“Fuck you too,” June had mumbled as she burned his clothes in the backyard barbecue.
The school board couldn’t fire her for being married to an imprisoned sex offender. Instead, she was moved to the worst part of town, a job for which she was routinely called to testify in court cases of students who’d been accused of armed robbery, rape, drug trafficking, and any number of horrors. Her social life was nonexistent. There were no friends left for the woman who had defended a pedophile. There were no shoulders to cry on for the principal who had called the students raped by her husband a pack of lying whores.
Over the years, June had considered giving an interview, writing a book, telling the world what it was like to be in that room listening to Danielle Parson and knowing that her husband had as good as killed them both. Each time June sat down to write the story, the words backed up like bile in her throat. What could she say in defense of herself? She had never publicly admitted her husband’s guilt. June Connor, a woman who relished the English language, could find no words to explain herself.
She had shared a bed with Richard for eighteen years. She had borne him a child. They had lost their child. They had loved together. They had grieved together. And all the while, he was a monster.
What kind of woman didn’t see that? What kind of principal did not notice that her own husband was brutally sodomizing her daughter’s fifteen-year-old best friend?
Pride. Sheer determination. She would not explain herself. She did not owe anyone a damn explanation. So she kept it all bottled up inside of her, the truth an angry, metastasizing tumor.
“Another story about the weather,” Richard said, rustling pages as he folded the paper. “Umbrellas are suggested.”
Her heart fluttered again, doing an odd triple beat. The tightness in her chest turned like a vise.
“What is it?” Richard reached for the mask hanging on the oxygen tank.
June waved him away, her vision blurring on her hand so that it seemed like a streak of light followed the movement. She moved her hand again, fascinated by the effect.
“June?”
Her fingers were numbing, the bones of her hand slowly degloved. She felt her breath catch, and panic filled her — not because the time was here, but because she still had not asked him the question.
“What is it?” He sat on the edge of the bed, his leg touching hers. “June?” His voice was raised. “Should I call an ambulance?”
She looked at his hands. His square fingers. His thick wrists. There were age spots now. She could see the blue veins under his skin.
The first time June held Richard’s hand, her stomach had tickled, her heart had jumped, and she’d finally understood Austen and Brontë and every silly sonnet she’d ever studied.
Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.
This was the feeling she wanted to take with her — not the horror of the last twenty years. Not the sight of her daughter lying dead. Not the questions about how much Grace knew, how much she had suffered. Not the thought of Danielle Parson, the pretty young girl who could make it through the day only with the help of heroin.
June wanted the feeling from the first time she had held her child. She wanted the bliss from her wedding day, the first time Richard had made love to her. There were happy times in this home. There were birthdays and surprise parties and Thanksgivings and wonderful Christmases. There was warmth and love. There was Grace.
“Grace,” Richard said, as if he could read her mind. Or perhaps June had said the word, so sweet on her lips. The smell of her shampoo. The way her tiny clothes felt in June’s hand. Her socks were impossibly small. June had pressed them to her mouth one day, kissing them, thinking of kissing her daughter’s feet.
Richard cleared his throat. His tone was low. “You want the truth.”
June tried to shake her head, but her muscles were gone, her brain disconnecting from the stem, nerve impulses wandering down vacant paths. It was here. It was so close. She was not going to find religion this late in the game, but she wanted lightness to be the last thing in her heart, not the darkness his words promised to bring.
“It’s true,” he told her, as if she didn’t know this already. “It’s true what Danielle said.”
June forced out a groan of air. Valentine’s Day cards. Birthday balloons. Mother’s Day breakfasts. Crayon drawings hanging on the refrigerator. Skinned knees that needed to be kissed. Monsters that were chased away by a hug and a gentle stroke of hair.
“Grace saw us.”
June tried to shake her head. She didn’t need to hear it from his mouth. She didn’t need to take his confession to her grave. Let her have this one thing. Let her have at least a moment of peace.