dog and her friends from school and her friends from work and her friends from who knew where else. She made friends easily, his sister, which possibly explained why she had never felt the need to keep her temper in check: there was always somebody else in line waiting to tell her how great she was.
It wasn’t like that for him. It was just the football team, and then Bonnie, and then nothing. Until Ken and Betsy and everybody who gathered outside the clinic on Saturday mornings opened their arms and invited him into their huddle and he felt some part of him that had been missing for he didn’t know how long slot back into place.
Outskirts of Yeso, New Mexico—148 Miles to Albuquerque
Cait saw a few squarish shapes rise from the horizon. Yeso was nothing more than a ghost town, all but abandoned and creepy as hell. Cait remembered it clearly from past trips. She also knew it marked the halfway point to Albuquerque.
She’d thought Rebecca was starting to open up a little. The way she’d laughed about the gas station attendant, the way she’d let her eyes close for a few miles. Cait had felt the knife sliding along the clamshell, loosening the muscle, just the way they’d taught her when she’d worked in the kitchen at the Catch back in high school. Gently, gently. You didn’t want to crack the shell.
But then she’d mentioned the husband and Rebecca had seized back up.
She was running out of time.
It was ridiculous, this whole charade. Pretending like she didn’t already know nearly everything there was to know about Rebecca, or everything the Internet would tell her. As if she didn’t know that her husband was Patrick McRae. A man who was in a high-profile Senate race. A man who had been described by The Washington Post as “electric.”
A man who had detonated an atomic bomb at the center of her life.
Two Months Earlier
Cait woke up to the sound of her phone buzzing. She picked it up, squinting at it in the dim light, saw nine missed calls and thirteen text messages and God only knew how many WhatsApp notifications. All of them asking the same thing: “Have you seen the video?”
Alyssa had sent a link. Cait padded into the kitchen, put the kettle on the stove, and clicked play while she waited for it to boil.
It had been filmed on someone’s phone in the audience. She could tell by the way the picture shook every time applause rang out, which was often. There was a man standing on a stage in a suit, his tie loosened around the throat, his hair darkened with sweat. When the video opened, he was mid-flow, his voice soaring as he hit the punch line. “We cannot accept anything less for our country!”
The crowd roared.
The kettle whistled.
Cait poured a stream of boiling water into the French press and started to wonder why the hell everyone was so keen on her watching this guy. She hit pause while she finished making her coffee. It was one of her little pleasures in life, sitting in her tiny egg-yolk-yellow kitchen in the morning and drinking a good cup of coffee. She wasn’t about to rush it.
She took a sip and hit play. The man in the suit lurched back to life. A question from the audience. “Congressman McRae, what do you think about the Me Too movement?”
“Well, sir, I was lucky enough to be raised by a strong woman, and now I’m married to one.” He took a moment to nod toward the pretty blonde standing behind him. “I believe that women deserve respect, and I believe that any man who rapes or sexually assaults a woman is lower than a dog.” He paused for the applause. “That said, I think some people are taking things a little too far. I believe that everyone—man, woman, gay, straight, black, white—is responsible for their actions and the consequences of those actions. Too often I see the names of good, honest people being dragged through the mud on the Internet and on social media. These tools have made it all too easy to point a finger at someone and—boom!” His hands mimicked a mushroom cloud. “Their life goes up in smoke. If someone has done wrong, they should be punished, but here in America, we believe in innocent until proven guilty. We believe in civil discourse. We believe in hearing both sides of the story before destroying a person’s reputation.”