by Lisa Unger
“I was drunk.” He looked into his now empty glass, then up at her. “I lost control.”
“She’s a person—someone’s daughter,” she said. “And drunk is not a free pass.”
“I have a—”
“I know.” She raised a hand, cutting him off. She felt the heat of anger rising. “You have a problem. You’re getting help. Guess what, Graham? Obviously it’s not working.”
He sank his head into his hands. When he spoke again, his voice was muffled. “I never hurt Geneva.”
She wanted to believe that, desperately.
“And what about Jaqueline?”
She saw his body stiffen, but he didn’t say anything.
“Detective Crowe told me the real reason you were fired, Graham.”
Still no words, but his shoulders were shaking. Yes, he’d start to cry. He always did when he ran out of excuses.
She should stop talking, leave, get as far away from him as she could. But she just couldn’t do it. There was that burning rage, something volcanic, that thing she pressed down and pressed down. After her father’s lies, she pressed it down, blamed her mother because it was just easier to do that somehow. After Graham’s sexting, she pressed it down. After Vegas. After she watched him fuck Geneva in the boys’ playroom, she pressed it back.
All these women—her mother, herself, the girl in Vegas, Geneva, Jacqueline, even Pearl—fucked over by terrible men. They were lied to, cheated on, beaten, killed because of male whims, male problems, their loss of control. Her father, her husband.
Why were they so broken?
“The body they found,” she said, her voice shaking. “It wasn’t Geneva. It was Jacqueline Carson.”
He looked up at her quickly, his face a mask of pure shock. She almost believed he was surprised.
“Wh-wh-what?” he stammered. “No.”
She almost believed him.
An object on the counter caught her eye. The gun from the lockbox upstairs. The sight of it sent chills down her arms.
“Who are you?” she asked him.
The expression that crossed his face—some twist of sadness and rage. She didn’t even know him.
They’d flown home from Vegas together, she taking the points upgrade to first class and letting him languish in a middle seat back in coach. For weeks, she couldn’t even stand to look at him, the image of the young woman he’d hit flashing over and over again in her memory. It was that more than the fact that he was in a strip club to begin with. She could live with that; turn a blind eye to boyish indulgences. But the violence. It made him something else. Something that was vile, frightening.
But she’d let him and the therapist convince her that there was a path forward.
A marriage is a negotiation, the therapist told her. You both have to decide what you can live with, what you can forgive, how you cope with various behaviors. It all sounded so reasonable. She could forgive him—for the boys. If not for the children, she’d have been long gone, years ago. At least that’s what she told herself. But there was no other self, no Selena without Oliver and Stephen. How could she know what that other imagined woman would do? The unencumbered Selena—she was long gone.
“Who are you?” she asked again of the stranger who used to be her husband. “We had everything. What have you done?”
“Selena.” Now the pleading. “Please believe me. I’ve made mistakes. I’ve hurt you. That girl in Vegas, I hurt her. But not this. What’s happening now. I promise, I didn’t hurt either of these women.”
He was so earnest. Like the boys, eyes wide and searching, the picture of innocence wronged. The smell of bourbon reached her, turned her stomach.
He rose, and she started backing toward the door.
“You’re afraid of me?”
Was she?
When Detective Crowe had asked if Graham ever hurt her, she’d felt a jolt of indignation. Of course not. In fact, her husband currently bore a gash on his head from her last angry outburst. And it wasn’t the first time. She’d slapped him during a Vegas argument they’d had after a particularly brutal therapy session where they’d dug in deep about how his father didn’t respect women, was verbally abusive to Graham’s mom. How it used to anger him when his father mistreated his mother, but he could still hear that voice—women were liars, they teased, couldn’t be trusted, they were manipulators. That was the voice Graham heard when he lost control.
After the session they’d had a terrible fight. He’d called her a castrating bitch. She’d slapped him hard enough to leave a red mark on his face into the next day.
Now, he moved closer. His face was dark with anger. A hollow of dread opened, her mouth going dry. She backed away, her hands shaking in anger.
“What are you going to do, Selena?” His voice was a tease, a goad.
“Let me guess,” he went on when she didn’t answer.
No, he had never hurt her. But would he? Could he?
Selena leaned her weight against the door and felt it give way behind her. She backed up as he kept moving forward, a tense dance.
“You’re going to leave me. Take the boys. Ruin our lives.”
His breathing was heavy, eyes shining.
In the hallway, she kept moving, slowly. His shaking hands formed into fists at his sides. He was a big man, over six feet. She’d always loved that about him. Graham’s size always made her feel small. His strength made her feel safe. Until it didn’t.
“It won’t be six months before you’re back with Will, right?”
“Stop it,” she said.
She passed the console table, a glance at the phone revealing that it had come back online. It started pinging and vibrating with texts and calls. Every nerve ending in her body was sizzling. Grab it. Run.
“Don’t touch it,” he said, following her gaze. “We need to talk. There are things I need you to understand.”
She thought about the boys asleep at home with her mother. She had to get back to them, away from him.
