Commitment (85 page)

“Now.
On a personal level,” Greg said
briskly
.
“Is there anything at all I can do?”

“Thank you, no.
I think we’ve got it covered for the moment.”

“Ye
s, of course.
Your husband can afford the best of every
thing I’m sure,” he said dryly.
“But what I me
ant was,
is there anything I can do for
you
,
Riley
?”

She could tell from the tight controlled tone that he was angry at
Shawn.
And instead of feeling defensive or insulted, the way she generally would, she
was instead very, very touched.
Greg felt
protective
of her, she realized.
Perhaps he even felt responsible, having been the one to send her on that fateful assignment what
now
seemed like a lifetime ago.

“I’m okay,” she s
aid trying to sound reassuring.
“I’m going to stay with my mother for a little while.”

“Good,” he nodded.
“I’m sure you’ll be well taken care of there.”

This time she did feel defensive.

“Greg,” she said on an impulse.
“Shawn is
a
much
better
man
than
this situation would suggest.”

“Well then I hope you both weather this,”
he said without missing a beat, but it was obvious she hadn’t penetrated his doubt one iota.

“We will,” she said, standing.

Greg stood as well and pressed a han
d on her shoulder.
“Be well,
Riley
.”

She took
a few
items
from her
office
and called Shawn to let him know she was
leaving for
home.
She must have sounded completely depleted because he told her to stay put and wait for a car
he would send.
The car and driver that showed up were
completely unfamiliar to her and as she slid into the backseat and into the care of this
unnamed
stranger, it underscored just
how much her life had changed.
All of
the
fears that caused her panic attack many months ago when she and Tracy first looked at the cond
o
had been realized
in spades
.
She was living Shawn’s life now,
and had left
yet another
huge part of her own behind.

The driver took her around to the freight entrance without her asking, probab
ly on instructions from Shawn
.
Riley
thanked him as she got out
, and
noticed that he waited until she was safely in the building before pulling away.
Upsta
irs, S
hawn was waiting for her alone.
She looked around before joining him on the sofa,
almost expecting that Brendan or
Doug, Rob
yn or Chris would materialize.
They’d spent very little time alone since last week.

“How was it?” he asked.

Riley
shrugged.
“Piece of cake,” she smiled.

Shawn tried to smile back at her
, and took her hands in his. 

“When this is over . . .” he began
.

“Let’s wait till then to talk
about that,” Riley interrupted.
“I’d better get some stuff for Lorna’s
.
”

She pulled her hands free of his and
went into the bedroom to pack.
Tracy called while she was in the thick of it and offered to drop by to help.

“In the middle
of the work day?” Riley asked. “No.
That’s alright.
I’ll call you later.”

“Give m
e something to do,” Tracy said. “I feel awful.
I know going into that office had to have been difficult.”

“It wasn’t so bad,” Riley lied.
“And my conversation with
Greg lasted all of ten minutes.
He gave me twelve weeks leave.”

“That’s pretty generous.”

“Well, he feels sorry for me.
They all do,” she said ruefully.

“How do
you
feel?”

“I feel . . . a little pissed off again to be honest,” Riley said quietly.  She could hear Shawn moving around in the kitchen.

“Naturally. Your work.
It’s tough to walk away from that.”

“Anyway, I’m tr
ying not to punish him anymore.
I mean, we were
just talking about
starting to work through it when this happened and I was so . . . in love with him again, y’know?”

“And now?”

“I’m stil
l in love with him, of course.
That’s what’s so terrible.”

There was
a
pause, but to her credit, Tracy didn’t ask why that was terrible.

“You know, just because you’re not at
Power to the People
doesn’t mean you
have to stop writing.
For years you’ve talked
about all these ideas you have.
And remember you want
ed to start a literary journal?
I mean, this could be your chance . . .”

“Except that I can’t think about anything except what’s happening to Shawn.”

“You don’t need me to tell you that’s probably not the healthiest thing in the world, right?”

“Look. Lemme get this packing done.
I’ll call you when I get up to Lorna’s.”

“Okay.
And wh
y don’t I come up this weekend?
We can check out our old stomping grounds.”

“Sure.”

Riley
threw some clothes
haphazardly into her suitcase and drag
ge
d it out into the living room.
Shawn
had his things
waiting by the door and
was
on the phone, probably calling for
a
car
.

