Chapter 3 - The Cold Ride Home
The drive back to our home in Westchester was conducted in absolute silence.
The rain, which had been threatening all afternoon, finally broke as we turned onto the highway, fat droplets smacking against the windshield of my sedan. Helen sat in the passenger seat, staring out at the grey blur of passing trees, her right hand resting in her lap, clutching a damp handkerchief.
I reached across the center console and covered her hand with mine. Her fingers were ice-cold.
"Does it hurt?" I asked softly, referring to her knee.
"Not as much as my chest," she whispered, without turning her head.
We had bought Ethan his first baseball glove when he was five. I remembered sitting on the back porch with Helen, watching him try to hit a ball off a tee, his tongue sticking out in concentration. When he got his acceptance letter to Columbia, Helen had cried for three days, saving every newspaper clipping that mentioned his name. When he passed his bar exam, we had thrown a party in our backyard, inviting fifty neighbors to celebrate the rise of the next generation of Whitakers.
All of those memories felt like they belonged to a different family—a family that had ceased to exist the moment Ethan looked at his mother lying in the dirt and said, Dad, stop.
When we pulled into our driveway at 7:30 p.m., the house was dark and silent. It was supposed to be empty until Monday; we were meant to be staying in the bridal suite's wing at Briarwood, celebrating with out-of-town relatives at a Sunday morning farewell brunch that I had also paid for in advance.
As soon as I unlocked the front door, Helen walked straight to the laundry room. She didn't take off her coat; she simply unzipped her mud-ruined dress, stepped out of it, and stood there in her slip, staring at the blue silk piled on the linoleum floor.
"Leave it, Helen," I said, coming up behind her and wrapping my arms around her shoulders. "We’ll throw it away."
"I bought it in Boston," she said, her voice flat and hollow. "Camille told me six weeks ago that ice-blue was too close to silver, and that silver was too close to white. She wanted me to wear dark navy so I would 'blend into the background.' I kept the ice-blue because you said it made my eyes look pretty."
She began to shake, long, wracking sobs finally breaking through her composure. I held her tightly against my chest, feeling the hot tears soak through my dress shirt, hating my son with a cold, fierce intensity that I had never known I was capable of feeling.
The front doorbell rang at 8:15 p.m.
I didn't answer it. I stood in the kitchen, pouring a glass of bourbon for Helen and a dark coffee for myself, listening to the heavy, persistent knocking on the heavy oak door.
Through the side window, I saw Charles Bennett’s black Mercedes SUV parked across our driveway, blocking the garage.
When the knocking stopped, my phone began to vibrate on the granite counter.
Ethan.
I picked up the phone, tapped the screen, and set it to speakerphone.
"Dad?" Ethan's voice sounded breathless, ragged, and surrounded by background noise—the sharp, echoing acoustics of a hotel lobby. "Dad, pick up. Where are you?"
"I am home, Ethan," I said coldly. "Where you should have been an hour ago, taking care of your mother."
"Dad, Charles is losing his mind!" Ethan shouted, his composure evaporating. "The venue locked us out! They wouldn't even let Camille go back to the bridal suite to get her second dress! They had security escort us to the parking lot! Do you have any idea what this looks like?!"
"It looks like an event that lost its funding," I said smoothly. "Which is precisely what happened."
"Charles had to pay fifty thousand dollars out of his personal account just to settle the vendor cancellation penalties!" Ethan raged. "The band is threatening to sue us because their contract guaranteed a four-hour performance! The photographer took the memory cards and refused to release any photos until the balance is cleared!"
"Then Charles can pay them," I replied. "He has plenty of money. He spent twenty minutes at the rehearsal dinner telling everyone about his venture capital firm’s third-quarter margins."
"Dad! This is my wife!" Ethan screamed into the receiver. "You ruined my wedding day over a mistake! She stumbled! She reached out to catch herself and her hands hit Mom! It was an accident!"
I took a slow sip of my coffee, feeling the heat settle in my stomach.
"Ethan," I said softly, my voice dropping an octave. "I am going to say this to you exactly once. The photographer, Mr. Vance, was standing ten feet away with a seventy-two-millimeter high-speed lens. He came to me in the parking lot before we left. He showed me the raw digital burst shots from those five seconds."
Silence stretched across the line, heavy and suffocating.
"In frame one," I continued, "Camille is standing three feet away from your mother. In frame two, she is leaning forward, her teeth bare, both hands extended. In frame three, her palms are flat against your mother’s chest. In frame four, your mother is in the air. There was no stumble, Ethan. There was no loss of balance. It was an assault."
Ethan didn't answer right away. I could hear him breathing heavily, the faint murmur of Camille’s voice shouting in the background behind him.
May you like
"She... she was upset, Dad," Ethan stammered, his defense shifting instantly now that the lie was dead. "Mom was being difficult about the seating arrangements—"
"Goodbye, Ethan," I said, and disconnected the call.
