The last secret_ a novel - Mary McGarry Morris [103]
“Oh my God, oh my God,” she whispers.
Nora!” Father Grewley calls with delight, bounding down the stairs. “Funny, I was just thinking of you. Did you get Alice's thank-you note?”
“I did, yes. It was lovely.” Last week Father Grewley called and asked her to go to court with Alice for a restraining order against her husband. He said he had offered, but Alice really wanted Nora there with her. Horrified by the prospect, the visibility, the involvement, no, she couldn't: work, she said, the children, just a crazy week. But if there was anything else, anything she could do, please let her know. Oh. Well, yes. Of course. Her own apartment, that made sense. The poor thing. She'd be only too glad to pay the security deposit, first and last month's rent. Which, knowing Father Grewley was probably the real reason for his call.
“I'll go get her, she's upstairs. She'll be thrilled to see you.”
“No!” she says too quickly. “I wish I could, but I'm … on my way to work.”
“Well, just so you know, you and your husband, what you're doing for Alice, it's more than kind, more than generous, it's amazing. Absolutely unbelievable. She's a new person. Totally energized. She's going to look at one more apartment before she decides. She said she doesn't want you paying too much. And!” He clasps his hands at his chin. “We may even have a job for her. Part time. Office work. At one of Chris Arrellio's car washes.”
Nora squirms. She's often seen him do this. Like klieg lights on a pebble, his profuse gratitude so far exceeds the giving, it somehow manages to diminish its worth. It's his very effective way of stroking donors' egos while making them eager, hungry to do more.
He is wearing jeans and a plaid shirt. He's been moving some donated furniture into the back wing of the House. An additional family room for the guests. Her idea, he reminds her: not true, though, just his net cast wider.
She apologizes for not calling first, but she needs to talk to him. He's pretty sure he knows why, he says, but not to worry, it's been taken care of Letitia Crane is leaving the board.
“Just not the right fit, that's all I said, and amazingly enough, she agreed!” He pats his chest, rolls his eyes with relief.
A half hour later, she is still talking. Rather than have the desk between them, he has pulled his chair next to hers. Everything spills out: the shock of Ken's affair and its fallout on her fragile family, still together, though the pressure is building, especially now with the intrusion of Eddie Hawkins into the mess her life has become, and the fear she feels, this anxiety, this nightmarish paralysis, knowing something bad is going to happen if she doesn't make the right decisions, but not having a clue what to do, because there's nothing she can do, nothing she can change. It was all so long ago it doesn't even seem real sometimes, which is the dichotomy she's been living, two separate planes, the everyday, physical reality of her family's needs and this looming blackness of the past. She didn't do anything that night in the desert, she couldn't have hurt that man, and yet something did happen, something terrible, she's always known that. Even with her uncertainty about the man's injuries, the priest merely nods. She was so young, his only comment. If he's the least bit shocked he hides it well. He can't afford to be too candid. After all, the Hammond name is valuable to him. She goes to the edge, draws back, can't say the word murder, can't admit buying a scumbag's silence. She describes the dreams, waking up in a cold sweat, seeing that battered face, and that's when it's most real, the feel, the smell, the sounds, but all she can do is run. Just keep running. Still. It's all she does, she says quietly.
“What do you mean?”
“I've lived my whole life trying to keep one step ahead of what I really am.”
“And what's that?”
She stares at him. “A cold, selfish bitch and a liar.”
“That's not what I see.”
She shakes her head, laughs a little. “Yeah. I'm pretty good