She paused again, shuffling her feet in the slushy ground. “The day of the banquet, I told him that our friendship had to end. But it was hard, I didn’t want it to. He didn’t want it to either. I didn’t mean to, but I leaned over and kissed him. But then you burst into the house, Charles, and I thought you saw us. I know some people saw. I thought we were alone, but a group of people came in all of a sudden. Board members, other kids, you. And then you were screaming at Scott, and he pushed you down on the ground and … I don’t know. I thought it was all a symptom of what you saw. And so I ended it with you. I figured you wanted me to. You acted like you did when I told you, just nodding, not even asking why. I didn’t blame you for hating me. I didn’t blame you for not understanding. I was taking away what was yours.”
Charles’s head pounded. What she had said began to take shape. He thought about how she always tried to draw Scott in—on the patio, in the halls at school. Sometimes she’d disappear upstairs when she came over to the house for dinner. He’d assumed she was in the bathroom, freshening her makeup, carefully washing her hands … but maybe not.
He thought about how Scott hovered over their table at the banquet, staring right at Bronwyn. And when Charles had gone inside after Scott and found him in the laundry room, it had seemed like another person had been in with him moments before. Maybe he’d just missed Scott and Bronwyn’s maudlin good-bye. His stomach turned.
“Why?” he whispered.
She blinked. “I know it makes no sense. But it did, back then. It really did.”
He stared at her, disgusted. “How could a clandestine relationship with my brother make sense?”
Bronwyn blinked rapidly a few times. “Your brother?” she whispered. “Charles, no. No. It wasn’t Scott.”
Charles tilted his head.
“Scott was the one that saw us hugging a week before the banquet. He was the one who … who read it all wrong.” She looked down. “I tried to explain it to him a few times, but he wouldn’t listen. He called me terrible names.”
Charles’s mouth felt dry. “If it wasn’t Scott you were with, then … who?”
Bronwyn lowered her eyes, ashamed. Charles stepped back, daring to consider the only other possibility it could be. The only other him. “What?”
She let out a small, animal-like noise.
“You felt like you could … talk to him?”
“Yes. Kind of.”
“What the hell did you talk about?”
“I don’t know. School. Pressure. College. My future. The weather.”
He clapped his hands on his head. “Why didn’t you talk about any of this with your parents?”
“You know my parents, Charles. You know you can’t talk to them like that.”
But that was the thing—Charles didn’t know Bronwyn’s parents, not really, not intimately. Just as she wasn’t supposed to know his parents. “I’m supposed to believe this?” He sputtered. “He wasn’t … touchy-feely. He wasn’t a talker. I’m supposed to believe that you two just had nice little conversations and that there wasn’t anything more to it?”
“Charles, I’m sorry. This is why I didn’t want to get into it with you. I knew you’d jump to conclusions. Who wouldn’t? That’s why I ended it. That’s why I got out of the picture. I thought you knew already and we would never get past it.”
Charles rubbed his eyes. When he took his hands away, Bronwyn was still there, huddled and small. “I still don’t understand why you picked him.”
“He listened. I think … well, we both felt out of place, maybe. We both felt a funny kind of angst that sort of … matched up.”
“Don’t act like you know him. Don’t talk about his angst.”
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “People saw us at the banquet, though, including my mother. She was horrified. Of course she told my father, and my family practically disowned me. They got me out of this area as best they could. Sent me away to Europe every summer. Made sure I was never around your family ever again. Not that it was difficult. You made no effort to contact me.”
“I never knew any of this,” Charles murmured. “Lots of people saw, but I never had any idea.”
“Well, I think my father did a pretty good job keeping it a secret.”
“Jesus.”
She wrung her hands. After a while she said, “I should have told you a long time ago. But I didn’t want to hurt you. In a way, I knew this would feel like more of a betrayal than if it had been … sexual. But he told me things about you, Charles. Good things. Do you want me to tell you what he said?”
“No,” he shouted. “Absolutely not.”
“Okay, okay.”
“So did you talk to him again? After the banquet?”
“I saw him only once, kind of recently. It was right when I came back home, a few days before Leon and I moved out to the woods. I ran into him at the mall. When he saw me, his face went white, like he’d seen a ghost. We talked for just a moment before he made an excuse to get away.”
“What were you doing at a mall? I thought you were supposed to renounce your possessions.”
She sank heavily into one hip. “It wasn’t a prearranged thing, Charles. We really met by accident.”
He struggled for a breath. “So what did he get you?”
“Sorry?”
“You said he got you a Christmas present our senior year. Did you open it? Do you know what it was?”
She lowered her eyes. “It was a bracelet.”
“Jesus.”
