Page 19 of Such a Good Wife

“Okay.”

“I was his girlfriend. I finally get out, ya know I finally did it, I stopped comin’ back to the bullshit. I was there with a date, even, till I ran into that prick. He got me again. All the sweet-talkin’. Send this loser home, he says. Tells me he’s changed. God, and I fucking fell for that bullshit again!”

“You sent your date away?” I ask. She blows a thread of smoke out the window.

“The guy is fuckin’ good. He’s real good.”

“I can’t believe Joe Brooks would act—I mean, he hit you. Jesus—I...”

“That? That was nothin’.”

When she says this, she blinks back tears. I think of how bad it must be if that was “nothing.”

“And you don’t report him?” I ask. She tosses her butt out the window and its fiery end skips down the road in the darkness behind us. She looks at me pointedly.

“You gotta promise me you’re not gonna say nothin’ to no one.”

I look at her, at the fear and anger in her swollen eyes.

“Yeah. Okay. I mean...”

“He can make your life hell. Him and all those good ole boys he works with. I made that mistake once—reporting what he done to me. My word against his. All his friends in the department there protecting him. You’ll regret it as much as I did if you say anything.”

She crosses her arms and leans into the night air that’s rushing in the window. I imagine how the he-said, she-said would go. She’s a single mom with alcohol on her breath and track marks that I can see on the insides of her arms. Her word against kids’ baseball coach and cop Joe Brooks. I feel nauseous.

She points to her street, and I turn in and drop her at the end of Sycamore Street, which leads to the trailer community half a mile down. I don’t offer to take her all the way, I’m sure she doesn’t want me to know where she lives.

She gets out and closes the door, but leans back in a moment.

“He was there with his friends, celebrating his promotion to detective. For your own good, like, for real, don’t be stupid and go reporting anything.”

“Okay,” I say, and she stares at me, studying, clearly deciding whether I’m telling the truth or not.

“Thanks for the ride.”

“Yeah. I’m Melanie, by the way. Melanie Hale.” I scribble my phone number down on the back of a gum wrapper I find in the center console and hand it to her.

“In case you ever need it, I don’t know,” I say, suddenly insecure, wondering if it’s too much. She takes it and nods.

“Lacy Dupre,” she says as she pulls out another smoke. “Anyway, I know who you are. Joe pointed you out once at a baseball practice. You’re one of the moms he went to school with. Said you were ‘fuckable.’”

“He said that to you when you were dating him?”

“Yep.”

“Classy,” I say, and she lights another cigarette, gives me a final, curt wave and walks unsteadily down the black road toward her home.

***

8

IN THE FOLLOWING DAYS, autumn settles slowly as it does in the South, with slight drops in temperature that offer only a small respite from the white-hot sun and merciless humidity. Rachel didn’t make cheerleading, so she spends even more time in her room scrutinizing her appearance and general self-worth. The makeup tutorial YouTube channel she started only has nine likes, so that explains why I find a mound of expensive cosmetics congealing in the heat, on top of the garbage next to the garage. I try to rescue a sticky red clump that used to be lipstick, pushing it back into its tube, but it’s no use.

Collin suggested we go down to the bayou and fish, maybe charter a boat for the day and camp. Rachel loves being on the water and stopping for boiled peanuts. She doesn’t exactly jump for joy, but a half nod and not getting her bedroom door slammed in our faces is a win, so on Saturday, we all pile in the car to drive to Spanish Lake.

The tents and supplies are strapped on the top of the SUV, and we look just like the Griswolds coming down the highway, I’m sure. I’m like one of the kids, glued to my phone as Collin drives. I skipped Thursday’s writing group. I didn’t trust myself to go, to risk another note or worse—that I might take Luke up on his offer—and I resist the urge to look up his name on social media. I don’t want any record that I even know who he is. But I want so desperately to see the thumbnail of his face bloom on my screen. I want to see candid shots of him at a ball game with friends, or with his toddler nephew on his shoulders at a backyard pool party. I want to see the shameless selfies. I wonder if he takes any. Maybe one on his balcony in Italy—just his face, the subtle duck-lipped expression he doesn’t realize he’s making, with the vast Mediterranean blue behind him.

I lay naked next to this man while he expressed his fear of dementia—his grandfather had early-onset—while he wrestled with regrets of not having kids, even though he always exclaims how great it is to be free. I laughed under the sheets as he walked through the house naked because he heard Roger, the stray cat, crying at the door and he had to run down and bring him some milk.

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