Page 65 of Breaking the Dark

Arthur bends forward slightly, looks hard at the tabletop.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” says Ophelia at last.

“Yes,” Polly replies simply. “Yes, you do. You know exactly what I’m talking about.” She dips her hand into her handbag and pulls out the photographs she took of the sketchbook she’d found in the old chalet and the news clipping about the bar in Harlem, the police report about the bodies found under the dance floor. She spreads them out in front of Ophelia and her husband and watches them react. “I know all this about you, and yet I still want to be a part of your family. So all I’m asking, Ophelia, is for you to let me in.”

She stops and lets the ringing silence that follows this speech play out, revels in the dreadfulness and profundity of it. But she’s not worried. She has all the power right now.

She has Ophelia’s son; she has Ophelia’s secrets.

It won’t take long, she thinks, until Ophelia gives Polly everything she wants.

TWENTY-TWO

THE PLASTIC STICK sits on the edge of the sink. Jessica sits on the closed lid of the toilet. The time on her phone ticks down the seconds.

Five minutes later, the beep tells her the result is ready. But she is not. She really is not.

She pulls her hair away from her face in her fist and blows out her breath.

Then she picks up the stick.

There sits the word pregnant.

She sighs heavily. She knows now. She knows with a clarity that nearly blows her teeth out of her head.

She doesn’t want it.

She can’t want it.

It can’t happen.

She dumps the stick in the trash, lets the lid shut with a loud bang, and drops heavily onto the edge of the bed, where she sits for a long time.

The pub is quiet at four o’clock in the afternoon. Three solitary men sit at the bar, spaced a few seats apart from one another. Two are scrolling through their phones; the third stares into the middle distance.

The bartender greets Jessica with a smile of recognition. “Good afternoon, lovey. And how are you today?”

“I’m good, thank you. How are you?”

“Oh, you know…”

Jessica doesn’t but nods anyway.

“What can I get for you?”

“A scotch, please. Whatever you’ve got. A double.”

“Ice with that, lovey?”

“No. Thanks.”

The bartender pours it and passes it to her. Jessica pays for it and takes it to a table in a side room far from the ponderous air of the silent men at the bar. She places it in front of her on a small table overlooking a dank backyard with a mildewed marquee tent in it. She stares at the drink, turns it around and around. Her heart pounds in her chest. She picks it up and brings it to her nose. The smell catapults her back, Proust-style, through most of the worst times of her life. It takes her back to her grim apartment in Hell’s Kitchen. It takes her back to dimly lit bars and rough men and mornings that felt like sick jokes. It smells like purple.

She puts the glass back on the table.

She thinks of the word pregnant on the plastic stick in the trash.

She thinks of Luke.

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