The Ex (36 page)

Dr. Harris went on, “Remember, if you are uncomfortable at any time, you can ask him to leave or ask for my intervention. I want this to go as well for you as it can, but I have to warn you again that these scenarios aren’t always as cathartic as patients expect. Are you absolutely certain this is something you’re comfortable doing?”

“I am.” He nodded toward the door. “I’m ready.”

Despite his cool, decisive exterior, Neil’s hand trembled when he took mine. Dr. Harris led us to the door and opened it. The room beyond was decorated similarly to the waiting room, down to the structured leather chair and black leather sofa. And sitting in the chair was the man responsible for all the anguish Neil was reeling from.

In person, Stephen looked even more like his sister. Beyond their matching hazel eyes and auburn hair, his expressions, his body language mimicked Valerie’s to a T. It was eerie. I’d never thought to ask if they were twins, but it seemed like a possibility. Was that why Neil had loved them both? Because they were so similar?

Maybe I’d been expecting Stephen to look like the monster I knew he was, but he was just a guy. He wore a gray jacket over a white shirt with blue pinstripes and dark indigo jeans. The smattering of brown freckles over his tanned nose gave him a boyish look. So did, I assumed, a healthy amount of Botox or surgical tune-ups; for a man in his fifties, there was nary a line on his face.

“Neil,” he said, extending his hand. “It’s been a long time.”

“It has.” He didn’t take Stephen’s hand, forcing him to withdraw it awkwardly.

Stephen turned to me. “And it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

I said nothing. There wouldn’t be anything constructive to say.

“This is my wife, Sophie,” Neil said coolly. He sat on the couch, and I sat beside him.

Dr. Harris had positioned his desk chair at one end of the oval table, putting himself between Neil and Stephen. “Mr. Stern, Neil has asked you to meet him here today to discuss some…discrepancies in your book.”

“Valerie mentioned that you were angry over what I wrote about you,” Steven said, already apologetic. Too apologetic, I thought. “I tried to contact you, Neil. You never took my calls.”

Of course he didn’t take your calls. You’re a rapist.

“I was never made aware of any calls.” Neil’s voice was even and detached. “And you could have contacted me through Valerie.”

Stephen seemed like the kind of person who was surprised when his routine lies didn’t work. He was a reasonable facsimile of a human, but he seemed like a predatory lizard who’d just realized that his camouflage wasn’t as good as he thought it was.

“I don’t want to argue over whether or not you tried to contact me,” Neil went on. “The fact is that you lied.”

With a sympathetic look that I was sure he’d practiced in the car on the way over, Stephen leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “Neil, I know we’ve had our differences in the past, over what happened to us that night.”

“Nothing happened to us,” Neil interrupted. “You did something to me. We weren’t both victims.”

“I have to respectfully disagree,” Stephen said gently, as though he were talking to some irrational, overemotional child. “When I realized what I’d put you through, even though it was an accident, I felt horrible. Imagine if our roles had been reversed. I’m sure you would have felt the same—”

“No, I wouldn’t have. Because it wouldn’t have happened, at all.” Neil’s expression was stony, impenetrable.

Stephen made a short, rueful sound, as though he were resigned to some undue penance. “I know I can never convince you that what happened was an accident—”

There it was again.
Happened.
As though he’d had no choice in the matter. As though it were an event that swept them along into equal suffering.

“—but I do hope that someday you realize that I would have never hurt you like that intentionally. We cared about each other. We were friends. I’ve missed you every day,” Stephen went on, like he was acting out a speech in a movie.

“I don’t see how,” Neil said, laughing in bitter disbelief. “Do you miss all the rubbish you throw out? All the things you use and discard, do you feel the same agony of regret toward them?”

Still playing the martyr, Stephen nodded in understanding. “You have every right to be angry with me. I know that.”

