Dark Redemption Page 5

  "You know, I just don't understand why he doesn't want to be here for me. I mean, he told me he wanted to have this baby. He was so excited when I got pregnant and now it just feels like he's ignoring me."

  "Maybe he's not lying. Maybe he's trying to set up something for afterward. You know, make some moves, maybe get a promotion,” I suggest.

  “But the thing about his kind of work is that there's just always more and more of it,” she exhales, gasping in despair. "There's always more clients. There's never enough money, you know? There's always more rungs on the ladder to climb and what's the point?”

  “You of all people should understand," I say. "You went to medical school, you put in all those hours at the hospital."

  “I'm not saying that his work is not as important as mine, of course not. I mean, I know what this means to him."

  "And obviously it doesn't save lives," I point out.

  She laughs. "Yeah, if it did, it'd pay less."

  We both chuckle.

  "I just don't know how to deal with this," Marguerite says, after a long pause. "I'm tired of fighting with him and every time he's home, the few hours that he has, I just want to talk about it and it's so stupid because I shouldn't have to talk about it. I bring it up and then we have a fight and it's just like one thing after another. How do I even get through this?"

  "I have no idea.” I shake my head.

  I hate to admit it but I understand where Lincoln is coming from. I have that same workaholic gene within me. My solution to everything seems to be to bury myself in work.

  "His work is more than something he does to make a living," I say. "It's his identity. Money is about winning points on the scoreboard, especially if you're in the position like he has at that fund. He brings in money; he invests it properly. Everyone benefits, everyone celebrates, he gets a promotion. It's a lot like my work and it's easier for me to tell him to take it easy when in reality, that's exactly what I do whenever I feel a little bit lost."

  "Is that why you've been working so hard?" Marguerite asks, adjusting her location on the couch and moving her stomach from one side to another, holding it a little bit underneath for support.

  "Yeah, of course. I mean, it's a no brainer. I've taken on a bunch more clients, traveled a lot more than I probably would have. Haven't stayed in the same hotel room for more than two days."

  "And what are you running away from?" she asks.

  "All the lies I've told."

  "What are you talking about?"

  I shrug and look down at the bottom of my cup. "I need a refill," I say, getting up.

  I grab her glass of iced tea and fill up both of our drinks. When I return, she's sitting straight up with her arms crossed in front of her, waiting for my answer.

  "You're not going to get away from this that easily," she says, pointing her finger in my face.

  “Jacqueline and I met at a club," I say after a long pause.

  "Yeah, I know that."

  “No, you don't. We met at The Redemption.”

  10

  Dante

  Marguerite narrows her eyes. "I've heard of that place. What's different about it?"

  I don't know why I chose this particular instance to tell her something so private, but for some reason I do. She listens carefully as I tell her all about the club and how different it is from the usual nightlife spots.

  “So, this is where you've been going?" Marguerite sits back, pulling her legs up into a Lotus position rather unsuccessfully. "You haven't just been going out dating, meeting one-night stands, but you've been going there?"

  "Yeah.” I nod. "I mean, I go to bars, too, but I thought that it would be more honest this way. I thought that, I don't know, I could just have some fun, but I wouldn't have to have all of these explanations and nobody would wait for me to call."

  "And that's where you met this girl that you can't stop thinking about?"

  I nod. I've told her some of the truth, but of course not all of it. I haven't told her that I've been watching Jacqueline. At first, just to see if she was okay but then because I couldn't make myself stop.

  "So you met her there and you two what? Fooled around?"

  "Yes," I admit.

  "And what then?"

  "Then I went back looking for her. I wanted to run into her again by accident, but on purpose."

  "And?"

  "And, I don't know. It just didn't work out that way."

  "But I thought that you went to Minnesota, I thought that you two had a good time?"

  "I did," I nod, "but then she found out something that she shouldn't have."

  "What? You didn't cheat on her, did you?” she yells at me.

  I shake my head no and look away.

  "What did you do?"

  "I paid for her mother's medical treatment."

  Marguerite furrows her brow and leans closer. I can tell that this was the last thing that she had expected to hear.

  "I don't know. I don't know how to put it, but she had mentioned that her mom was sick and doctors had recommended this experimental surgery but they had to pay upfront, and she didn't have the money and so, I just did it."

  "You just paid for a medical procedure for a stranger?" Marguerite asks. "How much?"

  “$250,000,” I say quietly.

  "A quarter of a million dollars?" She gasps. "You don't even make that much."

  "There were complications and there was an additional amount of about $100,000,” I admit.

  "I cannot believe this.” Marguerite stands up, shaking her head. "You don't even have that much money."

  Of course, on some level, I have known this part to be true all along, but this is the first time that anyone's ever confronted me with that fact out loud.

  "I had some money saved up and I had some in the trust but yeah, I had to really borrow a lot to try to make this work."

  "And what about now? Is she paying you back?"

  "We had a fight when she found out about it. She was really angry that I didn't tell her."

  "She was angry at you?"

