Page 62 of Rebound

Huh. This is not the reaction I expected at all. I thought she’d be spitting like a cornered tiger, ready to scratch my eyes out.

“I agree. No more games. So how long has Freddie Kemp been representing you?”

She looks up at me sharply, her eyes huge. “What?” She’s trembling, and her legs look like they’re about to give out. Her skin goes even whiter, and as she tries to straighten up, her knees buckle and she starts to fall. I catch her under her armpits and heft her toward me. She sags against my body, then immediately starts flapping her hands like she’s trying to fight me off. What the fuck is this? Some kind of act? She’s pretending to be sick now?

“Let me go, I’m fine.” She pushes away from me with weak shoves, but as soon as I loosen my hold, she staggers again. Shit. This isn’t an act. She’s a mess. I scoop her into my arms and carry her like a child into the living room, where I lay her on the couch and cover her with the pink crocheted blanket draped over the back of it. Brushing her hair back from her face, I note her unfocused eyes and wobbling lips.

“When’s the last time you had something to eat?” I ask briskly. I’m still angry, and I still have questions, but she won’t be answering them if she’s unconscious.

“I don’t know, breakfast maybe… It doesn’t matter. Just leave, Elijah, leave me alone like you did earlier. I don’t need you.” The words come out in an uneven flurry, and as she speaks, tears spill from her eyes. She bats me away, but I don’t budge.

“I’m going to get you something to eat and some tea. I’ll be right back.”

As soon as I stand up, she curls into a ball under the blanket and buries her head in her arms, sobbing uncontrollably. I have no clue what’s happening here, so I concentrate on the basics.

It doesn’t take long to find what I need, and I whip up some buttered toast and a cup of the chamomile tea she likes, then add a couple chocolate chip cookies on the side. The cocoa I smelled earlier is still sitting in its mug, completely cold now. She must have made it and left it there when she went to bed.

I take in the signs of her life here: the colorful jars of tea and cocoa, a bowl of kiwi, a pile of paperwork. It’s an invasion of her privacy, but I rifle through the pages. The top page reads “Leslie Odom Jr. Community Center Volunteer Application and Questionnaire,” and her elegant handwriting fills every page. I study her answer to the question of why she wants to volunteer there, and her apparent naked honesty, her desire to have a lasting impact on the world around her, fills me with doubt. Why bother taking the time to complete a twelve-page questionnaire if this whole moving to Brooklyn and finding herself thing was a ruse?

Determined to get answers, I carry the food and tea back to the living room where she is still curled in a ball but has stopped sobbing.

“Amber, come on. You need to eat.” I gently pry her hands from her head and encourage her to sit upright. She lets me maneuver her but pulls her knees up and refuses to meet my eyes. I tuck the blanket around her and pass her the plate. Her hands are shaking so damn much she struggles to get the food to her lips, and I don’t think having me here is helping. “I’m going to use the bathroom, but eat and drink your tea. You need to get your strength up.”

She doesn’t respond, but she does nibble at the corner of a piece of toast, so I leave her and go find the bathroom, giving her a bit of space. After closing the door behind me, I let out a harshly whispered “Fuck!”

I came here full of self-righteous fury, and now she’s gone and blown that all away. Nathan would say she’s faking it, but I know my wife, and she is in real distress. Whether that’s because she’s been caught or for some other reason, I don’t know yet.

This small, unmistakably feminine room oddly seems to fit her in a way none of the rooms in our house ever did. I absentmindedly pick up a bottle of shampoo from the side of the tub and sniff the coconut fragrance she uses these days. The budget-store brand toiletries are another glaring disparity, more evidence that there are way more pieces missing from the puzzle I came here looking to solve tonight.

Dead set on learning the truth once and for all, I splash my face with cold water and head back downstairs.

Giving her a moment paid off. She’s eaten most of a slice of toast and nibbled at a cookie, and she is now sitting with the tea in her hands, steam forming a cloud in front of her face.

“You feeling better?” I ask, sitting down next to her.

She scoots her feet away as though she’s scared of touching me. “Better, yes. Thank you. Now will you leave?”

“No. I won’t. Not yet. I know you’re not at your best, but I’m not leaving until I have answers. How long have you been cooking up this thing with Freddie?”

Again, the mention of his name makes the blood drain from her face, and she swallows hard before speaking. “I haven’t been cooking up anything with Freddie, and I don’t know what you’re talking about. If that’s all you’re going to keep asking me, it’s going to be a long night for both of us.”

I suck in a breath and try to calm myself. Yelling at her when she’s in this state won’t help.

“Nathan saw you there, Amber. You must have known that he’d tell me.”

She frowns up at me, looking confused. “What did he tell you?”

“That he saw you. That you had an appointment with Freddie Kemp, in his office, alone—that he’s your attorney.”

She looks at me like I’ve grown an extra head and sips more tea. Probably buying herself time. “I should have known he’d interpret it like that and that he’d come running straight to tell you what your big, bad bitch of a wife was getting up to.” She shakes her head and huffs a humorless laugh. “I would have thought of it if I’d been thinking straight. It didn’t even occur to me… I’m so stupid.” Her big brown eyes are glassy, but no tears fall. “Did you just… just believe him?”

She sounds so fucking disappointed in me. I would rather her throw the damn tea in my face than hear that defeated tone in her voice.

“Of course I believed him. Nathan is many things, but he’s not a liar. If he says he saw you, he saw you. But I did also call Freddie.”

“I see.” She nods. “And? How did that go?”

“Well, he basically backed up what Nathan said. Said you’d been to see him, and he couldn’t confirm you were his client because of confidentiality but that I could figure it out myself.”

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