Chapter 6: Small Mercies

Rachel went for the hand, not the face. She grabbed Chloe’s wrist, and for one ugly second she was going to twist that ring off whether the finger came with it or not, and she could see Chloe see it too, the sweet blue eyes going wide.

“Mommy?”

They both froze.

The little boy was standing at the top of the stairs. Barefoot, same blond cowlick, no Yonkers sweatshirt tonight, thank God, just Paw Patrol pajamas with the knees gone shiny. He had something clamped under one arm, and when he started down the stairs one at a time, holding the rail with his free hand, Rachel saw what it was.

Mr. Hopps.

Her rabbit. Her actual childhood stuffed rabbit, gray plush gone bald in patches, one ear sewn back on with blue thread because her mother hadn’t had gray. Rachel had slept with him till she was eleven. He’d been in a box in the hall closet with her report cards.

Rachel let go of Chloe’s wrist.

The boy stopped on the third step. It squeaked. He looked at Rachel’s face, at the red handprint she could feel blooming there, and his eyebrows did something worried that no four-year-old’s eyebrows should have to do.

“You’re the lady from the rain,” he said.

“I am.” Her voice came out wrong. She cleared it and crouched down, right there on her own hall rug, so she wasn’t looming. “Hi. I’m Rachel.”

“I’m Noah. I’m four and a half.”

“That’s a good age. Four and a half is when you get really good at stairs.”

He looked pleased. He held up the rabbit. “I found him. He was in a box. Nobody was playing with him.”

“Nobody was,” Rachel said. Her throat hurt. “His name is Mr. Hopps.”

Noah’s whole face lit up. “How do you know?”

“I used to know him. A long time ago.” She pointed, gentle, not touching. “You should hold him by the tummy. Not the ear. His ear had surgery. See the blue stitches?”

Noah studied the ear seriously. Then he moved his hand down to the rabbit’s belly, careful, like he was carrying soup.

“Like that?”

“Exactly like that. He likes you. I can tell.”

Chloe came off the step so fast the silk snapped. She scooped Noah up, rabbit and all, and swung him onto her hip, turning her body so he was between her and Rachel like Rachel might bite.

“Don’t talk to my son.”

“I was telling him about the rabbit.”

“Go upstairs, baby.” Chloe set him on the stairs and gave him a little push on the butt. “Go. Now. Mommy’s talking.”

Noah went up slow, looking back at Rachel the whole way, Mr. Hopps held by the tummy.

Chloe rounded on her. “You don’t get to be nice to him. You don’t get to be anything to him.”

“He’s four,” Rachel said. “Somebody in this house should be nice to him without wanting something back.”

For half a second the sweetness slid right off Chloe’s face, and what was under it looked tired, and a lot older than twenty-seven. Then it snapped back like a window shade.

* * *

Headlights swung across the front windows.

Rachel knew that engine the way she knew the squeak in the third step. The Range Rover’s big throaty purr, the way it braked a little too hard at the end of the driveway because Michael always came in too fast. A door slammed.

“Oh, thank God,” Chloe said, and Rachel almost laughed, because that was the first time anyone had ever said that about Michael pulling in.

He came up the walk with his phone at his ear, navy overcoat, briefcase, that gold-brown hair that cost him a hundred and twenty dollars every three weeks. He saw Rachel standing in the open door and said, “Let me call you back,” and hung up.

Across the street, Mr. Petrakis was raking leaves in the dark. Rake, rake. Listening. So Michael smiled.

“Rach. Hey.” Big and warm, for the cheap seats. He put a hand out toward her shoulder like a husband. “Let’s not do this here, okay? Let’s walk you to the curb. Come on.”

She let him walk her down the path because she wanted out of that vanilla smell anyway. At the curb he stopped with his back to Petrakis, and his face went out like somebody flipped a breaker.

“You come here again,” he said, low and easy, “and I file for a restraining order Monday morning. Harassment. Trespass. I’ve got the doorbell footage of you screaming last night, I’ve got Chloe’s statement, and I’ll have a judge’s signature by lunch. Do you understand me?”

“She hit me.”

“Did she? I didn’t see that.” He glanced at her cheek and away. “You’ve always bruised easy.”

Rachel planted her feet on the wet curb.

“I want my half,” she said. “Half this house. Half that account you emptied at 2:14 yesterday, eight thousand six hundred and twelve dollars and forty cents. My car. And my mother’s ring off that woman’s finger.”

He laughed. Head back, a real laugh, the one he did at dinner parties when the boss made a joke that wasn’t funny.

But she was watching him. She’d been watching him for eleven years, and she was good at it, better than he’d ever bothered to notice.

His phone buzzed in his hand and he checked it. Then thirty seconds later he checked it again, and nothing had come in. There was sweat at his hairline, and it was fifty degrees out. His thumb kept rubbing the edge of his phone case, rub, rub, rub, the thing he did when he was waiting on numbers from his accountant every April. And twice, without seeming to know he was doing it, he looked toward the side of the house, at the small window next to the laundry room. His office. The downstairs room he kept locked because of “client confidentiality.”

He’d won. He’d taken the house, the money, the car, the ring. He had the girl in the robe and the kid on the stairs.

So why was he scared?

“Michael,” she said slowly. “What did you do?”

The laugh stopped. He stepped in close, close enough that she could smell his cologne, the Tom Ford she’d bought him at Neiman’s three Christmases ago, and something sour under it. He fixed her collar with two fingers like he used to before parties. Gentle. For Petrakis.

“Go away quietly, Rachel,” he murmured. “You signed a lot of papers at our kitchen table last spring.”

He smoothed the collar flat. “You’ll want to forget you did.”

He went back inside and shut the door. Rachel stood at the curb with her collar fixed and her hands shaking.

Twenty-two pages. She remembered counting them, because she counted everything.

She hadn’t read a single one.