“I don’t need your permission to be angry with you.” Neil spoke more forcefully now. “What you did to me that night… And, then, you dared to write about it as though we parted on a passionate argument. You said I ‘couldn’t handle the scene’, and I became too emotionally involved. You implied that I was a manipulator and that I was unstable. And you wrote about my sexuality without asking permission. I wasn’t out to my family, let alone strangers.”

My spine went rigid. Neil had never told me what Stephen had written about him. I felt sick to my stomach.

“And you did it because it would liven up your book. There would be rumors and gossip, and you would sell more copies.” Neil’s throat flexed as he swallowed. “That’s the level of regret you truly feel over what you did.”

Stephen didn’t have anything to say to that. I wondered how many people had ever called him out on his bullshit before. “I have to say, I thought this would be about making up and putting some of this ugliness behind us.”

“It is about putting ugliness behind him,” Dr. Harris interjected patiently. “But there was no guarantee of reconciliation.”

“Of course, doctor. My apologies.”

Ugh, smarm. It was like he was running for class pet. Even I could tell that Dr. Harris wasn’t impressed, and I’d just met the guy. I desperately wanted to ask Dr. Harris if he would diagnose Stephen as a malignant narcissist, because that was my armchair opinion.

“All I can say, Neil,” Stephen went on, “is that if I misrepresented you or our relationship in any way, then I am deeply, deeply sorry. And I hope that one day you might be able to forgive me for whatever wrong I’ve done you.”

Whatever wrong?
I silently fumed. As though there were some dispute over what he’d done.

“You raped me,” Neil said suddenly, forcefully. Finally, he’d said it. Instead of relief at hearing him admit it, all I felt was deepening horror. He looked Stephen in the eye, with an expression that would have scared the hell out of me had I been on the receiving end. “You raped me, and you announced my sexuality to the entire world. There is no question in my mind as to what ‘happened’ between us. And, if a time comes that I can forgive you, I won’t be informing you.”

Stephen wasn’t shaken. He spread his hands, dropping all pretense of remorse. “Then, why am I here?”

“Because you owe it to me to hear this. After what I’ve lived with for nearly three decades, you owe me this much.” Neil took a deep breath and nodded to Dr. Harris. “I think we’re finished here.”

Stephen looked to Dr. Harris, who nodded and said, “Thank you for your time today.”

Maybe it was because he was a TV personality, but I couldn’t help but think Stephen was relishing the drama when he stood and said, as though he were the bigger person, “I hope this doctor can give you the help you need to accept reality, Neil.”

Then, he went out the door.

I tried to take Neil’s hand, and he let me, but only for a moment before he pulled away.

“Sophie, could you give me a moment with Neil in private?” Dr. Harris asked gently, and I nodded and stepped out of the room.

Stephen was still there, on his cell phone in the waiting room. Unbelievable. He didn’t even have the grace to leave.

“I think it went well,” he murmured into his phone. When I closed the door behind me, the sound brought his eyes up in guilty shock.

I kept my expression blank and sat in one of the chairs across the room. I stared, never flinching, into his eyes. A part of my brain, a part that terrified me, made a weapon out of everything in my peripheral vision. I could grab the brushed steel lamp from the secretary’s desk and bash him over the head. Or the phone. I could garrote him with the phone line. I had no doubt I would be strong enough; my hate was that big inside me.

“I’ll have to call you back,” he said quietly, looking away.

I didn’t. I imagined my stare drilling into his head like that space laser from
Alien vs. Predator
, rupturing vessels and searing away gray matter the same way the Predators had drilled through the arctic shelf.

He slipped his phone into his jacket pocket, rose and nodded to me. “Sophie. It was very nice to meet you.”

“I hope you die.”

“Pardon?” he asked in mild bewilderment.

Could he not fucking hear? Was it actually inconceivable to him that I would say something like that? If he was that stupid, I’d repeat it for him. “I hope you die. I know we all die someday, but I hope you die soon. And I hope it’s awful. And I hope you’re afraid for a long time while it’s happening.”

