Chapter 7
Chapter 7 - The Folder She Kept in Her Trunk
Melissa came to my house four days after the kitchen table.
I invited her.
I want to be clear about that, because everything that happened after was my decision and I won't hand it to anyone else.
She texted from her own phone this time, the one I'd given back, and she asked if she could come by in the afternoon.
I said yes.
She parked on the street instead of the driveway, which I noticed, and which I understood.
She was in plain clothes.
Jeans, a gray sweater, no makeup, hair pulled back with a clip that had come loose on one side.
No robe.
That mattered to me more than I expected.
She stood on my porch like she was waiting to be told to leave.
I opened the door and said, "Come in before the neighbors start narrating."
She almost smiled and then didn't.
She sat at the kitchen table where Aaron had sat, which was the point, and she put a manila folder on the table between us and kept both hands flat on top of it.
"I brought this," she said.
"I figured," I said.
"Tea?"
She blinked at me.
"I'm serious," I said.
"I'm making tea.
You can say yes or no."
"Yes," she said.
"Please."
I made two cups.
I set hers down across from me and sat with my back to the sink, where I could see the front door and the hallway at the same time.
Old habit.
She opened the folder.
The first page was a screenshot of a text from Aaron.
It was dated in February, and it said, "We're basically separated.
She's just finishing the paperwork overseas.
Don't make it weird."
I read it twice.
The second page was another screenshot, from March.
It said, "Wear the robe tonight.
It makes things easier for me."
I set my cup down slower than I needed to.
The third page was a printed email, not a screenshot, which meant she'd already thought about this being used somewhere other than between the two of them.
Aaron had written it in April.
In it he asked her to open a savings account at a credit union in the next town over and to put the statements somewhere I wouldn't look, "in case Rebecca comes home early and goes through my side of the desk."
He said "Rebecca."
He used my name in a sentence about hiding money from me, and he spelled it right.
"How long have you been keeping this," I said.
"Since April," she said.
"I started saving things when I started feeling like a secret instead of a person."
She cried once.
Just once.
She didn't hide it and she didn't ask me to take care of it, and I didn't.
"I'm not going to forgive you," I said.
"I know," she said.
"I might never.
I'm not saying that to be cruel.
I'm saying it because I don't want you to sit here waiting for something that might not come."
She nodded and wiped her face with the heel of her hand.
"I'm not going to pretend you didn't know what you were doing," I said.
"You sat in my kitchen.
You drank out of my cups.
You wore my mother's robe in my bedroom.
That was you.
I'm not erasing that to make this easier on either of us."
"I'm not asking you to," she said.
"Good," I said.
"Because here's the part I want you to hear.
What he did to me, he did on purpose.
What he did to you, he did on purpose too.
He told you a story and he told me nothing, and he kept both of us standing in the same house without ever letting us look at each other.
That was built.
That wasn't a bad week for anybody."
She was quiet for a minute.
"I thought I was the only one who felt like the secret," she said.
"Two people can be the secret," I said.
"That's the trick.
He only needed us not to compare notes."
We sat there and finished the tea.
We weren't friends.
We aren't now.
But we were witnesses to the same man, and I needed her to understand that was the role I was offering her, and it wasn't a favor to her.
She gathered the folder and slid it across the table to me.
I didn't take it.
"Keep it," I said.
"I have copies made.
Bring the originals to the attorney when he calls you."
She stopped at the front door with her hand on the knob.
"The robe is still at the cleaner's on Harris," she said.
"I never wore it after that Friday."
I stood in the doorway after she left and I thought about that.
A cleaner's on Harris.
May you like
Aaron doesn't use that side of town.
He never has.
