Page 81 of Unforgivable

THIRTY-SEVEN

While Jack is prepared to believe me about the painting, he refuses to consider that Jenny’s emails might have been coming from Bronwyn.

But I know I’m right. I know it in my bones, and I am terrified.

This morning I wake up with the sun, my head pulsing with pain, my throat parched. I put my pillow over my head, but it’s no use, and I get up, go to the bathroom and gulp water from the tap.

Downstairs, it’s just Charlie and I having breakfast. Jack and Bronwyn are both still asleep. Charlie is wearing pink pajamas with a picture of a tiara-wearing bunny on the front. She plonks herself on a kitchen stool without saying a thing and drops her chin in her hands, her legs swinging, hitting the bar. My head hurts and the sound she makes is like the clank of a hammer on a scaffold, metal on metal. I rummage through the cupboard for a Tylenol. I ask her how she slept and she shrugs. I ask her what she wants to do today and she shrugs. I pretend not to notice her mood as I serve porridge. She wrinkles her nose and draws shapes into the thick oatmeal with her spoon, the side of her head in her hand.

“Where’s Daddy?”

“He’s still asleep.”

“Where’s Mommy?”

I try not to shudder. “She’s still asleep too.”

“What are we doing today?”

I try to think. It occurs to me I’ve been trusting Bronwyn with Charlie blindly all this time and now I want to punch myself in the face for my stupidity. “I don’t know,” I say. “What would you like to do?”

She shrugs. “Are you going to work?”

“No, it’s Sunday. I don’t work on Sundays. You know that.”

She doesn’t reply. She dips her spoon in her porridge, right to the bottom of the bowl and opens her hand wide, like she’s releasing an insect. The spoon tilts slowly and comes to rest against the side of the bowl. She hops off her stool, leaves the bowl where it is and stomps up the stairs. I pick it up, throw its contents in the trash and put the dishes in the dishwasher.

I go upstairs and find her in her bedroom, crouched by her bed. She has laid Bronwyn-themed clothes onto her bedspread—pink, striped and feathery stuff—and she holds up a pair of yellow tights and a sparkly blue skirt. “Can I wear this?”

I bite the side of my thumb. “You can wear whatever you like.”

She frowns at the clothes, puts them back on the bed, picks up a yellow dress with a bow at the shoulder, holds it up. “Or this?”

“Whatever you prefer.” I watch her pull items out of her closet, holding them up against herself and checking herself in her mirror. I lean against the doorjamb and glance around the room. There’s a full-page ad for theSex and the Cityreboot above her bed, titledAnd Just Like That. Coming Soon To HBO. Charlie has never watchedSex and the City, for the simple reason she’s too young and wasn’t even born when it was a thing. What interest she could possibly hold in the reboot amounts to minus one trillion. And yet there they are—minus Samantha—hovering above her pillow in their expensive clothes and glossy hair. Then there’s a picture of a smokey-eyed, red-lipped, thin-waisted but busty blond in a gold sequin dress lying on a boardroom table, torn out ofHarper’s BazaarorVogue, and which has absolutely nothing to do with what an eight-year-old might like or relate to, let alone tomboy Charlie. I have no idea who the woman in the picture is, and I’d bet my bottom dollar neither does Charlie. But I know what she’s doing. She thinks if she can show interest in these magazines, if she can show Bronwyn shegetsit, that she’s a chip off the old block, then maybe Bronwyn will love her.

“Or that?” She holds up a red corduroy skirt and a fuzzy pink jumper that looks like it’s made of cotton candy.

“I tell you what,” I say, pushing myself off the wall and reaching into her closet. “Since it’s chilly outside…” I pull out a pair of jeans, and a green long-sleeve tee with a cartoonish picture of the earth and the slogan,There Is No Planet B. “Why don’t you wear those?”

She hesitates, looks up at me, her hands reaching out but not quite. I nudge the clothes forward.

“Because it’s chilly?” she says, taking them from me.

“Because it’s chilly. And you know what I think we should do today?”

“What?”

“We should go to the aquarium and—”

“We’re going to the aquarium?”

She looks up at me, her face alert, expectant but hesitant. Before Bronwyn, you could tell Charlie every day that we’re going to the aquarium and every time she’d scrunch up her whole little face and bring her little fists near her eyes and do a little jig on the spot, and she’d raise both arms high and shout,THE AQUARIUM! YES!These days, thanks to Bronwyn, Charlie doesn’t know what she likes anymore. She lives on eggshells, afraid she’ll get whatever the question is wrong, as if everything is a test that’s hers to fail.

“We’re going to the aquarium,” I repeat. “Go brush your teeth.” And suddenly, she smiles, her face—open and smoothed out of worry—turned up to me, before doing a little skip down the corridor.It’s going to be fine. Everything is going to be fine. We are going to be just fine.

* * *

The aquarium is packed. It turns out we’re not the only ones with the bright idea to come here on a cool, rainy Sunday. Charlie has her face pressed against the glass and she’s waving at the diver. Later she’ll tell me that that was Kelly or Mark or Samantha and I have no idea how she knows since they’re always suited up in their identical red suits and yellow masks and breathing gear and they literally all look the same.

---