Chapter 2 - A House With Two Versions
We returned home past ten. The kitchen still smelled of tomatoes and pepper, though the soup had dried to a dull orange crescent along the wall. Caleb offered to clean it. I asked him to leave it until morning so we could take photographs in better light.
“Do you think we need all this?” he asked.
“Someone has already told you I hate your brother.”
He put the sponge down.
We stood facing each other over the sink where I'd cooled my arms. Caleb was a patient man when the problems were practical: a leaking pipe, an overdue inspection, a car that wouldn't start. Feelings were different. He liked to make peace quickly and decide afterward what it had cost.
“I didn't believe her,” he said.
“Did you answer?”
“No.”
“Will you?”
He didn't promise. That silence accompanied us upstairs.
I slept badly because the dressings caught on the sheets. At six I heard Caleb talking in the hallway. The voice on his speakerphone was Marlene's.
“She needs to understand he is under terrible pressure,” Marlene said. “You know how sensitive Tyler gets about being embarrassed.”
Caleb saw me standing in the bedroom door. “We are not discussing Jenna while she isn't here.”
“Then put her on.”
I took the phone. “What pressure?”
There was a pause. “What?”
“You keep saying he's under pressure. Pressure from whom?”
“That's Tyler's private business.”
“And my purse isn't?”
She exhaled sharply. “I called because I don't want this family split over an ugly dinner.”
“It was ugly because your son assaulted me. And you helped him steal from me.”
“You don't know what you saw.”
“Then tell me.”
Marlene was silent long enough for the heating system to click on. “I'm not doing this with you.”
She hung up.
I went to work anyway. I managed the front desk at a neighborhood dental practice. I handled insurance claims and panicked patients and appointment slots that never stretched far enough. I was good at it. But that morning I typed the same patient's birthday into the wrong field three times.
My colleague Denise looked at my covered forearm. “Did you burn yourself cooking?”
I opened my mouth to say yes. The lie had been ready before she'd finished asking.
“No,” I said. “My brother-in-law threw hot soup at me.”
Denise pushed her chair back from the computer. “Are you safe?”
The plainness of her question almost made me cry. She didn't ask what I'd said to provoke him. She didn't ask whether he'd had a difficult week.
“I think so,” I told her.
At lunch I counted what was missing from my wallet. Eighty dollars I'd withdrawn to pay the lawn service and forty dollars in emergency cash. It was a small sum compared with the eleven hundred I'd already lent him. The amount didn't make the violation small.
I checked the older camera recordings. Our system saved only a limited history, so there wasn't much to inspect. On Thursday afternoon Tyler had stopped by to borrow a ladder. He had waited in the kitchen while Caleb found it. He looked toward my purse on a dining chair, hesitated, and then walked away. That was all the camera showed.
The temptation was to search every minute of our past for evidence. I needed to believe the answer was somewhere I could pause and replay. But what I remembered instead was three years of small compromises: Tyler arriving without warning, Marlene volunteering our spare room before asking us, Caleb calling it easier to say yes.
After work I drove to the police station parking lot. I sat there with the engine off and the file on my phone. Reporting would mean explaining the slap too. It would mean an outside person examining all of our choices instead of accepting my preferred version.
I went in anyway.
The officer taking the report asked about injuries, witnesses, the theft and the recording. I described what I did to Tyler as clearly as what he'd done to me. The officer explained that an investigation could take time, that she could not promise charges, and that I should preserve the original footage, photographs, and medical paperwork.
When I came outside Caleb was waiting beside my car. I'd texted him before entering, but hadn't asked him to come.
“I'm glad you told me,” he said.
“About the report?”
“About being here. I keep realizing how much you stopped telling me because you thought I would smooth it over.”
I wanted to deny it for his sake. Instead I unlocked my door.
May you like
On the passenger seat was a grocery bag he'd brought from home. Inside were clean dressings, bottled water, and my old blue sweater, the one that wouldn't rub against my skin.
Under the sweater lay an envelope with Tyler's handwriting. It was addressed to Caleb, not me.