He forced a smile. A smug, victorious smile, as though my loss of temper had proven something. That shift in expression confirmed my opinion. He wasn’t sorry. He’d come here for the drama, for his own edification. To make amends with himself and be absolved of his past.

He turned and walked out, and I gripped the chair cushion, my whole body trembling. It was only through the strength of my concern for Neil that I managed to calm myself down by the time he and Dr. Harris emerged from the office.

Neil didn’t talk much in the car. “I know you planned to stay in the city tonight. I was hoping we could go home.” He smiled sadly and took my hand. “I need to be at home. In the present.”

“Yeah, of course.” I stroked my thumb along his. “Anything you want.”

“And I don’t—” He broke off and rubbed the back of his neck, staring out the window at the Manhattan traffic. “I don’t feel safe here while he is. It’s a city of eight million people, I know I’m not likely to run into him, but… Ah, that’s stupid.”

I laid my hand on his knee. It wasn’t going to do any good to argue with him about whether or not his fear was perfectly acceptable. At least he was taking steps toward protecting himself, even if they seemed illogical.

* * * *

Dr
. Harris had given Neil a few Valium to help control his post-confrontation anxiety. I’d made him swear in front of the doctor that they wouldn’t be taken in conjunction with anything. Neil took a pill in the car and another when we arrived at the house. I took him straight to bed, but sleep eluded me.

Cautiously rising from the bed, I grabbed my phone and texted Mom.
You up?

I knew she was, because the little gray dots indicating that she would respond popped up. But it took her a long time to answer. When she did, all it said was,
Yup.

Frowning, I pulled on my robe and went into the hallway to dial her number.

“Yeah, Soph?” she answered. The TV was on in the background.

“I can’t sleep. I had kind of a hard day.” I took a deep breath. “Do you have anything to drink?”

“I do. But what happened to the big fancy bar in the basement? Don’t tell me you threw away all that booze just because you remodeled.” She snorted at her own joke.

Maybe it was because of the day I’d had. Maybe it was the year. I was suddenly weary to tears. I sniffled as I asked, “Can I just come over?”

“Of course, honey,” she said, her voice full of the motherly concern she’d always shown me after a break up or a bad grade.

But never a scraped knee, because parents who work at hospitals wouldn’t “poor baby” you if your leg got ripped off.

“Okay. I just need to get dressed, and I’ll be right there.”

I put on sweats and grabbed a hoodie. Even though it was July, being this close to the ocean made the nights a little chilly. As I stepped out the kitchen door, I passed Tony going up to his apartment over the porte-cochere.

“Late night tonight?” I called, and he startled, a hand on his chest.

“Ms. Scaife. You scared the hell out of me.” He looked so sheepish at being easily frightened, I decided not to laugh at him.

“Sorry. I’m just happy that anybody is awake, right now.” I pointed toward the driveway. “I’m headed down to Mom’s place. She can’t sleep, either.”

“Do you need a ride?” he asked, almost too quickly.

For a second, I considered reminding him that we didn’t care what he did after he punched the clock. Especially since he’d spent all day ferrying us around. I worried such a statement would be condescending, so I kept it to myself. “No, I think I’ll just walk. Get some fresh air and clear my head.”

Tony nodded, his smile looking more like a grimace in the outdoor lighting. He was our driver, and he went with us almost everywhere. He had to know what was going on. “Be careful, ma’am.”

I ignored the “ma’am” part and went on my way.

The guest house was a two-story building that matched the big house, set off from the main drive by a winding lane lit with Dark Sky compliant post lights made to look like gas street lamps. A little copse of trees provided a bit of privacy, which was good, because having lived in the woods for most of her life, Mom barely ever remembered to close her curtains or blinds. There was a two-car garage and a small swimming pool out back. It was a bigger, better place than Mom could have dreamed of living in back home, and that made her uneasy enough that she had to point it out every time the subject came up.