Heart of the Matter - Emily Giffin [39]
“Go ahead. Eat your candy and watch your movies,” she says as casually as she can so as not to give away her panic and further entrench Jason’s position. She glances at her watch and mumbles that she’ll be back in a couple of hours.
“Nope,” Jason says. “You’ll be back tomorrow. Now go.”
Valerie gives her brother a blank stare, prompting him to literally push her off the chair. “Skedaddle. Scoot. Begone, woman.”
“Okay, okay,” Valerie finally says, slowly gathering her purse and BlackBerry, charging in the corner of the room. She knows her feelings are not rational—that she should be relieved to have a good night’s sleep in her own bed and a little privacy. More important, she knows Charlie’s in good hands with Jason. He is safe and stable, and for the most part, perfectly comfortable—at least until his surgery on Monday. But there it is anyway—a feeling of deep reluctance in her gut. She takes a breath and slowly exhales, wishing she had a Xanax left in her prescription, something to smooth out her ragged, worried edges.
“C’mon, now,” Jason whispers to her as he helps her with her coat. “Call a friend. Go get a few drinks. Have a little fun.”
She nods, pretending to ponder her brother’s advice, full well knowing she will do nothing of the kind. Saturday-night fun, at least the kind Jason means, was a rarity before this—and is certainly out of the question now.
She goes to Charlie and gives him a hug, followed by a light kiss on his cheek, alongside his scar. “I love you, sweetie,” she says.
“I love you, too, Mommy,” he says, quickly returning his attention to the selection of DVDs Jason has fanned out on the foot of the bed.
“Okay then. I’m off. . .” Valerie says, stalling as she glances around the room, pretending to look for something. When this charade is exhausted, she kisses Charlie once more, walks out the door, and makes her way down to the cold, dark parking garage. For a few moments, as she hunts for her dusty teal Volkswagen with its political bumper sticker now two elections old, she becomes convinced that it was stolen, somehow chosen over the trio of BMWs parked on the same level—and she feels one part relief that she’ll have no choice but to go back inside. But then she remembers squeezing into a narrow space designated for compact cars after a burrito run a few days before, and finds it just where she left it. She peers into the backseat before unlocking the door, something she has done for years, since a teenager from her hometown was kidnapped in a shopping-mall parking lot days before Christmas—the chilling moment captured on a surveillance camera.
Tonight, though, Valerie’s backseat search is not hair-raising, but perfunctory and halfhearted. It is a silver lining, she thinks—when a greater fear is realized, lesser ones fall away. Hence, she is no longer petrified of parking-garage rapists. She shivers as she slides into her car and starts the engine. The radio, left on high from her last trip, blares R.E.M.’s “Nightswimming,” a song that vaguely depresses her, even under the best of circumstances. She exhales into her hands to warm them, then turns the dial, hoping for something more uplifting. She stops at “Sara Smile,” figuring that if Hall & Gates can’t help her, nobody can. Then she drives slowly toward home, humming an occasional refrain and doing her best to forget the last time she left her son for a boys-only sleepover.
***
Only she doesn’t go home. Not right away. She fully intends to, even planning to return a few phone calls—to her friends at work and a few girls from home, even Laurel, who had heard through the grapevine, aka Jason, of Charlie’s accident. But at the last second, she bypasses her exit and heads straight for the address she looked up on the computer, then MapQuested and memorized last night, just after Charlie fell asleep. She wants to believe her detour is a lark, a flight of fancy, but nothing can truly be called a lark or