I thought of Bibi — of
her
misfortune — but said nothing. As if reading my mind, Nico turned to me, laying his hands on my shoulders. “I just wanted a normal life with this woman. She’s amazing, isn’t she? Calm and rational, even standing here at the gates of hell.” He gave me a gentle push toward the door. “Go into the other room, Jane. I need to lock the door.”
While Nico paused to confer with Brenda about Bibi’s care, the police detective whispered in my ear. “Nobody blames you for any of this,” he said. “Anyone can see you’re the victim here.”
The victim. Is that what I was? Numbness set in; I could barely make sense of anything that had just taken place. I started down the stairs to my room, leaving the men behind me. I had to get away from everyone. Not to weep or mourn: I was still too shocked for that. No, I had to change out of my heavy satin wedding gown, out of the stiff underwire bra poking into my flesh and the excruciating shoes. I had to get back into
my
clothes, the ones I’d brought with me to Thornfield Park.
In the shower, I ran the water so hot it scalded my skin, then scrubbed the makeup from my face. I dressed in my usual clothes and sat down on the edge of my bed. Weak and tired, I pulled back the covers and climbed under. At last I was alone and could think. But every thought brought pain. Nico owed me an explanation. I waited for the knock that I knew would eventually come.
But it didn’t.
Hours passed. I considered leaving my room, looking for Nico. He hadn’t come for me, so what good would it do to look for him? According to my alarm clock, it was 5 p.m. Night was coming. I knew I should make a plan, figure out what to do next. But how could I decide what to do before I understood why Nico had misled me? Six o’clock came and went, then seven. I hadn’t eaten a thing all day. I hadn’t heard a single voice in hours. Where was everyone?
By then, pride seemed beside the point. I unlocked my door and looked out into the hallway, and there, to my surprise, was Nico. He’d dragged a chair next to my door; he must have moved it very quietly. He had been waiting — possibly for hours — for me to leave my room.
“Finally,” he said quietly. “I was beginning to think you might never come out. Why did you lock yourself up in there? Why didn’t you come out and scream at me? Hit me, throw plates at my head? Anything but this.” He stood and cradled my chin in his hand, tipping my face toward him to better study it. “No sign of tears,” he observed. “You look exhausted and pale, though — and sad.” He removed his hand. “Say something, would you? You’re starting to scare me.”
But I still didn’t know what to say.
“I never meant to hurt you, Jane. You have to believe me. I’ve done a lot of damage in my life, most of it unintentionally, some of it deliberately. But I swear, you, of all people, I never meant to hurt. Will you ever forgive me?”
How could I not forgive him? He looked down at me, his gray eyes full of sadness and, yes, love. Still I said nothing.
“I’m an asshole, right?” His tone was wistful. “A man who would try to marry a sweet, innocent girl under false pretenses.”
“Yes, Nico.”
“Then tell me so. Call me an asshole.”
“I can’t. I’m tired, and I think I might be coming down with something.” He heaved a sigh, scooped me up in his arms, and carried me downstairs. He set me down on one of the living room couches and brought me a glass of water and a plate of crackers.
“Start with these,” he said. “You need to eat.”
I did. Then, with my stomach full, I drifted to sleep. When I woke, the fireplace was lit, and Nico was sitting on the floor beside the couch, his dark head next to mine, keeping watch. When I opened my eyes, he smiled and leaned to kiss me, but I pulled away.
“Oh, Jane,” he said sadly. “Don’t tell me you hate me.”
“I don’t hate you.”
“Then why won’t you kiss me? Because I’m a married man?”
“Aren’t you one?”
“You saw Bibi. Can you consider me married? My ‘
wife
’” — he said the word with scorn — “is psychotic and spends half her time thinking I’m trying to kill her and the other half trying to plot ways to kill me. Is that what you’d call a marriage?”
“Then why didn’t you get an annulment or a divorce?”
“I couldn’t do that to Bibi. She’s the way she is because of me.”
“How is that possible? You didn’t cause her mental illness.”
“Schizophrenia runs in her family, and I didn’t find out right away. We got married so quickly. We met, fell in love, spent one long weekend in a hotel in Rio, and got married on a whim. She
didn’t think to tell me that when she was a little girl her mother was institutionalized or that her grandmother had killed herself decades ago. Bibi might have meant to hide her family history from me, or she might have thought nothing like that would happen to her. She wasn’t one to worry about the future. She was brave and funny, and she didn’t care how the world saw her.”
