I stand with my brother’s wife and his mistress. I don’t belong here. I know that. But I can’t take the chance. I will give Patsy what she wants. What she needs. But I can’t let her go too far. I can’t let her undo everything I’ve done.
“I’m so sorry,” Lauren whispers.
She’s crying. Patsy isn’t now. Instead, my brother’s wife stands inches taller than her, her back straight and her eyes strong but not angry.
I feel for Lauren, in a way. She probably thought she was so slick, so careful. Now she stands before the wife of her lover. This is so much bigger than her affair, and maybe she has started to see that.
“Lauren,” Patsy says. “I know what you’re going through, but I need you to listen. He’s not what you think he is. He’s dangerous. Really dangerous . . . Because so few people see it. But think about it. Think about those moments you were with him. Something would happen, something small. Like some guy at a restaurant would call him ‘boss’ or ‘champ.’ Or maybe someone at the office would make a joke about him. You’d see it in his eyes. You’d see the change. It would be so quick, like a flash. One minute he is the most charming person on the planet. Then the truth would peek out. And after, you would laugh it off. But it was there. You couldn’t put words to it, or even describe it if you had to. But you saw it, didn’t you?”
I look back at Lauren. She is shaking now, her cheeks wet. I think to stop Patsy. That’s why I am here. But I can’t find the strength to do that.
“Maybe he hurt you once,” she continues. “By accident . . . or you thought it was. You probably felt like it was your fault.”
The words surround me. Pull me in. And before I realize it, I am a part of this. I share their pain. I know it is different for them. That he did things. Made them do things. But in the moment, we become one. We are all his victims.
“Maybe . . . Maybe he would make . . . you do something. Something you didn’t want to. Something that made you feel . . . wrong.”
Our wounds merge. It fills the charged air between the three of us. I feel it, too. That, and the burning, suffocating shame. I want them to stop talking. It’s like Patsy’s words are the beam of a flashlight, moving through the darkness, inch by inch, closer and closer to some unspeakable monster in the corner. I know that if the light shines on it, if I let it become real, it will consume us all. That’s why it is so shocking that when the conversation does continue, it is my voice, my words that pass between us, melding the three of us into one.
“He’d make you do it . . . ,” I say, knowing that we are not talking about the exact same thing. Knowing that only Patsy knows my truth. What I did. But I can’t stop myself. “After, though, you’d . . . you wouldn’t understand how he did it. They were only words. His words. But they changed you. And he would look at you after with that face, like you were the most disgusting thing in the world. But he’d be smiling, like it entertained him. Like it was funny to him. You’d look at him and feel so naked and so lost and so broken.”
I feel the dampness under my fingers. When I look down at my arm, I see that I’ve scratched the skin off my tattoo again. Blood drips down my arm and I want to cry. But this moment feels so different. For the first time in my life, I am not alone. The three of us have been marked by our pain, eternally drawn together by our will to survive. We are a burning, burrowing force, one that moved the three of us, pushed us into the darkness, and threatened to drag us under forever. In that moment, I feel the tiniest glimmer of hope. And the sensation may be the most foreign feeling I have ever experienced.
When Patsy speaks again, I think she is speaking for all of us.
“It’s the kind of broken that can’t be seen. It can’t be fixed. It can just be pushed down, buried; otherwise it slowly poisons everything. You hide from it. Make excuses. Worse, you lie to yourself . . . and you believe it. Your lies become this fantasy truth. And in those moments, your mind begins to adapt, to alter. In an attempt to protect you, your brain allows the most fundamental of betrayals. It allows you to survive. To live with it. It fractures, and pushes those awful moments into the pits that form inside your soul.”
I continue. “Some days, I think about what someone might think if they knew. They’d feel bad for me, for all of us. But they’d judge, too. They’d think, ‘They were just words.’ To them, it would seem so easy to stand up to him. Go to the police. Vanish. But their minds aren’t broken yet. They don’t understand . . . because they can’t, not until they are there, until their own thoughts betray . . . and they’ve opened their eyes to see that there are no choices anymore, no paths forward. No paths back. That someone else is pulling the strings.”
Lauren is looking at me, but I don’t notice at first. I can’t see Patsy, but I can feel her. I blink and clear my throat, but my words are finished. I have nothing left to offer. The hope blinks out and I am only emptiness and resolve.
“He wanted you to kill me, didn’t he?” she asks.
I nod.
The air seems to leave her body. “I guess I already knew that. Maybe I always did. Maybe that’s just how strong he is. That I knew, but I didn’t run. That I let you take me. Because . . . it was just what Drew wanted.”
“We understand,” Patsy says, touching Lauren’s hand.
The younger woman looks at me. I see the swollen lip. Her injured wrist. I have hurt her. Badly.
“You saved me,” she says.
I swallow the bitterness and shake my head. “Not yet. Patsy’s going to drive you to the office. Go back to him. Tell him what I did to you. Tell him what you saw in that cabin. Everything you saw.”
All Lauren can do is nod. I watch her walk down the rise, down to Patsy’s car. I know what she will do. And I know what my brother will do once she tells him about the bones. Because this has been my plan all along.