Chris Bohjalian - Before You Know Kindness

“You can’t do that!”

“I can! I won’t lie in the deposition, Charlotte. I won’t. It’s wrong, and it’s not fair to my dad.”

“You can’t-”

“Girls, is everything okay?” It was her aunt Catherine’s voice. She turned around, and the grown women-her aunt and her mom and her grandmother with the pram before her-all looked slightly concerned. Willow didn’t believe they had overheard enough of their conversation to understand exactly what they were discussing, but clearly they’d heard their daughters fighting.

“Oh, we’re fine, Mother,” Charlotte called back in that new voice of hers. “Just two girls bickering.”

“Are you hungry? There seem to be some vendors along that road over there,” Aunt Catherine told them, and she pointed at the row of food carts on the street, closed today to automobiles, that wound its way up to the Cloisters.

“Cousin, are you hungry?” Charlotte asked her.

“No.”

“That’s probably good. I smell a lot of seared flesh,” she murmured softly. Then she raised her voice for their parents and said, “We’re both fine!”

“Okay, then. Just let us know if there’s something you want,” her aunt said.

Charlotte picked up her pace and Willow had to walk faster to keep up. When they had some distance once again on the grown-ups, Charlotte spoke: “This is very complicated, you know. I’m trying to do the right thing.”

“Me, too.”

“But here’s something else,” she said firmly. “How could we be friends after you revealed everything? How could we? Telling everyone everything would be so hurtful to my dad. That’s what I don’t get: Here I am trying to make up for what I did-yes, what I did, I know I’m to blame-by making this lawsuit and this press conference go perfectly, and you’re trying to stop me.”

“I’m not trying to stop you.”

“Oh, but you would. You would undo everything if you talked,” Charlotte said.

“But-”

“Look, we’re not going to figure this out right this second. Would you do me a favor?”

“What?”

“Think about what I’ve said. Okay? Just think about it today, and we can talk more tonight. Deal?”

Willow couldn’t imagine she’d change her mind, but they really were getting nowhere. And so she nodded and mumbled, “Okay.” Then she halted where she was to watch a pair of tumblers who were dressed like the court jesters on her grandmother’s playing cards, while Charlotte walked on ahead.

“What were you and Charlotte talking about?” She turned and saw her mother standing beside her. Her grandmother and her aunt were continuing to walk, slowly narrowing the gap between them and her cousin. At some point her mother had taken the carriage back from Grandmother, and so Willow peeked inside now and saw her brother smiling up at her. He seemed to be batting his eyelashes like a baby flirt.

“Oh, nothing.”

“It didn’t sound like nothing.”

“I’ll tell you later,” she said, though she had no expectation that she would tell her mother the real subject at any point soon. How could she until she and Charlotte had come to some sort of resolution?

But then, maybe that shouldn’t matter. And maybe it wouldn’t matter. This had to resolve itself this weekend, because it was possible that after tomorrow she wouldn’t see Charlotte again before their depositions. And so it crossed her mind that she should simply tell her mother and father tonight what had occurred that awful evening at the club in New Hampshire. Let them figure out how to deal with the information.

An idea began to form. She wasn’t sure if it was a good idea or-even if it was-whether she had the courage to go through with it. But it was certainly a notion that intrigued her. With her uncle Spencer now speaking to her father, she had no doubt that later that day or that evening both families would have a meal together somewhere. Maybe a nice dinner at a Japanese or Chinese or Indian restaurant on the Upper East or West Side. Then, with everyone gathered together, she would reveal the details that both she and her cousin had withheld since that horrible night. Charlotte would be furious-there would be no dignified British orphan scene once this word got out; this would be a performance, she guessed, comprised largely of screaming and hysteria-but wouldn’t it be better to expose everything here in New York, with all the grown-ups assembled in one place, than as a complete surprise in a deposition?

And, she knew, one way or another it was going to come out. No matter how hard she tried, she could no longer keep that part of the story to herself.

HOW ODD, Catherine thought. Spencer was here and she was walking with him, and he had just had a long talk with her brother. This was exactly what she had wanted, exactly what she had hoped would occur but hadn’t thought possible. They were strolling along the terrace that overlooked the Hudson River, while everyone else was back in the park getting something to eat. But then Spencer had told her of his conversation with John about the press conference and she had grown angry. Their family was lurching spastically toward public humiliation, estrangement, or both, and their daughter was, according to Dr. Warwick, a volcano of guilt and despair just waiting to explode-despite whatever serenity she was projecting on the surface. And here Spencer was bringing up the press conference. Again. The gentle feel of his fingers on her neck last night-their taste when she kissed them-seemed very far away to her now, and she knew exactly what she would say.

She paused against the stonewall and gazed out at the Palisades across the water.

“I’ve made a decision,” she said, and she could feel him stopping beside her, though she couldn’t imagine he knew what she was thinking.

“Oh? About what?”

She took a breath, exhaled. Took another and began: “If you go ahead with that press conference on Tuesday, I will leave you.”

“What?”

“I will pack up our daughter and we will go across town to my mother’s, and I will immediately start looking for a new home for us. For Charlotte and me.”

“Whoa. Where is-”

“You know where this is coming from. At least you should. Things haven’t been right between us for a very long time. As a matter of fact, if the accident hadn’t intervened, I was going to tell you in New Hampshire that I wanted us to start counseling. Marriage counseling. At the very least I wanted that. Certainly we needed it. I might even have left you then, but you got hurt and so I couldn’t. I just… couldn’t.”

He was leaning against the stones beside her, and she wondered why she wasn’t crying. She thought she might if she turned to look at him, and so she didn’t. She focused on the shore across the water, on a plane descending toward Newark.

“Why isn’t counseling an option now, then? Why this threat-”

“Maybe we could explore counseling once I’ve left. Maybe not. Right now I don’t know. But I am quite sure that I cannot live with you if you are capable of subjecting our daughter-and, yes, my brother-to the indignities that will follow your press conference. It’s just that simple.”

“But it will help the lawsuit,” he said, a quiver of panic marking his voice. “And it’s such a great opportunity for us to point out the horrors of hunting. Good Lord, the pain I’m enduring is precisely what deer experience-”

“I don’t care. For once I want you to put your family first. You know, those animals you live with, those animals who are a part of your very own little herd. Charlotte and me. My brother. Go ahead with the lawsuit, sue the hell out of Adirondack-though I would certainly hope that you and Paige would have the common sense not to let this thing ever get to a trial. But you hold that press conference to announce it on Tuesday-you so much as have Randy Mitchell pick up the phone to start calling people on Monday morning to tell them about the event-and your daughter and I are out the door. We are gone before the sweat from Randy’s hands has left a palm print on her phone.”