I couldn’t help noticing the tenderness in his voice as he spoke about his wife as she had been. I recalled with a sharp pang how he had called her “angel” — the same term of endearment he had given me.
“Remember that night I told you Bibi had never even tried drugs before she met me?” he asked. Then, more bitterly, “I’m a corrupter of young women.”
I nodded.
“I’ve always felt responsible for… for this.” He pointed up toward the third floor.
“Responsible?”
Nico reached out to smooth my hair. I pulled back. “Don’t pull away from me like I disgust you. You’ll break my heart.”
“Why do you feel responsible?”
“Guess. You’re smart. Figure it out.”
“Do you think the drugs the two of you used caused her schizophrenia? Or brought it on prematurely?”
“I can’t know for sure,” Nico said, “but it’s a strong possibility. Cocaine can do that — trigger schizophrenia if it’s in someone’s genetic makeup. And then there were all the other things we tried — acid, mushrooms, ecstasy, Jack Daniels — in all sorts of combinations. If I hadn’t pressured her, surrounded her with wild parties
and hangers-on, just looking to win us over… If I hadn’t —” His voice broke. “She’d never tried anything before I met her, but she wanted to be a part of my world. I promised I’d watch out for her, I’d never let anyone harm a hair on her head.”
I thought for a while. “She was a model, right? Aren’t they exposed to a lot of drugs and parties too?”
“She wasn’t a model when I met her,” Nico said. “She was a waitress. I got her connections, started her down that path. The schizophrenia might have taken years, even decades, to kick in if it weren’t for me. Maybe it wouldn’t have happened at all.” A long silence ensued. “Say something. Do you think I’m a monster?”
How could I sit so near him — his eyes burning with sadness, his shoulders slumped with the weight of his history — and not stroke his hair, not kiss his forehead, not hold him in my arms? Just sitting there, hands in my lap, not reaching out to him, was the hardest thing I’d ever done in my life. “No. I don’t think you’re a monster.”
“Then let me hold you. Let me kiss you.”
“I still have questions,” I told him. “Why do you keep her here when you know she’s dangerous?”
“What else would I do with her?” he asked. “Have you ever been inside a mental institution?” He clapped a hand to his forehead. “God forbid. Of course you haven’t. You’re the sanest person I’ve met in my life.”
“Aren’t there some nice ones?” I asked. “For rich people?”
“There are bad ones and worse ones. I couldn’t stand to see her put away… to have her live out the rest of her life among strangers. And, well… since I’m owning up to every sleazy thing I’ve ever
done in my life… I wasn’t just thinking of Bibi. If I’d sent her away, the press would have gotten wind of it. ‘Rock Star Hides Wife in Mental Institution.’ I’d be the villain. Instead, I coasted for years on ‘Rock Star Pulls Life Back Together.’ ”
“Won’t the press find out the truth now?”
“No doubt,” Nico said. “It doesn’t take too much imagination to see what the headlines will look like. ‘Famous Musician Locks Wife in Attic.’ And, then there’s the inevitable ‘Bigamist Lies to Child Bride.’ ”
“Oh, Nico. How is that going to affect your tour? And your album?”
He laughed incredulously. “My tour? My album? How like you, Jane. You catch me lying to you and the entire world, and you’re worried about my PR.”
“Then why
did
you lie? I understand why you hid things from the press. I don’t think it was the right thing to do, but I get why you did it. But why did you lie to
me?
”
For a long moment he said nothing. “Would you have married me if you knew?”
I didn’t know how to reply.
“Would you have fallen in love with me?” he asked.
I hesitated. “I might have. Yes, I think I would have no matter what.”
“But would you have ever let me touch you if you knew I had a wife? Or would you have run straight back to the agency and found yourself a new job?”
“I… I don’t know.”
“In the beginning, my romantic history was none of your
business, none of anyone’s business. Then, suddenly, I was in love with you and wanted to make you love me. And then I knew you loved me back, and all I wanted in the world was to marry you. It seemed like such a simple thing. Everyone should be entitled to happiness, even me. Don’t you think so, Jane?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know. I need to go someplace quiet and think.”
