“It’s a princess, see? I made her dress yellow, and red, so maybe it’s like a volcano dress. Do you like it?”
Jonah nods. “It’s fantastic.”
Libby beams up at him, trusting and adoring. But Jonah can’t smile back. I know that he’s seen what haunts me most about Libby.
She has her father’s eyes.
• • •
I don’t trust myself to speak again until I’ve steered the car onto I-10. “Jonah—thank you.”
“For what?” He sounds strained.
“For taking Anthony on. For seeing what nobody else ever saw.”
He stares out the window at the dull jumble of chain stores that lines the interstate. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
This conversation was inevitable—I knew that—but I’m not ready. When would I ever be? “It’s a hard thing to say.” True. Obvious. Meaningless. Jonah deserves more. “The only people I ever told were my mother and Chloe, and they didn’t believe me. I mean, the only people not counting my therapist. Because, wow, I have done some time in therapy.”
“It never helps.” Jonah doesn’t get sidetracked. “Your mother . . . didn’t believe you?”
“Anthony’s rich. He wanted to marry Chloe. Mom would never let herself believe anything that got in the way. Even what happened to me.”
“And your sister? That’s what you told her the night before the wedding, wasn’t it?”
Concentrating on the road is difficult. “She only heard part of the story before she shut me up. Anthony had convinced her I was jealous of her. As if.”
Jonah shakes his head. “I would have believed you. Don’t you know that?”
I think I always knew, though I never realized it until now. Jonah would have believed me, and that’s why I didn’t tell him. “It would have—complicated things.”
“You don’t think I deserved to know?”
“What? Where my sexual fixations come from? Do I need to bring you in to talk to my therapist before every date?” I sound hysterical, even to myself. So I take a couple of deep breaths. “You keep your secrets too, don’t you?”
“This isn’t about me.”
“Isn’t it?”
Jonah turns his face from me. “This is the way to the airport, isn’t it?”
“Uh, yeah—”
“Drop me off there.”
“Jonah?”
“You should have told me.” The words burst from him, so angry I wince. He sees that, and speaks more quietly, but with an effort. “I needed to know, Vivienne.”
“It’s a difficult thing to tell.” That sounds so inadequate.
“You didn’t think I needed to know that before I did these things to you?”
Humiliation scorches me from the inside out. “We both wanted that fantasy. It was your idea!”
“If I’d known you were a rape victim, that would have changed everything.” Jonah won’t even look at me now.
I’m crashing. Burning. And from a greater height than ever before, because only moments ago I dared to believe that Jonah was truly on my side. For the past couple of months, I’ve been trying to make peace with my sexual desires. Now all the shame has returned in an instant. “You think I’m sick for wanting it after what happened to me. Don’t you?”
“That’s not it.”
Of course it is. “You hate me for giving in to the fantasy, even though you wanted it too—even though it was your idea.”
Finally Jonah turns to me again. I wish he hadn’t. The fury in his eyes makes me feel sick inside. “You turned me into the last thing I ever wanted to be. You turned me into someone who abused a rape victim.”
“It wasn’t abuse. Not if I wanted it.”
“Your wrists are still raw!” he shouts.
I wince and turn away.
When Jonah speaks again, his voice is calmer—but in the tight, controlled way that tells me it’s mostly an act. “We can’t keep doing this.”
Does he mean we can’t play our games any longer? No. He means that this is the end of him and me.
“All right,” I say. The words come out cool and polite. I sound like my mother. In our worst moments, we often revert to our worst selves. “Let’s go to the airport.”
Jonah doesn’t speak as I drive him there, though I sense he’s waiting for me to say something. What? It doesn’t matter. The man I showed my most secret self to has rejected that part of me. The one person who looked deeply enough to find the truth turned against me because I didn’t tell him myself.
And something about my secret feeds the darkness inside him in ways neither of us can bear.
I pull up in front of the airport, by the sign for Oceanic Airlines. We are surrounded by people dropping off friends and family members, hugging each other tightly around the backpacks they wear, exchanging kisses and laughter amid nests of luggage. Jonah opens the car door, then says, “Good-bye, Vivienne.”
It sounds so final. But I can top it. Without looking at him, I say, “Get out.”
Thirty-two
“This is the part where you say ‘I told you so.’” I wipe at my eyes with the Kleenex Doreen always has waiting on the end table. “Go ahead.”
“That’s not what I’m thinking, and it shouldn’t be what you’re thinking either.”
“Why not?” My eyes actually ache from crying. I don’t think I’ve stopped weeping since I broke down driving past Shreveport yesterday afternoon. “The most fucked-up sexual arrangement ever has now blown up in my face. Not like a grenade, like an atomic bomb. You saw it coming.”
Doreen shakes her head. “Not this.”
All last night, I kept staring at my phone, waiting for it to chime with a text from Jonah. I didn’t expect an apology, much less an explanation. But I can’t stop wondering what he’s thinking.
Jonah may have left my life, but his shadow will linger for a long time.
“Someone finally learned the whole truth,” I whisper. “And he hated me for it.”
“You don’t know that he hated you. You only know that Jonah had to stop.”
“Why else would he stop?”
“You tell me.” Doreen gives me one of her looks, which means it’s time to dig deep.
And I remember Jonah’s words: You turned me into the last thing I ever wanted to be.
I tuck a lock of hair behind my ear. “Whatever darkness that’s within Jonah—whatever fuels that fantasy for him—he doesn’t want to turn that on someone who’s actually been hurt.”
“Jonah spoke harshly. He shouldn’t have done that. But he gets to have limits too.”
She’s said this to me before, but about Geordie, when he absolutely could not play along with my fantasy. Those two men have drawn their boundaries about a thousand miles apart, but they’re both within their rights.
Still. “Jonah was angry. He was furious. I froze up just the way I did when I was a little kid and Mom would start screaming.”
“Did you feel threatened?”
“Not physically. It just . . . hurt so much. Jonah had stood up for me, and finally, finally Chloe knows Anthony’s full of shit, and it could have been one of the best days I’d ever had. Instead everything fell apart.”
Doreen nods. “Let’s focus on the good part of the day for a bit. Somebody finally believed you. Somebody finally put the blame where it belongs, on Anthony. How does it feel?”
Beneath all my sorrow, all my anger, that tiny light still glows. “Unbelievable. Like—like the whole world turned upside down.”
“In a good way?”
“Yeah.” Whenever I think about returning home for Thanksgiving, or Christmas, I feel apprehensive, but it’s not the dread that has consumed me for years. Anthony will never have as much power over me again, even if Jonah’s not at my side. I saw him humbled; I saw him humiliated. That memory will feed me for a long time to come.
“What about your father?” Doreen says.