Look Closer

She goes off into that faraway place of hers, then leans forward, her arms taut on each side of me. Her face close to mine. Her jaw clenched.

She opens her eyes and slows things down to a gentle rhythm. She leans forward, nose to nose, and whispers to me.

“Simon did it. He killed his father. I didn’t try to stop him. And I married him anyway. I married him for his money. So now you know. Now’s your chance to run as far away as you can.”

I thrust upward, Vicky bobbing, closing her eyes in response.

“I’m not . . . running away,” I say.

“You don’t know me,” she says, eyes still closed, her head turned away. “You can’t trust me.”

“I know you. I trust you.” Running my hands over her body, picking up speed, the heat rising within me.

“Nobody’s . . . ever . . . trusted me,” she says, breathing hard, head leaned back.

I’ve never come so hard in my life.

45

Wednesday, October 19, 2022

“You didn’t tell her,” you said, reading my face when you opened the door.

“It’s . . . not an easy conversation to have.”

“Have you made an appointment with that divorce lawyer?”

“I called him,” I said, but that was a lie, and I made that vow, I’d never lie to you, Lauren, so with my tail between my legs, I corrected the record. “I started to call but hung up. This isn’t easy, Lauren. C’mon.”

“You want me to ‘c’mon,’ like this is some casual thing? Are you committed to us or not?”

I am madly, desperately in love with you, Lauren. That is one thing that is not in doubt. But you have to know how hard this will be for Vicky. Why can’t you understand that? Why can’t you let me make this decision?

“I’m not going to be that woman,” you said. “I’m not going to nag at you and beg and plead and demand. If you don’t want to commit to me—”

“I’ll tell her tonight,” I promised.

And I will. Vicky will be home soon, and I’m going to tell her. God, this is going to be brutal. Oh, she’s home, she’s coming up the stairs right

46

Simon

I drop my green journal into my work bag as Vicky comes into my home office upstairs. “I thought I might find you here,” she says.

“You found me.”

She’s holding a laptop, carrying it like a book in school.

“I want you to look at something,” she says. “Don’t say a word until you’re finished.”

—

“Does your wife do this for you, Paul?” the woman on the video screen asks.

“My wife? Give me a break. She just lies there like a sack of potatoes. I have to check her for a pulse.”

“Okay, enough,” I say, hitting the “pause” button on the video, handing the laptop back to Vicky. “You promised me you wouldn’t do anything.”

“And I’ve kept my promise,” she says. “I haven’t done anything with it. He has no idea he was recorded. I leave that up to you.”

I run my fingers through my hair. “This is Paul Southern? Reid’s father?”

“The very one,” she says. “The man who’s bankrolling his idiot son all the way into a full professorship.”

“I wish you’d told me,” I say.

“You would’ve told me not to do it.”

“Exactly.”

“Well, so far, I haven’t done anything. All I did was load the gun. It’s up to you whether you pull the trigger.”

I drop my head into my hands. I should’ve figured she’d do something like this. “I take it you couldn’t find anything on Dean Comstock?”

“Nothing all that good.” She closes the laptop. “But I was thinking. If you go straight at Dean Cumstain, you have an archenemy on your hands. That’s not in your best interest. Why not go to the source, the one the dean is trying to please?”

“So, what—we show this to Paul and tell him to back me instead of his own son?”

She shrugs. “That’s exactly what we do.”

“Won’t that seem odd to the dean? Suddenly, Reid’s father says, Give the promotion to the other guy?”

“Who cares what seems odd?” she says. “You know all this money Paul Southern has—it didn’t come from his own blood, sweat, and tears. Did you know that?”

“I did not.”