Elin Hilderbrand - Silver Girl

“Okay,” Meredith said. She had her wig in one hand. They were back to the wig.

Goddamn you, Freddy, Connie thought.

She climbed the stairs slowly because she wanted to listen. Toby was right there in the room, probably unabashedly eavesdropping. Connie heard Meredith say, “Hello?” Pause. “I’m doing okay. Do you have any news for me?”

Connie stopped in her tracks, but she was near the top of the stairs, and she didn’t hear anything more.

He wouldn’t talk to her.

“I asked everyone in the system at Butner,” Dev said. “Everyone gave the same answer: Fred Delinn won’t take your phone call, and they can’t make him. They can’t even make him listen while you talk.”

Meredith felt her cheeks burn. She was embarrassed. Humiliated. She was dying a living death. “Why won’t he talk to me?”

“It’s anyone’s guess, Meredith,” Dev said. “The guy is a sociopath, and he’s deteriorated mentally since he’s been in. Everyone at the prison knows what happened with Mrs. Deuce. They understand why you want an audience. Mrs. Briggs, the warden’s secretary, personally pushed for Fred to face you on Skype and at least be forced to listen to what you have to say, but that idea was shot down. It’s against prisoner’s rights. They can lock him up, they can make him go to meals, they can make him go out into the yard at nine a.m. and come in from the yard at ten a.m., they can make him take his meds. But they can’t make him talk, and they can’t make him talk to you.”

Meredith reminded herself to breathe. Toby was somewhere in the room, though she wasn’t sure where. Her right knee was knocking into the table leg. “I should go down there and see him in person.”

“He won’t see you,” Dev said, “and they can’t make him. You’ll go down there for nothing, Meredith. It’s a romantic idea, like in the movies. I get it. You go down there, he sees you, something clicks, he offers up all kinds of explanations and apologies. That isn’t going to happen. He’s a sick man, Meredith. He’s not the man you once knew.”

She was tired of this idea, even though she knew it to be true.

“So you’re telling me I can’t go?”

“I’m telling you you shouldn’t go,” Dev said. “Because he won’t see you. You can travel down there to hot and desolate Butner, you can plan on enduring a media circus, you can meet with Nancy Briggs and Cal Green, the warden, but they’re just going to tell you the same thing that I’m telling you. He won’t see you. He won’t talk to you.”

“I’m not going to yell at him,” Meredith said. “I’m not going to hurt him. I’m not going to go on some kind of crazed jealous-wife rampage. I just want answers.”

“You won’t get answers,” Dev said.

She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She had thought that perhaps the prison would make it difficult for her to talk to Fred. But from the sound of it, they wanted to facilitate the phone call but couldn’t-because Freddy refused. It was the very worst thing: He had stolen everybody’s money, he had lied to the SEC and single-handedly put the nation’s economy in the toilet. He had cheated on Meredith for six and a half years with a woman she considered to be their closest friend. He had lied to Meredith tens of thousands of times-fine. But what she couldn’t forgive was this, now. What she couldn’t forgive was this stonewalled silence. He owed her a conversation. He owed her the truth-as egregious as it might be. But the truth was going to stay locked up in Butner. It was going to stay locked up in the sooty black recesses of Freddy’s disturbed mind.

“Fine,” Meredith said. She slammed down the phone. She was furious. Furious! She would make a statement to the press vilifying the man. She would take down Freddy and the undisputed harlot who was Samantha Champion Deuce. (She wrote her own Post headlines: CHAMPION HOMEWRECKER, CHAMPION TWO-FACED LIAR.) Meredith would file for divorce, and three hundred million Americans would support her; they would raise her up. She would regain her position in society; she would hit the lecture circuit.

She turned around. Toby was standing there, and something about the look on his face made Meredith’s anger pop like a soap bubble.

She said, “He won’t talk to me. He refuses. And they can’t make him.”

Toby nodded slowly. Meredith expected him to take this opportunity to say, He’s a rat bastard, Meredith. A piece of shit. What further proof do you need? But instead, Toby said, “Maybe he’ll change his mind.”

Meredith smiled sadly and headed for the front door to meet Connie in the Escalade. They were going to the store. Meredith had planned on wearing her wig, but this suddenly seemed pointless. The wig was meant to protect her, but she had just suffered the ultimate blow. Nothing anyone did could affect her now; the wig had been rendered useless. Meredith left it on the stairs. When she got home, she would throw it away.