  "Well, she was really grateful for the treatment, but she was angry that I didn't tell her. She was angry that I just went behind her back."

  "Okay," Marguerite rolls her eyes, "but you don't actually have this money, you borrowed it from your trust, right?" Marguerite asks.

  She knows exactly what that means. It's not borrowing in that true sense.

  "What's going to happen when your mother finds out?"

  "She's not going to be happy," I say.

  "Yeah, exactly. You think she'll just let it go, $350,000 missing."

  "I borrowed about two-hundred from there."

  "Just because you liked this woman?"

  "No, there's something else, but I can't talk about it right now."

  "Look, whatever it is, Adele is not going to understand."

  I bite the inside of my cheek. She of all people knows exactly the limits of my mother's understanding.

  We sit for a little while in total silence and I look at the drapes: warm, the color of tangerine and diaphanous. The window is slightly cracked, and a little bit of air comes in swaying in the breeze.

  "How do you feel about Jacqueline now?" Marguerite asks.

  "I thought that this would be a good chance to make a clean break. I shouldn't have been so obsessed with her," I say, pausing slightly before saying the word obsessed in an effort to figure out just the right phrasing. "I was being, I don't know, impulsive and then when we had that fight, I thought, 'Okay, this is my chance.'"

  "But aren't you going to ask for the money back?"

  "No, I'm just going to pay it back. I'm working a lot of hours, booking a lot of clients, and there's a number of investments that might sell in the near future, so I'll be able to put the money back before Mom notices."

  "That's if you're very lucky," she says, swallowing hard.

  "You're not going to tell her, are you?"

  "No, of course not, but Adele has her way o
f finding out. Besides, you know how she is about money. God knows why she has a business manager when she takes care of every last thing."

  "This came from my trust, I just hope that she doesn't check those amounts very often since they've pretty much stayed the same."

  There’s another long pause in conversation.

  I'm tempted to fill it up with something inconsequential, some small talk, but there's another pressing issue that I want to discuss with Marguerite.

  We've talked about this before.

  There's a trust fund that Lincoln would have had access to if he had married the right person. I know that it still weighs heavily on her mind and the last time we talked, the conversation didn't go so well.

  11

  Dante

  Marguerite announces that she's getting hungry and if she doesn't have something to eat quickly, she's going to start to feel nauseous. We head to the kitchen and she frantically looks around for the saltine crackers in the pantry.

  "Don't you want some something more substantial?" I ask.

  She shakes her head no. "I hate these things. They taste like cardboard, but it's the only thing that makes me feel better."

  "Do you want me to order some food, anything like that?"

  Again she shakes her head no. "Only if you want some. It's hard for me to predict what's going to make me feel sick to my stomach and what's not, so I kind of stick to this."

  I decide to join her in her plate of crackers but cut up an apple and grab a vine of grapes as well.

  "Wow. This almost would feel like happy hour if we had some wine," Marguerite remarks.

  "I saw some in the back," I joke.

  "It's strange but I've never been a big drinker, as you know. And now that I'm pregnant, alcohol is all I can think about."

  "Really?" I ask.

  "Yeah. I don't mean like to get drunk, just kind of crave that first sip of a cold beer. I don’t even want the whole thing, just a taste.”

  I grab a cracker and chew with my mouth open, thundering inside my head.

  "I wanted to talk to you about Lincoln's trust fund again.”

  She tenses up. A small line forms on her forehead between her eyebrows and she clenches her jaw.

  A second later, she bites into another cracker.

  "Look, I know this is a tense situation but the money's there, and it would really change the situation for you two. I mean, he wouldn't have to work so hard."

  "That's the thing. He still will," she says, shaking her head. "I mean, five million? Yeah, that's a lot of money, but he can't give up his career. It's not enough money to retire on forever in the city in any sort of lifestyle. But it is enough to move to some little town out in the country, get some animals, a little acreage, but that's not Lincoln.”

  “What are you going to do out there?” I ask, sitting back in my chair and taking a bite of the apple.

  “Maybe open a little practice.”

  “You want to be a country doctor?”

  She rolls her eyes. "You're not going to make fun of me about it, are you?"

  "No, not at all. I just never heard you talk like that."

  "Well, you know, we all have dreams. That’s what I was thinking the last time I was in the ER before they forced me to take maternity leave."

  "Well, you did throw up on a patient," I point out.

  "Dr. Gowalski nearly killed someone because he was hungover, but hey, we're all going to focus on me and my persistent nausea," she says, throwing her hands up. "Lincoln would never want to move somewhere like that, you know?”

  “What about you?” I ask. “What if it were just up to you?”

  “I think having a practice in a small town would be nice. Relaxing. Maybe I could even keep regular hours.”

  "What's that like?" I ask.

  She laughs along with me.

  "You know, growing up, I thought all of those people who have their friends and their work and everything within a twenty-minute drive and I thought how boring? That would be awful. But now having this baby, that's all I can think about. I just want Lincoln to be with me. I guess the pregnancy I can handle on my own, but I'm a little scared about having the baby. And then after we come home ..."

