BETHANY LAY IN bed, asleep under the quilt.
Except to change and feed little Jon she’d been in bed with her baby every minute since they’d arrived two days earlier. The baby lay asleep in the crib provided by the inn as Jon shaved in the bathroom. He needed to appear ever the respectable, professional man of the law, for the press conference.
He leaned from the bathroom doorway looking at Bethany. She stirred and blinked awake as if feeling his gaze. She yanked back the quilt. The scent of her unwashed body rose up out of the sheets.
“You should get up. Go for a walk, the stroller is downstairs,” Jon said.
She shook her head and sniffed. The old pajama top of Jon’s she wore was buttoned crookedly. From one pocket she pulled a used tissue. She blew her nose in it, then dropped it to the floor.
“Do you good to get ambulatory,” Jon said.
“Don’t push.”
“I’m not.”
“You are. You do.”
“Sorry.”
She sighed, exasperated. “Then you get all sorry. It’s one or the other with you. Control or grovel. Be something else. Anything else. In between. Be normal. Please.”
“OK. All right. Stop. I can’t hear this now. You need to get up sometime. Do something. It was awful. But it’s over.”
“Like you know.”
“It is. I promise. I saw on the TV a boy has been brought in for questioning. It won’t be long before he’s arrested. I promise.”
“Promises.”
“I lived up to them. The baby and the house . . .”
“I wanted a home. And little Jon. I can’t believe you.”
Jon clenched his fists. Sometimes she pushed him. Pushed and pushed and pushed. Until all he wanted to do was . . . He closed his eyes, breathed. Opened his eyes again. “Right. OK. It’s all me.”
“Don’t put words in my mouth.”
“No it is. It’s all me. I know.” He cracked his knuckles. “But you. You need to get back to the land of the living. Quit wallowing.”
“How should I behave? Cold. Like you?”
“I’m not cold.”
“You haven’t missed a beat.”
“I just haven’t shown it.”
“God forbid you should,” she said.
“I need to get done what needs getting done. I won’t stop living to grieve for a girl I hardly knew when I have important work to do.”
She looked at him, her lips slightly parted. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Me? You act as if it was your own kid who was killed instead of a babysitter.”
“You’re cold.”
“This is no time to be a mess.”
“You haven’t so much as touched me—”
“OK. All right. Who’s cold? To bring that up.”
Jon turned back into the bathroom and slammed the door. The frame shook. Before he could control himself, he punched the mirror. Cracking it.
His knuckles bled.
The baby cried.
Jesus. Why wouldn’t that baby shut up?
Trying to collect himself, he rubbed his temples and shut his eyes. He squeezed and unsqueezed his fists, trying to steady his hands, but they would not steady. They trembled uncontrollably. His whole body shook, as if he were standing beside a locomotive as it roared past him.
He slouched against the wall and slid down it until he sat in a heap. He’d not meant to yell. He hated yelling at her. Hated himself for it. She was right. He would crawl back, tail tucked, and say sorry until it sickened them both. Grovel, mouth metallic with the bitterness of a remorse that seemed bottomless.
Ever since the horror in the cage as a boy, he’d calculated every move, exacted it with mechanical precision, however pleasant or unpleasant. It had gotten him through. It had gotten him a wife. It had gotten Bethany her dream house, the baby she’d wanted. She’d had little idea of the legal thorniness and cost related to adopting a white male American baby. How could she? He’d handled the entirety of it, except for their personal interviews. And now all she wanted from him was emotion. Emotion. Life was easier without it. Easier when you saw relationships as they were: a dominant and a submissive. A person was either preyed or preyed upon. He’d learned the importance of control. It was the only way he’d survived.
A knock came on the bathroom door.
“You can’t go through with this press conference,” Bethany said through the door. “You have to quit the case. I won’t stay here with our son if you go out there in public and announce you will push on, like some hero, and jeopardize our safety any further.”
Jon opened the door. “I can’t quit,” he said.
“You can,” Bethany said. “If you want to.”
“It has nothing to do with want. I can’t just abandon my clients.”
“But you can abandon your family.”
“I won’t listen to you when you’re being dramatic and irrational.”
She wagged a finger in his face, nicking the end of his nose with a long fingernail, drawing blood. Her face was distorted with anger. “If you give that press conference, you’re inviting more violence upon us.”
“No one exacted violence on us.” He licked his lips. He needed a drink.
Jon turned from her and finished shaving. He washed his face with cold water. He put on the dress shirt hanging from the back of the door. Pulled himself together.
He slipped on his trousers and pushed past Bethany at the door, then lifted the sports coat from where it was slung over the back of a chair and tossed it on.
He put on his best tie and knotted it. “I have to go,” he said.
“Go,” she said, waving the back of her hand at him. “Go.”
“Nothing is going to happen. The kid is locked up and not going anywhere.”