But she was aware of something else, too, something that had risen in her when she watched Graham and Geneva through the nanny cam. Maybe she felt it for the first time after the sexting. Then, after the woman in Vegas, it grew. Finally, as she watched him with Geneva, it reached another level. But maybe it was there before all that—her father who cheated on her mother, who had another family, other children. Women weren’t supposed to feel rage, were they? It was ugly. But that’s what it was. Pure and white-hot, a siren. She’d been tamping it down, pushing it back, swallowing it. Her whole body was shaking with it now.
“I’ve been a good husband,” Graham said. “Mostly. Haven’t I taken care of our family? I need you to believe me. Selena, I need you to have a little faith in me.”
She laughed at that; she couldn’t help it. It rose up from her like a wave, a hysterical burst that shifted suddenly to tears.
“Faith?” she said. The word felt like fire in her throat. Then it was scream. “Faith?”
There was an explosion inside of her, like a crowd cheering in her veins, adrenaline pumping hot and fast, giving her strength and driving her forward.
She ran at her husband, pushing him back with the weight of her own body and landing on top of him, knocking the wind from him, leaving him struggling for air. Then she lifted her fist and punched him hard in the jaw. He raised his arms to ward her off.
“Selena,” he managed. “Stop.”
But she kept punching him, with everything she had, sobbing with the depth of her rage and her sorrow—not just for herself. For her mother, for Geneva, for Jacqueline, even for Pearl. Yes, Pearl. Who’d brought them all to this somehow, but only because she was formed in pain. Only because the fissures were there to exploit.
Exhaustion slowed her blows, and Graham just lay there, bleeding, arms covering his head. Her fists, her arms, were on fir
e with effort and impact, her breathing animalistic.
It was an easy thing for him to flip her. In one effortless motion, he was on top of her, looking down. The blood from his face dripped onto hers; she felt it on her face, trailing down her throat. He pinned her arms to the ground, his full weight on her middle. She was immobilized, powerless against his vastly superior strength. It was a surprise to feel so weak. She was breathless, arms and hands aching.
“Those times you hit me, Selena,” he said. He was breathing hard. “It was only because I let you. I deserved it. Hey, who knows, maybe I even liked it a little. You are super-hot when you’re angry. But that’s enough.”
She tried to get away from him, squirming and writhing beneath him. She was a doll, a child, her strength minuscule compared to his.
“Let go of me.” Her voice was a ragged shriek, unfamiliar.
Something dark crossed his face and in the next moment, he slapped her, openhanded across the face. Her jaw rattled; she saw stars as the pain radiated—the back of her head, her neck. The world seemed to halt. His face was twisted into an expression she’d never seen before. Was this the man the Vegas stripper saw? Geneva? Jacqueline?
There’s something inside me, he told her once. And when it breaks loose, I’m not the same person. She thought he was just making excuses for his bad behavior. But now she saw it. She tasted blood in her mouth.
“The boys,” she said.
She flashed on Stephen clinging. Oliver sulking at the table with her mother. Oh, god. Was she ever going to see them again? Who would care for them when she was gone? She started screaming, more like a roar of anger and sadness, rage at her own powerlessness.
“Shut the fuck up, Selena,” the stranger who used to be her husband hissed. “Don’t make me hit you again.”
He shifted his weight. And in one swift, direct movement, she brought her knee up hard into his groin. She watched his face freeze, go white. A kind of strangled cry escaped him, then he fell off of her, curling himself up into the fetal position, moaning.
“You fucker,” she managed. “I hate you.”
All he could do was groan.
She struggled to her feet, grabbed her phone and her charger and was about to run for the door. But then his hand was strong around her ankle, fingers digging into her flesh, tripping her. She fell hard, the phone cracking against the hard wood, then skittering away out of reach.
The wind knocked out of her, she struggled for breath, crawling toward the door. Then he was on top of her. He flipped her again, her head knocking against the wood, and then put strong hands on her neck and started to squeeze.
She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t scream. She clawed at his hands, kicked her legs.
Her husband. She tried to say his name but couldn’t. No air, no sound.
“I gave you everything,” he said through gritted teeth. “You spoiled, ungrateful bitch.”
Her husband, eyes black with rage, was trying to kill her.
He was killing her.
FORTY
Selena
Around her things started to go gray, her vision a fish-eye lens. Her mind raced, gaze scanning the room for a weapon, a way out, a solution.
Finally, energy waning fast, her glance landed on the family portrait hanging on the wall over the console table. It’s all worth it, the photographer had said. I promise. Her babies. A kaleidoscope of memories played out in her mind—their laughing faces, the day Stephen dumped a bowl of mashed peas on his head, Oliver’s first steps, Stephen watching her as she fell asleep, his eyes slowly closing, the feel of their bodies against hers. They were slipping away from her. As hard as she’d tried, she’d failed them completely. Who would they be now without her, after this?
Selena felt herself go slack, the darkness encroaching, her limbs heavy and useless. She kept her eyes on the picture of the boys. She wanted their faces to be the last thing she saw.
Then, in a rush of air, Graham’s grip loosened, and blessed oxygen flowed back into her lungs.
Selena rasped, drawing it in, hands flying to her brutalized throat. She coughed, great retching bursts, bile rising. Graham still sat on top of her, frozen, stunned, his expression gone slack. His hands loose at his sides.
