Page 83 of The Devil Gets His Due

My gaze lingers on him for a moment, and something shifts between us. His eyes are suddenly hazy in a way that looks a lot like interest. But he’s turning toward his room before I can even say a word.

Maybe I can pretend I’m going into labor so he misses his flight. That, to me, sounds like an entirely reasonable way to handle this situation. And a lot easier than admitting I don’t want him to go.

37

GRAHAM

“We’ve got a problem,” says Ben on Tuesday, and I want to put my fist through a wall.

I’ve got enough problems as it is, thanks.My second-in-command just quit, which means I’ve got to leave for New York in the morning rather than Friday afternoon…at the exact moment when it feelsvitalthat I stay here and get shit straightened out with Keeley. I could see it on her face last night—she is ready to pull the plug on our arrangement. The crib’s coming and she needs me out to get the room ready, and what the hell happens then? It feels like my life is about to implode, and I don’t need more Tate family bullshit on top of it all.

“What’s up?” I ask.

“Colin and Mandy broke up, and the idiot told Mom already.”

Fuck.Tate family bullshit it is.

Colin was a newborn the first time things in our life went sideways, and he wasn’t around the second time because hisdeparturewas what made them turn that way. It was the incident that would eventually help him straighten his shit out, but running off with a girl when he was eighteen and getting thrown in a Colorado jail seemed like the end of the world at the time, especially to our mother.

She never wanted him to know how badly she fell apart. Maybe we should have told him anyway.

“Is she okay?” I ask, pinching my nose. Keeley and I need one normal evening, just to get us back where we were. I have to at least tell her I’m leaving in the morning.

“Of course she’s not okay,” Ben says. “She’s blaming herself. Walter wants her to check in somewhere and she’s refusing because she wants‘to be there for Colin this time’. Can you go see her? I can’t get back to California until Thursday.”

I agree, of course, because the idea of my mom suffering is unbearable to me. She’s already suffered so much, and most of it was my fault.

38

KEELEY

Iwant the phrase“no good deed goes unpunished”to be written on my grave.

Here’s the score, so far: I stopped drinking and got a real grown-up job. I started saving money and eating salad. I missed out on some well-earned chicken tikka and ruined a very nice pair of shoes to bring a life into the world. And I’m pretty sure I’m now in love with the father of my child, which doesn’t necessarily sound laudable but is way less villainous than previous Keeley iterations.

What do I get in exchange for all this virtuousness? Graham, probably rekindling his relationship with Anna, and Fox making work so unpleasant that no sane person would stay. I’m double-booked all day. I’ve got no lunch break, and my last scheduled patient is coming in at seven-thirty, which means my lastactualpatient will be arriving an hour after that.

And the really shitty thing—well, there are several really shitty things, of which this is one—is that we are flooded with calls from new patients asking for me. If I’d planned for all this in advance, I’d have gone off on my own beforeMindy and Millsever aired. I doubt any sane bank would have given me the start-up money for office space and equipment, but I picture it anyway: something modern and glamorous, where I’ve stolen Trinny and my favorite nurse and we all work reasonable hours.

But that’s an ideal scenario...and it still falls flat. Even in a perfect situation, I’d still be stuck seeing one patient after another whose greatest complaint is that she’s starting to look old.

There’s nothing wrong with those patients. But they are the grilled chicken and salad of dermatology, and what I want is the chicken tikka and spanakopita. They are the boring parts ofReal Housewiveswhere everyone is sober and being polite. I want the part where they’re drunk and accusing each other of shit.

I need a little delicious and exotic and unusual. The occasional guy who turns out to have agyria or ichthyosis vulgaris. I want skin turning blue. I want a kneecap covered in fish scales. I want the cases Dr. Patel pushed me front and center to treat, always finding fault and upbraiding me no matter how well I did.

And I want to discuss this with Graham, along with all the things I’m still not ready to say to him—I don’tknowthat I can do a relationship because I haven’t really done one before, and I don’t know if he wants one because he’s sure not acting like it—but the one problem I can’t flesh out with him is the one he’s the subject of.

Maybe I’ll try anyway.

Me: Will you be home tonight?

He normally responds fast, but it’s over an hour before I hear back.

Graham: Sorry…had to go to Newport for a family thing and heading to NYC early. Leaving for the airport at four tomorrow morning.

Atfour? How am I supposed to fake going into labor before he leaves atfour? It’s like he did this on purpose to foil me. He knows I won’t wake willingly before seven-thirty, not even for childbirth.

And a family thing he didn’t even invite me to…he’s ghosting me with a level of commitment I’d admire if I wasn’t the recipient.

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