Toby was being kind about Freddy because he could afford to be. He knew, as Meredith did, that Freddy would never change his mind.

That night, before she left for her date with Dan, Connie made dinner for Meredith and Toby. It was a crabmeat pasta with sautéed zucchini in a lemon tarragon cream sauce, a stacked salad of heirloom tomatoes, Maytag blue cheese, and basil, sprinkled with toasted pine nuts and drizzled with hot bacon dressing, and homemade Parker House rolls with seasoned butter.

Unbelievable, Meredith thought. Connie had showered and dressed. She looked absolutely gorgeous, and she had made this meal.

“I feel guilty,” Meredith said. “You should have served this meal to Dan.”

“I offered,” Connie said. “But he really wanted to go out.”

Without us, Meredith thought.

“And I wanted to cook for you,” Connie said.

Because she feels sorry for me, Meredith thought. Again. But there was something almost comforting about reaching this point. Nothing left to lose, nothing left to care about, nothing left to want.

The outdoor table was set with a tablecloth and candles. There was a breeze off the ocean that held a hint of chill.

Fall was coming.

Connie wrapped herself up in a pashmina and said, “Bon appétit! I’m off for my date. I’ll be back tomorrow morning. Dan’s on the noon boat.”

“This is lovely,” Meredith said. “Thank you.”

“And there’s dessert in the fridge,” Connie said.

“Have fun,” Toby said, pushing her gently to the front door.

She left, and Meredith had the feeling that Connie was the parent, and she and Toby were teenagers on a date. It was supposed to be romantic-the candlelight, the delicious food, the ocean before them like a Broadway show. Meredith should have dressed up, but she was in the same clothes she’d put on that morning: a ratty old T-shirt from Choate that Carver had worn his senior year, and her navy-blue gym shorts. She knew it was possible that she would sleep in these clothes and wear them again the next day. She didn’t care how she looked. She didn’t even care, anymore, about her hair.

Thirty years of marriage, and he wouldn’t talk to her. So many dinners at Rinaldo’s she had sat with Freddy the way she was now sitting with Toby, and she had talked about her day, and Freddy had nodded and asked questions, and when Meredith asked him about work, he’d run his hands through his hair and check his BlackBerry as if a pithy answer would be displayed there, and then he’d say something about the stress and unpredictability of his business. Meredith had no idea that Freddy was printing out fake statements on an ancient dot-matrix printer, or that he was spending his lunch hours with Samantha Deuce at the Stanhope Hotel. Freddy had pretended to live in awe of Meredith, but what he really must have been thinking was how blind and gullible and stupid she was. She was like… his mother, Mrs. Delinn, who toiled at providing for Freddy and giving him love. He’ll pretend like he can get along without it, but he can’t. Freddy needs his love. And Meredith had been only too happy to take over the care and maintenance of Freddy Delinn. He was a rich man, but she was the one who rubbed his back and kissed his eyelids and defended him tooth and nail to those who said he was corrupt.

There had been one time in early December when Freddy had called out in the night. He had shuddered in bed, and when Meredith rolled over, she saw his eyes fly open. She touched his silvering hair and said, “What? What is it?”

He didn’t speak, though his eyes widened. Was he awake?

He said, “David.”

And Meredith thought, “David? Who is David?” Then she realized he meant his brother.

“It’s okay,” Meredith said. “I’m here.”

And he had turned to her and said, “You’re never going to leave me, Meredith, right? Promise me. No matter what?”

“No matter what,” she’d said.

Freddy’s eyes had closed then, though Meredith could see manic activity beneath his twitching lids. She had stayed awake as long as she could, watching him, thinking, David. I wonder what made him dream of David?

But now she suspected he hadn’t been thinking about David at all. He’d been thinking about money, the SEC, a looming investigation, being caught, discovered, indicted, imprisoned. He had invoked his brother’s name to throw Meredith off the trail of his real worries. He had known how to lie to her, even when he was only semiconscious.

No matter what, Meredith had promised. But she hadn’t known what kind of “what” he was talking about.

“I don’t think I can eat,” Meredith said. Toby was very patiently holding his utensils in the hover position over his plate, waiting for her.

Toby’s face darkened. “The guy is the biggest creep on earth,” he said. “He didn’t deserve you.”