“Let me go.” Her voice was just a whisper.
He looked at her, eyes red and watering—from effort, from sadness, she didn’t know. There was a moment when she glimpsed him, the man she thought he was. Then he fell off to the side, landing heavily on the ground, head knocking hard.
She skittered away from him, moving again for the door, coughing. That’s when she saw the blood trailing down the side of his face from a wound on his head.
Standing behind him was a woman she knew.
She held their gun in her slender, manicured hand—the weapon she’d obviously just used to hit Graham in the head. She must have hit him hard, a spray of blood across her blouse. She, too, wore a stunned expression, her breath ragged, hair wild.
Martha. Pearl. Her half sister. The stranger on the train.
FORTY-ONE
Selena
Pearl was saying something that Selena couldn’t make out over the roaring in her head. The unreality of the moment spun and pulled. Was she dreaming? She struggled to hold on to consciousness, the lack of oxygen making her loopy and heavy with a strange fatigue.
Pearl moved in close to her, pushed back a strand of Selena’s hair. Her face—the pale of her skin, the abyss of her eyes. It was so familiar, like they’d always known each other. Selena almost reached for her, and Pearl helped her climb to her feet, the other woman far stronger than she looked. Together, they staggered to the couch. Selena sat heavily, sinking into the softness of the cushion. She could still feel Graham’s hands on her throat, a terrible burning pain, sharp, acidic.
Pearl put the throw blanket on Selena’s lap, staying close.
“Is he dead?” Selena whispered, glancing over at Graham, who lay still on the floor of the hallway.
“No,” said Pearl, but she didn’t seem sure.
Selena kept her eyes on Graham. Pearl still held the gun.
“Why did you do this to me?” she asked Pearl. Her voice sounded faint, breathless. “To us?”
Pearl stayed quiet.
“We would have welcomed you in,” said Selena. She didn’t know if it was true, that she and Marisol would have brought Pearl into their family. If Cora might have accepted her. But she wanted to believe that about herself. That she could have found room in her heart, in her family, for someone who had been so badly wounded.
“No,” said Pearl. She was level. There was no emotion. No heat. A coolness that Selena had sensed in their last two encounters. “You wouldn’t have.”
“How can you say that? You don’t know us.”
“Because I know people,” she said easily. “I would just be a reminder of your father’s flaws, his mistakes, his betrayals. Our father.”
Selena regarded the other woman, still aware of Graham, of the pain that was starting to radiate in her body.
“So then you decided to hurt us,” said Selena. “You didn’t believe you could be a part of this family, so you sought to destroy it. Or what? Is there something else? Do you want more money?”
She took the money from her pocket—a meager couple of thousand—and held it out. Pearl looked at it, a small smile on her face.
“I know it’s not enough,” said Selena. “But I have more. What’s your price? What do I need to do to make all my problems just go away?”
She let the cash drop to the floor and it fell like leaves. It was too late for Selena’s problems to just go away. They were, of course, just beginning. Graham issued a groan from the floor. She fought the urge to go over and kick him hard in the gut. She didn’t have the strength anyway.
Distantly, Selena heard sirens. She wondered if Pearl heard
them, too.
“Maybe it was about money, at first,” said Pearl. She sat on the chair across from Selena. “Maybe it was about revenge. Or both. I looked for a way into your life. And I found it.”
Selena pushed herself up, pain rocketing up her neck, down her arms, her back.
“I thought your life was perfect,” Pearl went on. “But it’s not.”
“Far from it,” Selena said.
“Your husband is a bad man, Selena. I didn’t know how bad he was until I started following him. He’s a monster.”
Selena’s head started to clear, the situation coming back into focus. She had so many questions. How had she found her way in? When? Was it Pearl who had been texting Graham? What did Pearl know about Graham that even Selena didn’t know? It all came out in a tumble.
But the sirens were growing louder, and Pearl didn’t answer. She rose and started backing toward the door.
Selena wanted to reach for her, ask her to stay. But she couldn’t. They weren’t friends; they couldn’t be now. Maybe Pearl was right, maybe they never could have been anything to each other but reminders of how flawed life was, how imperfect, how painful.
“Did he kill Jacqueline Carson? Or did you?” Selena managed.
“I’ve never hurt anyone,” said Pearl. “Not like that.”
It was an echo of what Graham had said, both of them qualifying how much pain they were willing to inflict upon others.
“I saw him,” Pearl said. Selena didn’t know who to believe, what to believe. Who hurt who? Who killed who? These were not questions she wanted to be having about her life. “I know what he did.”
“No.” The word came out weak and breathy. It was a single syllable of protest—to all of it.
So many questions. She wanted to know what the other woman had seen, how. She wanted to know everything that Pearl knew. But she barely had a voice. Or maybe, really, she didn’t want to know.
The sirens grew louder. Selena’s phone rang and rang. Graham was still and silent on the ground. Maybe he was dead.
Pearl seemed small, sad, apart from Selena, apart from the world. A butterfly. Beautiful, but elusive. A flap of her wings and the world shook. A black butterfly.
