Page 195 of The Clinch
I sit because the alternative is swaying.
She disappears into the kitchen, comes back with water, and presses the glass into my hand without comment.
I take a sip because my mouth tastes like metal and old grief.
For a minute, neither of us says anything.
Then I whisper, “He knows now.”
Eden sits in the armchair across from me. “Yeah.”
I stare down into the water.
“I never told him the whole story.”
“I know.”
The feeling isn’t quite shame. More like exposure. Like a locked room in me got kicked open under stadium lights.
“I didn’t want him to know like that.”
“I know.”
Then, because fury is simpler than grief, I lift my head. “I’m still livid.”
Eden gives me a tired half smile. “I’d be worried if you weren’t.”
Despite everything, a sound almost like a laugh catches in my throat, then dies.
I scrub a hand over my face.
“He decided for me,” I say again, quieter this time. “Again.”
Eden leans back, studying me. “Maybe.” I look up. She holds my gaze. “Or maybe he decided about Travis and left the rest to you.”
In the soft lamplight, with a glass of water in my hand, my pulse finally slows. The silence between us swells with everything I’m not ready to name.
Anger. Relief. Grief.
And something more unsettling than all of them.
The growing certainty that she’s right.
46
PAIN RESPONSE (LIZ)
The next morning, anger is waiting for me before I even open my eyes—hot, sour, immediate. My body feels wrong. Dehydrated and heavy.
Then memory hits.
Red Hook. The ring. Travis saying “my wife.” Leo’s expression when I said “pregnant.”
I open my eyes and stare at the ceiling. The apartment is quiet in that particular early-morning way that sharpens every sound—pipes ticking somewhere in the walls, a car horn out on the FDR, the soft hum of the vent over the stove.
I feel flayed.
Last night, after Eden finally went to bed, I stood in the shower until the water ran lukewarm and my skin pinked under the spray, as if heat and pressure could wash off the feeling of being looked at in that room. His voice. Leo’s silence. My own words hanging in the air in front of witnesses, cameras, and Jessica’s phone.
