As I got closer to my house, I saw a nondescript car idling in my driveway and allowed myself a moment of hope.
It was quickly dashed when Fawn got out of the car.
“Thanks for the warm greeting,” she said as she came toward me.
“I’m sorry. I just…”
Her face turned down, and she grabbed my hand. She squeezed and then met my gaze. “I’m glad I came. Vasile said something had happened, but you were okay. But this is bad.”
“I’m fine, fine,” I said as I unlocked the door.
She glanced at me quickly. “You’re not fine.”
Then she hugged me. “Why didn’t you call me? I was worried sick.”
“I’m sure Sorin—” I cut off quickly, not even able to speak the words aloud. “They told you I was fine,” I finally settled on.
“Them telling me and me seeing you with my own eyes aren’t the same thing.”
“You see me. Now go home be with your family, hold your baby.”
She frowned even harder, and my heart quaked.
“I’m sorry. I’m such a bitter bitch. You should go home. I’m not up for company.”
“You apologized to me twice in the past two minutes. I think you’ve apologize to me twice total since we were in third grade. Talk to me, Esther. Don’t push me away. Not now.”
I looked at Fawn, the wide-eyed earnestness in her voice, the gentle kindness that I had always appreciated and envied, and it shattered me.
I barely recognized the first sob as my own voice, but by the second there was no doubt. I trembled all over, tears that had exploded from seemingly nowhere wetting my face. Fawn held me tighter, patted my back, and I did something I don’t think I’d ever done. I let it all out, let myself go completely.
“I thought I was gonna die, Fawn,” I said around gasping sighs.
“Did they hurt you?”
I chuckled, only belatedly realizing how unhinged I probably sounded.
“No. Not physically, anyway.”
“Sometimes the physical wounds are easier,” she said.
I knew the words came from a wealth of experience, things that she had seldom told me about, and that she’d never given me full insight into. But I knew it now, knew how shattering it could be to be so close.
“How do you do it?” I asked, as I angrily swiped at a few stray tears that had escaped.
“Do what?”
“Live like that, with him?”
“Easy. The alternative is living without him. And that’s not an alternative,” she said. She looked at me with conviction, certitude, and again I found myself envying her.
“That wasn’t the worst of it, Fawn. Thinking I was gonna die…”
I paused, looked away. Then I looked back at her. “Seeing that man get shot. Rolling around on the ground screaming. It was awful. And then, the look on Sorin’s face when he was going to shoot Natasha. He would’ve done it. Wouldn’t have given it a second thought. Tell me I’m wrong,” I said, looking at Fawn, desperate, pleading, hoping she could help me deny the truth I new.
“He would have. And if you weren’t there, he wouldn’t have thought about it. But you were there and he did. And that’s the difference. That’s how I can live with it,” she said.
“That’s some heavy-duty compartmentalization,” I said. And when she lifted her brow, I added, “When I’m not working, I watch talk shows. You pick up the jargon.”
She gave me a faint smile, and I did as well.
“I don’t know, Esther. I’m so messed up, and I’ve been a part of this for so long that it’s hard for me to put myself in your shoes, to imagine how the darker sides of this world must be to you. So I’ll just tell you how I look at it. The things they do aren’t always pretty, maybe aren’t often pretty, but I trust him. Trust him to keep us safe. And I know, beyond all doubt, that he is the best man I’ve ever known. And Sorin is too.”
“He’s a psycho. He beat up some guy, was gonna shoot his lifelong friend.”
“Or he was defending you, protecting you and avenging an unforgivable betrayal,” she said.
“Convenient interpretation,” I said.
“Do you have another?”
I stayed silent, unable to refute her statement.
“Sorin’s not a psycho. He’s a little nutty, but someone else here is too.”
“I resent that remark. I’m totally non-nutty.”
“Whatever you say,” she replied on a laugh.
“But even if I concede that I might be a little outside of the mainstream, that and being a Romanian mobster are not, in fact, the same.”
“They’re not. But could you have been if you were born to it? Would you have managed to retain your humanity the way they have?” I went silent again, exhaled hard. “It’s a moot point anyway. He broke up with me,” I said. “I sound like a fourteen-year-old girl. He broke up with me.” I snorted in disgust and leaned back against the couch that we had moved to.