When I was still new to dating him, I’d been left breathless once or twice by the sheer audacity of his arguments. He could take a point I made in support of a position and send it back to me as an argument against it.
The machinations of his mind were dazzling.
But that wasn’t his only attraction. I melted at the way he was so thoughtful. The way he always asked about my day before telling me about his. The way he brought me flowers randomly, spontaneously, just because. I loved the way he towered over me, the way he always leaned into me. And the way he always seemed to be waiting for me. It seemed so protective.
And manipulative.
Only I didn’t see it that way at first. It took me sixteen months and three weeks. Two black eyes and—finally, after our breakup—one restraining order to see him as he really was.
The first few weeks after I’d moved from DC to Virginia, my senses were still attuned to him. I thought I saw his slick-haired, preppy-clothed frame everywhere. I could have sworn I heard his confident voice. Recognized his laugh. I even woke up sometimes at night thinking I’d felt the fan of his breath on my neck.
But we were done.
As categorically as a lawyer could, I’d broken things off. I left him just as surely as I left all the little gifts he’d given me. I put them in a pile on his kitchen counter, keeping only a small cactus, an aloe plant, and a planted palm. They were his, but I didn’t figure he’d notice. The diamond tennis bracelet, the smartwatch I’d never really liked, the cashmere sweaters, the calfskin boots, the luxury handbags—I left them all behind.
He understood my background. He knew I didn’t have the money to spend on myself. I’d protested every gift he gave me, but he always replied the same: “It’s all in the details. I know you’re brilliant and it’s what’s inside you that counts. But if you look the part of a successful, high-powered lawyer, then it will be easier for other people to see you that way too. You don’t want to give them any reason to discount you.”
In hindsight it was a bunch of BS. He gave me all those things for another reason entirely, but he was right. He was absolutely right. Especially in the world of the DC elite.
If I had sold those gifts on Craigslist I might have made a couple thousand dollars. I could have used that money. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Maybe I was leading with my heart instead of my brain, but he’d taken enough of my past from me. I didn’t want him to have anything to do with my future.
I scootered past brick colonials and sprawling Arts and Crafts bungalows.
Past a school.
More houses.
I heard the thump of tires as a car pulled up next to me at a stop sign, baking me for a moment in the heat from its engine. Then it rolled through the intersection, leaving me behind.
I let it. I’d rather have a car ahead of me than behind me. I waited until the air had cleared of the exhaust, until the dust and pollen had come to rest. Then I pressed down on the throttle and glided on.
At the end of the block, where a modern, angular concrete-and-glass home stuck out like a pariah, I turned onto a narrow curving street. The houses along it didn’t have garages and, for reasons that weren’t apparent to me, most of the residents ignored their driveways. Fortunately, my side was mostly clear.
Behind me, I heard another car coming, wheels churning over scattered gravel that had been left behind after a road repair project.
I pulled my elbows in, moving away from the middle of the street toward the sidewalk.
I threw a glance over my shoulder.
The car was coming up fast.
There was a pothole right in front of me. I slowed, made a sharp turn to the right, and tried to navigate the thin strip of road between the pothole and the curb. I’d have to turn left—hard—to avoid running myself into a parked car.
As I scootered around the pothole, the car flew past me so closely that its tire thumped into the pothole and the side mirror caught the scooter’s handlebar.
It pulled me along for a moment.
The sudden momentum was dizzying. I put a hand to the side mirror and tried to lever myself away.
Didn’t work.
“Hey!” I bent, taking one hand off the handlebar in an attempt to pound on the window.
The car jerked in my direction, throwing me off balance.
On instinct, I pressed my foot on the back wheel to brake.
The wheels scraped against the pavement, making everything worse.
If I didn’t break free soon, I was going to get dragged into a parked car.
But we were going too fast for me to risk jumping off.
I squatted, lowering my center of gravity, and tried to rock myself free.
That didn’t work either.
The car sped up. As it did, it hit another pothole, shaking me free.
The sudden abandonment of our game of tug-of-war left me reeling. I lost my balance. I put a foot to the pavement, then jogged a few steps.
By that time, the car was already turning the corner at the end of the street.
I walked beside the scooter for several long minutes, taking deep breaths between sobs, chanting a shaky mantra. “It’s okay. You’re okay. You’re alright.”
Chapter 6
Riding a scooter was not the safest form of transportation, and I’d had close calls before, but never that close. Had the driver not seen me? But how was that possible? How could a person wearing a red blouse not be visible? If I hadn’t swerved toward the sidewalk to avoid that pothole, the car would have hit me!
All I wanted was to get inside. To be safe.
I left the scooter at a wide spot in the sidewalk. If someone scootered away with it before I had to work in the morning, then I would just use my app to find another.
I walked down the sidewalk and then up the long driveway toward the house. The blue iris that lined the drive in June had melted during a series of summer thunderstorms, then were overtaken by hordes of orange daylilies. At the top of the driveway, I ignored the paver stones that wrapped around the side of the house and took the herringbone brick path that led to the front door. I walked up the front steps and rang the bell.
Though my rent was rock bottom and the utilities and Wi-Fi were free, it came with a stipulation. I was supposed to check in daily with the eighty-year-old owner. She lived upstairs in the main part of the house.
A month before I moved in, she had a heart attack. The basement apartment was a compromise with her children. They kept asking her to sell the house and move into a retirement community; she kept refusing. I was the buffer that permitted civil conversations.
“Whitney Garrison! You’re home early!” Mrs. Harper always greeted me with enthusiasm, as if she’d been waiting all day for me to return. “Come in, come in!” She opened the door wide as she pushed a pair of purple tortoiseshell readers from her nose up into her hair. “Come in and tell me about your day.” She said the words as she walked from the front hall into her living room.
The walls were covered with framed damask fabric panels in cream, peach, and pale blue. A gleaming chandelier hung from the center of the ceiling.
A grand piano sat in front of the room’s bay window, and a set of skirted furniture clustered around the brick fireplace.
When I first moved in, I told her I’d taken piano lessons once upon a time, and she told me to use her piano whenever I wanted. Her children were living out somewhere in Loudoun County. Her grandchildren much too busy to visit. And her hands? They’d betrayed her. She held them out for me to see. Beneath her sparkling rings, arthritis had bent and twisted what once had been long, elegant fingers.