“Someplace quiet? You want to go to your room or out for one of your walks?”
I shook my head.
“What if I put you up in a hotel for a few days?” he asked. “You could rest there and order in room service. You could think everything through and then come back to Thornfield Park.”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“You can’t be thinking of leaving me.”
I didn’t respond.
“Why would you even consider such a thing? We don’t have to get married. We can live together, travel around the world. We could buy a house on the Mediterranean. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? We could live anywhere, as far from Thornfield Park as you like.” He studied my face. “This isn’t about my being a married man, is it?”
“A little bit,” I told him.
“I’ll get an annulment tomorrow.”
“All these years you chose to stay married to Bibi,” I told him. “That tells me something.”
“I had no reason to get an annulment. I never thought I’d want to get married again. How could I know I’d meet you?”
His words caused a spasm of grief at my core.
“You loved her enough to stay married to her,” I said. “If she weren’t schizophrenic, you would still love her… and it’s not her fault.”
“It’s
my
fault.” Nico’s face contorted.
“It’s not anyone’s fault,” I said. “And there’s that whole ‘in sickness and in health’ part of the marriage vows.”
“You can’t know what it’s like. It’s complicated.”
“I’m not judging you,” I said. “But I could never be a home wrecker.”
“In case you hadn’t noticed, the home was wrecked a long time ago — long before you stumbled into it.”
“The press would judge me too. I’d be the jailbait who stole Nico Rathburn from his sick wife.”
“I’m not going to let those parasites decide how I live my life anymore. If I can say ‘fuck the press,’ you can too.”
“You lied to me. More than once. You lied to me this morning. On our wedding day. How could I ever trust you?”
He didn’t answer, because there
was
no satisfactory answer. “So you don’t love me then?” he said finally.
All this time I’d been struggling to hold back my emotions because I knew he wouldn’t want to see me weep. Now, though, I couldn’t help myself. Tears gave way, and I spoke through sobs. “I do love you. More than ever, now that I know everything you’ve been through. But that’s beside the point.”
“Beside the point?” He rose to his feet and crossed the room. “Beside the point?” He faced the bow window, with its long view of the front yard, the pond, and its resident swans. “Anything I’ve
done since the moment I met you — the good and the bad — has been out of love. That includes the lies I told. I was wrong, I know. I shouldn’t have done it. Maybe you’ll have trouble trusting me for a while, until I prove to you I’m not what you think I am. I’m not a liar. Not really.” He walked back to me. “Let me prove it to you.” He fumbled in his pocket, brought out a handkerchief, and handed it to me. “Let me make it up to you.”
I wiped my eyes and blew my nose, trying to think straight. Though Nico had lied to me, I knew he’d done it out of love. I believed him when he promised he’d never lie to me again. But something gnawed at me and kept me from giving in. It was the tenderness in his eyes and voice as he’d spoken to Bibi, the trusting way she’d looked at and spoken to him before she’d seen me. She wasn’t the woman he’d married, and yet she was. If he could only get her to take her medication, she could be her old self again. And then what? Who would I be if I stayed with Nico, betting Bibi would remain unwell, hoping she’d continue to spit out her pills? As much as I wanted to reach out to Nico, I couldn’t forget the loving look I’d seen pass between them. And then I thought of her hatred for me, her bared teeth, the way she called me
whore,
and the way, for a moment, I’d felt the label was deserved. I remembered how that morning Nico had distracted me with my desire for him, how he’d made me push my doubts aside. Given how much I wanted him, could I ever trust myself to make the right choices?
I waited a moment to see if the gnawing feeling would pass, but it didn’t. I got to my feet. “I need you to promise me one thing.”
“What is it? Anything.”
“Promise me you’ll take good care of Maddy. Treat her the way you have lately — like your daughter, not your ward.”
He looked stricken and then furious. “You think you can just run away from me? Just like that?” He grabbed my wrist — not hard enough to hurt, just hard enough to show that he could hold me against my will and there was nothing I could do about it. “I could make you stay.” His eyes glowed with rage.
For a moment, I was afraid, but the fear passed. “You mean you could lock me in a room and keep me there?”