“You hit your head on the wet grass. Farah went to get some of her doctor stuff to check you out,” Aimee adds.
“I’m fine,” I say. “Ted?”
He doesn’t hear me. I push myself up to stand and fight the wave of nausea creeping up my throat. Adam helps me balance myself.
“Ted, I need to talk to you,” I say.
“Now? You want to talk now?”
“Yes, now.”
I move past Rini and her sister, ignoring them, and reach the dock, away from the group. The wind picks up as Ted and I walk over the water, but we forge our way to the floating dock, as far away from the others as possible. I lose my footing but Ted grabs me before I fall. I consider that this isn’t the safest place in a storm, but it will give us the best chance of privacy.
“Margot, you’re not listening to any of this, right?”
“Ted” is the only word I can eke out before my throat closes up. He wraps his arms around me and presses me into his body. I smell his sour alcohol breath and remember how much drunker he is than I am. I don’t know what to think, what to believe. If Andi is telling the truth, that Ted did those horrendous things, it would make him a monster.
That couldn’t be the man I know, the man I married. The man I love. Could it?
I think of the tarot cards, the ones left in the dumbwaiter only for me. The ones Rini knew nothing about.
The Empress, upright: pregnancy; reversed: domestic problems.
The Fool, upright: new beginnings; reversed: poor judgment, naivety.
If they were left by Andi, who said she was trying to warn me, then their intended meaning was clear. And yet I saw what I wanted to see, a promise for the future rather than a glimpse of clarity into the past. I’ve always willfully ignored the signs that disturbed me. I did it with my parents’ marriage. With their tragic death. With Adam. With Ted too?
I remember back to that time before Ted and I got engaged. Our two-year dating anniversary was coming up, and I had a feeling Ted was going to propose. We’d been talking about the future and engagement rings and our favorite time of the year for weddings. Despite my firmly held career ambitions, I suddenly became more desperate for him to propose than a woman approaching her thirties in the 1950s. Aimee and Adam were already married and I knew they’d start having kids. I wanted the same. Adam and I would morph from orphans into a superfamily.
It was easy to ignore the nights Ted stayed out until the morning. Or the unexpected business trips. I was so close to getting what I wanted that I glossed right over those incidents. And in hindsight his odd behavior felt like a blip. Last-minute jitters before a well-planned-out, highly orchestrated proposal. There was nothing to ask about. Nothing to dig up. Until Andi appeared from the hands of fate with a horror story to ruin my life.
AIMEE
I fight the urge to take out my phone and snap a picture of the gray storm clouds cast Martian red from the late-afternoon sun hidden behind them. I want to video the flashes of lightning that divide the sky. To record the thunder that shakes the wooden piles of the dock below us.
This compulsion is not to post on social media, but to capture tangible evidence of the day the past came crashing back into us. Me, Adam, and apparently, Ted. Somehow I knew this was coming, as far back as the drive to Stars Harbor two days ago, but I could’ve never grasped the extent of it.
When Margot took Ted out to the end of the dock to confront him about Andi’s confession, Rini started to follow. Adam stepped up, blocking her.
“They need a minute,” he said.
Rini complied and since then, we’ve been loitering on either side of the dock’s entrance: Rini and her sister on one side whispering, Adam and I on the other.
“Do you think he could have done that?” I ask Adam. “That’s a pretty wild story.”
“Which makes me more inclined to believe it. I don’t know Andi to be a liar.”
“Do you know Ted to be one?” I ask, feeling defensive that Adam would stick up for his ex-mistress over his brother-in-law. Though somehow Adam’s use of “Andi” over “Mira” comforts me. When he adopts the name that Rini used for her sister over the one he gave her when they were lovers, that opens up the space for some objectivity.
“I know Ted is a man who will do anything to protect what’s his. We’ve all heard stories of clients his colleagues have tried to poach,” Adam says.
He’s right. That’s the reason Ted does so well at work. He’s quiet but cutthroat. Calm but merciless. We have heard the stories, but Ted tells them like he’s the victim and then the savior. Now he’s cast as the villain.
Like the rain that seems to be bouncing up at me from the dock below, my whole perception has been turned upside down. Ten years ago, I called Andi the villain. This weekend I understood my part in that same role. And now Ted is stepping into something worse than our petty crimes, into a truly heinous act.
“With Margot too,” I add. “How many times has he gone above and beyond to protect Margot’s feelings from being hurt by even the slightest comment?”
Ted’s personality comes off as a strength in his role as a husband. He’s fiercely loyal to Margot. He always follows through. But how far would he go to protect her?
Adam nods. “And remember, this all happened ten years ago. He was more desperate. If he’d knocked up another girl, Margot would have dumped him in two seconds flat. Goodbye Flynn trust fund, goodbye family connections. And they were so close to getting engaged. He had it in the bag.”
Could he have really gone to these lengths? I watch Ted animatedly explaining to Margot without being able to hear a word. He can barely hold his footing on the floating dock, bucking up and down in the waves, and yet Margot maintains her composure as always. I’ve never been more afraid for her. This is not the time to be calm.
RINI
Ted was the one who had done the unthinkable. I had no idea the extent of the violation Andi suffered. Ted showed no remorse while listening to my sister unburden her pain. We’re never going to get an apology. And even if we did, it wouldn’t be enough. Not for what he did to Andi.
I watch as Ted and Margot ascend the ramp of the floating jetty and stroll toward us. The storm whips their clothes and hair against their bodies.
Andi steps from the lawn to the dock, drawn to them like a moth to a flame. I follow behind her. Ted moves with the confidence of someone who has never lost a match of “he said, she said,” and as they approach I assume he’s persuaded Margot onto his side.
By the time they get within a few feet of me and Andi halfway down the dock, I’m frozen with rage. Ted drops Margot’s hand and ushers her in front of him. Margot moves quickly past Andi and then me, without making eye contact. She doesn’t notice that Ted has stopped inches from my sister. I can barely pick up what he says to her over the howling wind.
“I told you that if you ever contacted me or my wife, it would not end well for you,” he whispers.
Ted moves so quickly that I don’t have a chance to react. He grabs my sister and throws her into the stormy water.
FARAH