“No, it wasn’t like that. It was … sweet.” She cupped her hands around her big belly. “Do you know that my parents never got us Christmas gifts? They sent us on experiences. They arranged meetings for us with dignitaries and film directors. Yes, I realize I’m being an ungrateful bitch by saying that sometimes that wasn’t enough, but sometimes, it wasn’t. It wasn’t what I asked for. Often, it didn’t even suit my interests. My parents were so determined that they knew what was right for me, Charles, but you know what? That bracelet was what was right for me. It was picked out for me.”
“Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?”
“No, Charles. I know how this sounds. I just …”
“Why did I never know this?” he interrupted. “We were together for three years. Why didn’t you ever say anything?”
She pressed her lips together, holding in a sob. “It’s wasn’t something I could really explain. I’m sorry.”
He bent over at the waist. Horrible images sifted into his mind. He imagined Bronwyn and his father leaning close in the hallway of his childhood home, having heart-to-hearts. He pictured his father picking out a bracelet for her, asking the salesclerk to wrap it, presenting it to her in a stolen moment. He saw Bronwyn telling him that this had to end, that people wouldn’t understand. He tried to envision a look of turmoil on his father’s face, but that was just the thing—he couldn’t. He couldn’t fathom his father having such deep, powerful, fatherly feelings for anyone, not even Scott. Bronwyn was right—it would have been easier to swallow this if it had been an advance from a dirty old man, a sick little grope in a hallway, a forced kiss in the laundry room. But this, something rich, complex, and mature, was unbearable.
The sun suddenly felt bright and sharp, revealing way too much. He rubbed his hands together. They were still freezing even though he was wearing gloves.
Something struck him. He wheeled around at Bronwyn. “How did you know I was married?”
She blinked, caught off guard. “I …”
“I have gloves on. You can’t see my fingers. You couldn’t see a ring. Did you just guess?”
She lowered her shoulders. “I called your house yesterday. I didn’t realize it was your house number, but I think your office sent me that instead of your work number. Your wife answered. I only just put two and two together now.”
“Did you tell her your name?”
“I think I did. Then we got cut off.”
Pain shot through his stomach. “I have to go.”
“Charles?”
“I have to go.”
He fumbled blindly up the hill, running so hard for his car that he couldn’t quite stop himself when he reached it, crashing into the back bumper hard with his hip. He wrenched the door open, smacking it against a tree trunk, not even bothering to check if he’d done any damage.
When he turned the engine on, the radio blared loud through the speakers. He threw the car into reverse and peeled away from the cabin. It felt good to be moving. When he looked in the rearview mirror, he saw that Bronwyn had climbed the hill and was now standing on the edge of the gulley, watching him. By the time he got to the stop sign, three-tenths of a mile away in a perfectly straight, as-the-crowflies line, he could still see her shape, but she looked featureless and anonymous. He could pretend she was merely some strange, pregnant, country woman. Someone he knew nothing about.
Chapter 16
Catherine’s biopsy had been scheduled for 8 a.m., but because of a few emergencies, they hadn’t gotten to her until almost noon. Joanna and Scott sat in an open waiting room, surrounded by other people, and Scott passed the time by quietly making fun of them all. There was Hard Boiled, the man with the bad combover, strands of hair growing just above his ear swept across his entire bald, egg-shaped head. There was Aggressive Word Finder, attacking the puzzle with her pen, making little tears in the oatmeal-colored page. There was an obese woman in an American flag sweatshirt; her ankles were so swollen that Scott burst out laughing every time he looked at her. He made up names for the doctors and nurses based on characters from old cartoons: the hunchbacked, sour-faced nurse was Ram Man; the butch, broad-shouldered woman doctor was She-Ra; and the emaciated surgeon was, of course, Skeletor.
Joanna didn’t want to laugh. She still felt prickly about their talk last night, all she felt she’d revealed to Scott. Part of her wanted him to go home. Another part wanted him here, sitting next to her, doing exactly what he was doing. She hated that she felt so torn. She hated that she wasn’t taking Charles’s calls. It felt like things were slipping through her fingers and she was just letting them.
Catherine’s surgeon, Dr. Nestor, visited Joanna and Scott at 12:30, informing them that Catherine was resting while they waited for the test results. After Catherine had time to nap, but before the results came back, they went in to see her. She was in the bed nearest the door, her ash-blonde hair fanned out on the pillow, the white sheets pulled up to her mid-chest. Something about her appeared undone, like an unfinished painting. There were machines next to her, something monitoring blood pressure and pulse, an IV bag hovering over her shoulder. “The operation went well,” Joanna told her. “They were able to remove the cyst. You’re going to be fine.”
Catherine, still slightly woozy from whatever it was that had knocked her out for the biopsy, scowled. “It’s not a cyst. It’s something else. I can feel it in my blood. I feel diseased.”