  I'm about to bring up hiring help again, but she beats me to it.

  "Help would be useful, but it's not the same thing as raising a child with your husband, with the father. And I don't even mean forever, you know? Just a couple of years. We can connect, bond, leave the rat race."

  "I couldn't agree more," I say. "That's why you should do it."

  "Do what?"

  "You should seriously think about taking the trust to court."

  "What about your mother? She'll never speak to us again."

  "You'd be surprised."

  "What are you talking about?" Marguerite furrows her brows and crosses her arms across her chest again.

  "I'm not saying that Mom wouldn't be mad. She would, of course. All I'm saying is that she may even admire you after that."

  "What? That doesn't make any sense.”

  "I don't know. I can't make any guarantees. All I know is that the money should be yours. That is an unfair trust, and if you can convince Lincoln to go along with it, I'll testify on your behalf at any time. You deserve that money, Marguerite. You love each other. You care about one another. That's what that's about."

  She reaches out, grabs my hand, and pulls me into a tight hug.

  I wonder why I have been thinking a lot about that trust now. It has been weighing heavily on my mind for a while, partly because of how unfair it is and how much the two of them deserve that money to be theirs, and partly because that same trust applies to me.

  I also have to marry someone from a comparably wealthy family, whatever the hell that means. So far, Mom hasn't been putting any pressure on me about that.

  She probably thinks I'm sowing my wild oats or whatever patriarchal, antiquarian ideas she still considers to be dogma. But I think about it, that money, those options.

  It's not me that I'm thinking about, not exactly.

  It's all the debts that I owe and all the money that they're going to collect unless I pay them.

  I stay with Marguerite late into the evening. We watch Netflix, I order a pizza, and she continues to eat her crackers and fruit.

  After that initial conversation, we talk about anything and everything except for Jacqueline and Lincoln.

  We laugh, we watch some stupid fail videos on YouTube, and we pretend that we're both much happier than we actually are.

  Initially, I was going to stay until Lincoln showed up, but when it's almost eleven and he's still not back, I tell her that I have an early flight in the morning and I have to go.

  She gives me a warm hug and I tell her not to bother getting out of bed. She's too nauseous and too tired.

  Giving her a kiss on her forehead, I tell her to lock the door behind me with her app.

  12

  Dante

  The following weekend, after I come back from monitoring Vasko, and overseeing his investments with my investors' money, I head to the Hamptons.

  The family owns a large beach house that we refer to as, "The Cottage," but it's hardly that at all. It's five bedrooms with two wraparound porches, a large pool, and it borders onto the water, onto the sand, and the swaying green grasses for which the Hamptons are famous for.

  My family owned this house a while ago and it has recently come back to us after Mom agreed to help Lincoln and Marguerite with the financing.

  There has been a lot of land consolidation, and taking down of old cottages, and buildup of new giant homes all around us. This house remains somewhat of a relic. It was particularly large back in the day when it was first built, but Mom still complains about it because she prefers Cape Cod.

  The property now belongs officially to Lincoln and Marguerite, and they are paying Mom the mortgage and the fees while she holds the title. Still, it remains more of a family place.

  I drive down
the narrow streets, two lanes with beautiful landscaping around each home. The summers are what everyone here lives for.

  This is when all the out-of-towners swarm in, the wives and the children typically staying all summer and the husbands coming just for weekends.

  I have more work to get to on Monday, but I'm looking forward to dipping my feet in the ocean, having a barbecue, and catching up with Lincoln.

  When Mom calls, I reluctantly answer. I had mentioned to her that we're going to be meeting up here this weekend, and she's still bitter about it.

  "Why can't you come to Cape Cod?" she asks.

  "Because I have to fly out of LaGuardia early Monday morning."

  "Well, you can fly it out of Logan Airport or Cape Cod. It has a bunch of flights."

  This is probably the third time we have had this conversation.

  "When was the last time you were here?” I ask.

  We're video chatting, and she's in the kitchen chopping vegetables feverishly. She turns away from me for a moment to tend to the stove. I just sit here holding my phone in front of my face, waiting for her to return. "Where are you?" Mom asks, turning back.

  "I just pulled up to the house,” I say and point the phone at the big white traditional home with siding and two columns in front of the curved driveway.

  "I guess they're taking good care of it," she says, "from what I can see."

  "Yeah, it's perfect. They had it repainted. The housekeeper is doing a good job."

  "I still don't know why you all can't come up here—” Mom starts to say again, but I cut her off, and tell her that I have to go.

  Getting out of my rented car, I park right by the front door and knock.

  No one is inside.

  I use the code that Marguerite had texted me, and then walk into the newly painted interior. The living room is grand, with a big piano in the corner.

  No one in our family plays, but it was bought by my grandfather many years ago as a statement piece. Now we have to hang on to it for probably in perpetuity.

  The walls have been painted a combination of slate gray and white, giving it a very modern look. There's a waterfall style kitchen island made out of marble, and a sink right in the middle.