian. Regardless of how that turned out—and she hoped to heaven it turned out well—it was the last great hurdle for Abbey. The last thing that kept her past from fully reconciling with her present and future.
Timing was everything.
Unfortunately, Abbey didn’t have the luxury of waiting for the optimal timing. Whatever that would have been. So it was the first night that Brian came home from the hospital, after she had put Parker in bed, that she had the talk with him that she’d been needing to have for a decade now.
“How are you feeling?” The edge of the bed squeaked as she sat down next to him.
“Not too bad, actually,” Brian said. “Like I’m getting over a monster of a flu.”
“Do you need anything?”
He reached for her. “Just you.”
She smiled, but pulled back gently. “I need to talk to you for a few minutes—are you up to it?”
It didn’t take a hammer over the head for Brian to realize his wife had something serious on her mind. “What’s wrong?” He looked worried.
A man who was married to a woman who looked like Abbey was always vaguely worried.
“It’s about me,” she said quickly, trying to assuage the fear she saw in his eyes. “My past. I need to tell you about it, and I know it’s not a good time, but circumstances have come up that don’t allow for me to wait for a good time.”
Brian gave a patient nod. “I’m listening, honey. Tell me whatever you want to. I’ll love you anyway, you know.” He gave a small smile.
Something inside Abbey tore. She wanted so much to spend her life with this man. She knew that now. It hadn’t begun that way, but over the past month she’d come to know, more and more each day, how very lucky she was to have him.
All she could do was hope it wasn’t too late and understand that it might be.
“I love you, too,” she said up front. “Honestly. With all my heart. You and Parker mean everything to me, and the fact that I have to tell you some sort of ugly ancient history doesn’t affect that at all.”
“You’re not leaving.” He said it as a statement, but it was a question.
“No.” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “Not unless you want me to.”
“Never.”
It was time to just spit it out. “I didn’t marry you because I loved you, Brian,” she said, shocked at the honesty of her own words. “I married you because I was scared. Terrified.”
He looked surprised. “You married me because . . . you were scared? Of what?”
“I was scared I was damned.” She meant every word of it literally, but it sounded like a stupid joke when she said it out loud. “When I was younger, before I met you, I wasn’t exactly living what you’d call an exemplary life. I messed with drugs, alcohol, men—” She took a ragged breath. “—you name it. God—your God, any God—was never, ever part of my equation. In fact, I think the real truth is that I looked down on people like us.”
He nodded. “You weren’t alone. What changed your mind?”
This was hard. She didn’t want to say it. “I was responsible for my best friend’s death.” She hesitated for a moment, before adding, “And my own.”
There was silence. He didn’t ask what she meant, just waited for her to go on when she could.
So she did. “A few months before I met you, I was a mess. A real mess. Like no one you’d ever want your child to hang out with, much less end up like. I experimented with everything, absolutely no regard for what it was or what it could do to me.”
“Why?” He looked genuinely curious. Not judgmental, just curious. “Your childhood wasn’t so bad, was it?”
“No.” She shook her head and closed her eyes against the image of her parents’ stricken expressions the first time she was arrested at school for marijuana possession. “I put my parents through hell, and I have absolutely no excuse for it. I can’t fix it now.” They were perfectly fine parents. Not particularly affectionate, maybe. But they kept their children clothed and fed and made sure they were educated, at least through high school. They’d certainly never done anything to provoke rebellion in her.
“Fix it? I thought your parents were dead.”
Abbey shook her head. “My dad died years back, but my mother is still alive.”
Brian looked surprised. “You didn’t tell me.”
“No. I . . . it’s too complicated. Too ugly.”
“Surely it’s not too late,” Brian said, and she could tell from his tone that he thought—as anyone might—that her mother would welcome her back into the family no matter what had happened in the past.
She shook her head. “My mother pretends I don’t exist. I tried to talk to her once, recently actually, but she’d moved on. She made it absolutely clear that I don’t exist to her.”
