“If they fired you because you reported sexual harassment, that’s grounds for a lawsuit.”
“I’ve been down that road. Another girl and I were looking into a lawsuit, and into pressing charges, but we didn’t have enough evidence. We didn’t write anything down at the time, we didn’t tell anyone … My friend Natasha explained what it would involve, how long it would take, and that we’d probably lose. We were already so exhausted. And we didn’t have enough money to try.”
She expected Theo to press the issue. Tell her she should try anyway, tell her she would win. But blind optimism wasn’t his game, as she had learned. There was a long, uncomfortable pause.
“I told you it wasn’t a pretty story,” Kate said, making her voice light, trying to break the tension.
“No, it’s not,” he agreed. “I’m sorry. I’m just thinking. It’s terrible, what happened to you.”
Not what he did. It was a small difference, semantics really, but in some ways Kate thought it felt more true. Because although she hated Leonard and even hearing his name made her stiffen and sweat, it was not his actions alone that had hurt her, but rather the whole series of events. The system crashing down upon her.
She had tried to become someone who took action, who was empowered, and eventually the people who didn’t call her a bitch called her brave. But even after all that, she didn’t feel powerful. She felt like she had been thrown into a whirlpool and had gotten out the only way she could. Banged up, bleeding. And as angry as she was at her own helplessness, as much as she feared pity, hearing Theo say those words—what happened to you—in his low, solemn voice soothed some part of her she hadn’t known existed. Some part, deep down, that wanted someone to recognize that she had never asked for any of this; that the whirlpool had reached up and grabbed her, and now that she had crawled out, she still didn’t understand what had gone on inside.
“Thanks,” she said.
“It was brave of you, to report him.”
Back to being brave. Half helpless, half courageous. Maybe she would always be split in two.
“I guess so,” she said.
He looked down at his beer bottle and began to fray the damp label into tiny pastilles of adhesive.
She had the sense he was working up to say something. She turned on the bench, tucking her knees up to her chest so that she faced him. Her bare toes almost grazed his hip.
At last he said, quietly, “I hope I haven’t put you in that position.”
How easy it would be to ignore him. To pretend that she hadn’t understood what he meant on the beach about creating boundaries. Or that she hadn’t felt the attraction uncoiling between them jerkily, like a stiff cable that had been tied up too long. Yes, it would be easy to pretend. It would be wise.
Her skin pricked to life, sparking, tugging her muscles up and away from her bones. She had a sense of vertigo, not unlike on that last night in New York, when she looked down from the balcony and imagined falling.
“No, you haven’t,” she said. She leaned forward over her knees and said urgently, “Theo. That’s not what this is.”
He looked out at the backyard. His profile was one shadow against another. Her feet were still only millimeters from his thigh. All the muscles in her back stretching as she canted her body forward. A few moments ago, she had felt like he understood her. She wanted that synchronicity back again. But he had gotten the story out of her, and now was, perhaps unconsciously, assigning her to a new category: victim.
So she was not surprised when he sighed and said, turning to her, “I should get to bed. The kids will be up early. Let me drive you home.”
Kate realized with a start that he had only had that one beer, all this time, while she had drunk more than half of this bottle of wine, on top of what she had at dinner. Presumably he had done it knowing he would drive her home, in which case it was good someone was thinking ahead, but an irrational part of her felt betrayed somehow, like he had done this on purpose. To get her drunk and trick her into divulging everything.
“Okay,” she said.
The short drive to Louise and Frank’s was quiet in the cocoon of Theo’s car. The woods slipped past