Chapter 16
Chapter 16:
Nathan, it turned out, had never learned how to take no for an answer.
For three days after my procedure, he camped outside my parents’ house like a particularly well-dressed homeless person. He brought flowers that wilted on the porch. He wrote letters that my father collected and shredded without opening. He stood on the sidewalk in the rain, looking up at my window with the tragic expression of a man who genuinely believed he was the victim in this scenario.
The neighbors started to talk. The Hendersons across the street asked my mother if everything was okay. The mailman started delivering packages to the back door to avoid the awkward confrontation.
“I can call the police,” Dad offered on the third morning, watching Nathan pace the sidewalk through the curtains. “Get a restraining order p>
“Not yet.” I was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking tea I couldn’t taste, trying to remember what it felt like to have energy. “Let me try something first p>
I opened the front door.
Nathan’s face lit up like a Christmas tree. He took a step forward, arms opening for an embrace that wasn’t coming.
“Vivian! I knew you’d p>
“Stop.” The word hit him like a wall. “You can come in. We can talk. But you stay on that side of the room, and you listen more than you speak p>
He nodded frantically, following me into the living room with the eagerness of a puppy who’d been left in the rain. I sat in my father’s armchair—the big one, the one that made me feel protected—and gestured for Nathan to take the couch.
He launched into his speech immediately, the same speech he’d clearly been rehearsing for three days: he hadn’t done anything wrong, Meredith was just a friend, I was overreacting, the stress of pregnancy was making me irrational, he forgave me for the tissue box incident, we could still make this work, he’d be a good father—
“Take off your shirt,” I said.
He stopped mid-sentence. “What p>
“Your shirt. Take it off p>
A flush crept up his neck. “Vivian, this is… I mean, your parents are in the other room, and I don’t think p>
“You’re embarrassed?” I tilted my head, studying him like a specimen in a jar. “That’s interesting. You weren’t embarrassed to bring your ex-girlfriend into our home. You weren’t embarrassed to disappear for days at a time. But asking you to remove a shirt—that’s where you draw the line p>
The flush deepened. Spread.
“You’ve been sleeping with her,” I said conversationally. “I saw the hickey on your neck the night I threw the tissue box. I’m guessing there are more. Scratch marks, maybe? Love bites? The kind of evidence that would be hard to explain in court p>
His face went from red to white in approximately half a second.
“I’m not slandering you, Nathan. I’m stating facts. And if you don’t sign those divorce papers, those facts are going to become very, very public.” I smiled—the kind of smile that had no warmth in it at all. “Now get out of my parents’ house p>
He left. Ran, really—out the door, down the walk, into his car. Gone.
My mother appeared in the doorway. “Well. That was something p>
“It’s not over,” I said. “But it’s a start p>