“That’s unthinkable.”
Abbey shrugged. “I can’t really blame her. I was selfish. Hedonistic. Reckless, even, because I remember thinking I didn’t care if I lived or died. I was all about the moment. Until the moment came that I wrapped my best friend’s Honda around a parked BMW on M Street.” Abbey met Brian’s eyes with sincere sorrow. “She died at the scene. I suspect part of her parents did, too, they were so close.” The pain that had thrummed dully in Abbey’s chest for all these years hammered hard, threatening to punch a hole in her chest.
“I’m sure it wasn’t your fault,” Brian began.
“Oh, it was completely my fault.” She took his hands and looked into his eyes. “Make no mistake on that, it was my fault. I’d had at least a bottle of champagne to myself, in addition to three or four lines of coke. Yes,” she said, in answer to an expression she expected but he did not make, “I was using cocaine too.”
“You’re not the only one who’s done that.”
“I was the only one doing it in the car that night. It was absolutely my fault. I didn’t even know Paulina was dead when the ambulance came. I was still out of it. I remember bits and pieces of the ambulance ride, but the next thing I remember is waking up in Washington Hospital Center two days later and they told me I’d died on the operating table.” She gave a humorless laugh. “They told me how lucky I was to be alive.”
“You were.”
Abbey looked into his eyes and waited a moment before saying, “Don’t you want to ask me?”
“Ask you what?”
“What I saw. Who I saw.” She tried to keep the bitterness from her voice. “Which childhood pets came gamboling over the expanse of green meadow to greet me? Everyone wants to know that stuff.”
“Okay,” Brian said slowly. “So tell me. What and who did you see?”
“Nothing.” She met his eyes. “Absolutely nothing. No loved ones, no light, no meadow, no angels, no goddamn dogs.” She stopped herself and said, “I’m sorry.”
“Please don’t apologize to me at a time like this.”
“I have to, Brian, don’t you see? I didn’t see heaven, because I wasn’t going to heaven. Everyone has stories about the white light and the feeling of peace. You never, ever hear anyone say they died on the operating table, or in an accident, or whatever, and came back with no memories at all. No demons, no angels, nothing whatsoever to indicate I rated any sort of afterlife.” Tears
were burning her eyes now. “Just blackness. Just . . . nothing.”
“So what?” Brian asked. “Maybe that just meant it wasn’t your time. Or it happened and you didn’t remember.”
“Or maybe it meant I was damned for all time. And maybe when I met the pastor of the local church, I could save myself by attaching myself to him, marrying him, having his child. . . .” She was crying now, although the last thing in the world she wanted was Brian’s pity. “Maybe I compounded a lifetime of sins by making a calculated effort to take the easy way out by marrying a man of God.” She tried to catch her breath. “Maybe that, more than anything else, damned me.”
Brian looked at her for a long time, though she could not tell what was behind his expression. It was almost as if he were examining some new specimen of dolphin or something, looking at her with curiosity but without feeling.
Then he said, “If that’s the case, I’m damned, too.”
She looked at him incredulously. “Why?”
“Because when I met you, I wanted to save you.”
“You want to save everyone.” She didn’t understand his implication.
“I wanted to save you,” Brian said. “And I don’t think it was part of my job.”
She looked at him.
“I’ve had a secret or two of my own,” Brian went on. “I know about your accident. I was in the hospital for other reasons that night and they were looking for a priest but no one could be found, so I guess I was better than nothing. They told me what had happened and called me to your bedside to pray for you. They didn’t think you’d make it. But as soon as I saw you, I knew you would.” He gave a labored sigh. “I should have mentioned this a long time ago, but, you must know, it never really came up. It would have held so much weight if I’d brought it up out of the blue, like you were lying to me—”
“I was!”
“No, you weren’t. I know who you are. I knew who you were when we got married. What you did two months ago or two decades ago wasn’t relevant.”
She frowned. “And yet—”
Secrets of a Shoe Addict Page 23
