"Where's Lincoln?" I ask Marguerite who is washing an apple in the sink.
She looks refreshed after the shower and the nap, and she has her own novel and non-alcoholic cocktail set up to drink on the kitchen table.
"He's upstairs, working. Why?”
"I just need to talk to him."
Our eyes meet and hold there for a moment. I consider how much her life would change if she found out.
My brother has always been so faithful and honest, but the truth is that no one ever knows what's really going on in people's heads, lives, and marriage.
I only see them as a couple. I see them only from the outside. But ever since Marguerite got pregnant, she and I have gotten close. Much closer than we ever were before and now I consider her my friend, a close friend at that, and I cannot stand my brother doing this to her.
I hop upstairs, skipping three steps at a time and find him in their bedroom sitting on the bed with a laptop across his legs. He's dressed in a button down shirt and boxer shorts fresh from a shower. A half drunk glass of bourbon sits on the end table next to him.
"Hey, I was going to ask you about this one stock," he starts to say as soon as I enter the room.
"Where were you last night?" I ask.
"What are you talking about?"
"Where were you last night?” I repeat the question, closing the door behind me.
"You mean, after Mom came?"
I nod.
"Here. I was here all night."
"Yeah, I don't think so," I say, looking at him.
I don't need proof, I can just look at him and tell that he's full of shit. "What if I told you, you were at The Redemption?"
"What's The Redemption?" he asks without missing a beat.
No hesitation, no pause.
"It's a club for singles and couples who like to meet other singles and couples. You know what it is."
"No, I have no idea," he says with a shrug.
Suddenly, my confidence begins to waiver.
What if I'm wrong?
Could he actually be telling me the truth?
"Why would I go to a club like that?" he asks. "I'm married, I'm having a baby. Besides, I hardly have any time for work with all the doctors’ appointments and everything else that I have going on."
If he's lying to me, he's very good at it and I can tell why Marguerite would be so frustrated with him.
The earnestness, I practically want to slap it off his face, but I can't.
"So you were here all last night? You never left?"
He shakes his head no and shrugs.
"You wouldn't lie to me, would you?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about. Why would I lie to you about this?"
"You can tell me the truth. I'm not going to tell Marguerite," I say.
Now, it’s my turn to lie.
"I am telling you the truth. I was here, sleeping all night. You can ask her yourself."
"What if I told you that there's a camera on the front door and you left in the middle of the night and you came back a few hours later? What if I told you that something like this exists and that's why I know that you're lying?"
He opens his mouth to say something else but then closes it. He swallows hard.
"You're not going to tell her, are you?" he snaps and suddenly the facade of everything that he has been convincing me of falls away.
My mouth drops open and I wait for him to continue.
"You better not fucking tell her, okay? She's pregnant. We're going through a lot. I needed to blow off some steam, so I went to The Redemption, big fucking deal. You're the one who told me about it."
"I'm single," I say.
"There are people there who are married. It's no big deal."
I shake my head, unwilling to believe that he actually believes the shit that's coming out of his mouth.
"Those people are in relationships where both of them agree to certain rules. You and Marguerite have no agreement."
As I open my mouth to say something else, Lincoln raises his hand and punches me in the mouth.
30
Dante
"What the hell was that?" I stare at him, my face throbbing.
"Don't talk to me about my wife!” he yells.
“So, you were there?" I ask. "You admit it?"
"Get the hell out of here. This has nothing to do with you."
He takes another step forward to get closer, and this time I make a fist and punch him. My fist collides with his torso.
I suddenly have a flashback to being a kid again and all the time that he tortured me, all of those times that he hurt me and pinned me down and forced me to get into fist fights with him.
I really hated him for a lot of my life, and now I realize that that pent-up anger in the pit of my stomach is still there.
We tussle and fight for a little while. He punches me in the stomach, I clock him in the eye.
I somehow get the better of him, pin him down, and hit him twice in the face.
His nose explodes with blood and I let up.
Lincoln mumbles something, and I walk to the bathroom and look at my bloody face in the mirror.
There's blood dripping out of my nose, and my knuckles have also been scratched.
This is not exactly something that either of us will be able to hide from the women downstairs.
"How is this any of your business?" Lincoln asks. "What I do in my personal life."
"I stood up for you to Mom. She's the one that's always been against your relationship, and I thought you got a raw deal. I thought that you deserve more. You know that I talked to Marguerite about the trust fund? You know that I told her to actually try to get that changed? There's no way that's going to happen if the judge finds out that you went to The Redemption."
"And how the hell is a judge going to find out?"
"Investigators," I say, enunciating every syllable. “Mom's lawyers are going to hire investigators, and they're going to look into every part of your life to make sure that your relationship is actually as great as you all say it is. But of course that's not going to happen. Of course they're going to find out about going to that club. You probably used your own credit card, didn't you?"
"I have another credit card that Marguerite knows nothing about."
"Yeah, but it's connected to your name and your credit report, and it would be as simple as that, and you know it."
He stands at the other Jack and Jill bathroom sink next to me looking at his beat up face.
"You didn't have to go so hard at me," he says.
I shake my head. "You're the one that started it. I did not come here to throw any punches."
"But you did." He turns toward me, pointing his finger in my face. "You think there's something wrong with me going to that club even though you've been there for who knows how long."
"And what, this was your first time?" I ask, tilting my head, ready to not believe him.
"I've only been there a couple of times in the last few months ever since you told me about it. I just couldn't stop thinking about it. It sounded really fun, something I haven't had in who knows how long."