“We’ll have
a
security guy with us from now on,” he
said casually when he hung up.
“I don’t kno
w if you met him before. Tiny.
Works for Chris?”

“A bodyguard,”
Riley
said.
“I
sn’t that a little excessive?”

“No.”

She
didn’t
argue.

The car was wa
iting at the freight entrance.
It was a different car and driver than the o
ne who’d picked her up at work.
Riley
smiled at him absently when she got in.
As they pulled out of the alley Riley spotted the cluster of paparazzi waiting near the front of their building.

“T
his is Tiny,” Shawn introduced.
“He’ll be staying with you from now on.”

“With me?” she asked.
“What about you?”

“I’ll have some
other guy,” Shawn said vaguely.
“But when I’m in the city
,
Tiny stays with you.”

“Lorna . . .”

“
I already called and asked her.
She said he can
use
the carriage house.”

The carriage house was what they called the room over the garage that Lorna used when she was writing. It was basically its own little apartment, with a kitchenette and full sitting room and separate bath.

“Oh.
Glad you two have it all sorted out,”
Riley
said.

She leaned against the cool glass of the window and shut her eyes, planning to sleep through the entire drive.
But
Shawn had other ideas.
As soon as they hit the highway, he slid a manila folder onto her lap without explanation.
The first
was a three page document and that
listed properties and accounts
,
columns of numbers on the right corresponded with each until, on the last page,
where there was a grand
total.
The figure was
much higher than she’d imagined. She slapped the folder shut.

“I meet with a business ma
nager every month,” Shawn said.
“We go over everything, and I s
ign checks, that kind of thing.
If I’m not able to meet wi
th him, I’ll need you to do it.
And if that’s the case, someone else needs to have power of a
ttorney.
So that would be you, Mrs. Gardner.”

“So I’m ‘it’, huh?
Not Brendan.”

Shawn looked perplexed.
“
Why would I ask Brendan?
”

“No reason, I guess.”
She turned away a
nd looked out the window again.
She could just make out the Hudson River.

“What’re you thinking about?” Shawn asked gently.

“Nothing.”

She was thinking about Peter and his thinly veiled satisfaction at her misfortune, because perhaps the good fortune that preceded it had been too much for him not to envy. She was thinking about how love and anger co
uld co-exist in the same heart.
She was thinking that by turning over control of all his assets, Shawn was proving once and for all that he really did see her as
his
partner.
And she was hoping that it wasn’t too late
to matter
.

He didn’t try to draw her out of her funk for the rest of the drive.

When the
y
pulled up,
Riley
was
the first one out of the car.
She pressed herself into Lorna’s arms when she opened the door
and felt the tension dissipate.
Then Lorna was releasing her and huggin
g Shawn.
When she pulled away, she touched the side of his face the way any mother would.
 

“Well.
Enough of that,” she said, her eyes warmly regarding him. 

“And you must be Tiny.”
She took in his size
as she turned from Shawn
and laughed.
“I love it.”

There was a lunch of Indian take-out w
aiting for them in the kitchen.
Lorna had even taken the trouble to put it all into serving dishes with
plates and silverware laid out.
She passed around raspberry lemonade in tall glasses and filled the silence with chatter about her students’ reactions to the news. 

Apparently some of them thought it was appropriate to confront her during a lecture about whether she believed Shaw
n was guilty or not.

“Well, I suppose I’m fair game having
spoken out
and written about rape my entire career,” she said.

“Mom,”
Riley
stopped her, jarred by the use of the word.

“It’s okay,” Shawn said.
“I want to know what people are saying.”

“Well you’ll be pleased to know that most
of them believe you,” she said.
“
But no surprise there.
W
omen are hardly ever believed.”

“In this case, that’s just as well,”
Riley
snapped.
“Because she’s lying.”

“I know
that,” Lorna touched her hand.
“I was speaking more
generally, of course.”

“The ones who
don’t believe her,” Shawn said.
“Why don’t they?”

“A fundamental misunderstanding about
why men rape women,” Lorna said.
“They don’t believe her because they think you can get just
about any woman you might want.
So essentially, you didn’t need to rape anyone for sex.”

“And that doesn’t make sense?” Tiny asked.

“It would, if men raped women because of sex.”

“Men rape women in a dysfunctional attempt at self-empowerment, and to subjugate and humiliate them,”
Riley
recited
woodenly and
as though by rote.

Tiny shook his head, looking unconvinced.