Just One Night, Part 3_ Binding Agreement(42)

“Robert—”

He leans down, kisses me on the forehead, breathes in my perfume before saying, “I’m sorry.”

And then he gets up and leaves, making sure the door opens only a crack as he walks out, making sure that no one sees me with my clothes rumpled, my hair a mess. No one sees me on the floor, crying for the man who I have only now truly come to understand.

All these years he’s been running, from his past, from pain. . . .

And now he’s running from me.





CHAPTER 15





LESS THAN AN hour after Robert left my office Mr. Costin came to see me, in my office, further contaminating a place that was only an hour earlier a place of passion and love. He told me that Mr. Dade had come to see him. He assured Mr. Costin that he wouldn’t be taking business away from the firm just because of my departure. Mr. Dade told him that this was due to me and my altruism and that if I so much as hinted that I was unhappy with how I was being treated during my final days on the job, all bets were off.

Mr. Costin then spent about twenty minutes showering me with praise, kissing my ass, and making sure I was happy.

I can’t wait to get out of this place.

* * *

DAYS PASS AND I don’t hear from Robert. I don’t expect to. It’s the way it needs to be.

It breaks my heart.

But there are plenty of distractions. None of them, pleasant. Over the weekend I go to see my parents. I go to tell them the truth about everything. I sit in their living room, my hands clasped in my lap, my head bent, the picture of contrition.

I tell them I cheated on Dave, that we’re through. I tell them that I’ve been hiding this breakup from them for well over a month now.

I sit on their rose-patterned couch, inside their cream-colored walls, and I wait for the comparisons. The comparisons to Melody.

They come quickly from my father. I’m a disgrace, a disappointment . . . a slut. Just like her.

My mother doesn’t speak but her quiet tears say it all.

And then something odd happens as my father continues to grill me. Something ugly. It occurs as he questions me about the man who I betrayed Dave with, “this Robert Dade fellow.” As it becomes clear that Robert is rich, a power player, a man who had much more than a passing interest in me, it’s then that my father’s tone softens. Can I make it work with Robert? Will he marry me?

And all of a sudden my father thinks that Dave wasn’t such a great guy after all. He never thought he was right for me. I shouldn’t sell myself short, aim high; that’s what he always says. If this Mr. Dade can make an honest woman out of me—

“Stop,” I say. I don’t shout the word but it comes out with enough force to bring my father to silence. My mother is by my side, the tears drying on her cheeks. She looks at me curiously.

“It doesn’t matter if Robert Dade puts a ring on my finger or not,” I say quietly. “The man who helped me deceive another can never make me honest.”

“All right, but what I’m saying—” my father begins, his brown eyes still glittering with hope and ambition.

But again I interrupt. “What you’re saying is that it’s okay to cheat and deceive as long as I get something good out of it. Something that will last. I wanted to believe that, too, but I don’t.”

My mother puts a hand on my knee, gives it a comforting squeeze. “Kasie, don’t be so hard on yourself.”

I stare at her, at her hand wrinkled but soft due to an excess of lotion. My father’s hands aren’t much bigger. Neither of them have a single callous.

I used to think these were hands of virtue, that like the scales of justice they could weigh the weight of another’s guilt and come up with a fitting sentence. My sister had deserved to be rejected, hated, cut off. She deserved it because my parents said so. If I took that path I’d deserve it, too.

But now, sitting here on this couch, confessing my sins, an idea is dawning. It’s an idea that changes everything.

“She needed help.” I say the words slowly, tasting them.

“Who?” My father asks.

I look at him with new eyes. I note the way his stomach hangs a little over his pants, his receding hairline, the gray carefully coated with light brown dye. I look down at his shoes. My mother and I are barefoot, to protect the carpet. But not once has my mother ever asked my father to take off his shoes upon entering the house even as she asked the rest of us to.

I never thought about why that was before. I suppose I just assumed he was the king of the castle and was therefore granted certain privileges.

But now that I think about it, perhaps he wears shoes because when he’s the only one who isn’t barefoot, it gives him the illusion of height.