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“Maybe that guilt won’t ever fully go away,” Rose said. “But Howard’s right. Oren was a kind of sociopath. I would have done anything he asked me to. He manipulated me. It happens to millions of girls across the world every day. And I’m just so grateful I got out.”
Sean reached across the table and took her hand. Rose didn’t flinch away.
“I want to avenge Natalie for what happened to her,” Rose whispered. “It could have been me.”
“We’ll find a way,” Sean said. “I promise.”
Chapter Twenty
The rest of Rose and Oren’s marriage went like this.
Immediately after Rose’s miscarriage, they tried again. And again, and again. But when Rose wasn’t pregnant by the end of spring, Oren decided it was best that they pack up and move back to Nantucket. “The fresh air will do you good,” he suggested. He didn’t want to go to the doctor to see if anything was wrong. He was convinced it was Rose’s body. He was convinced he was powerful and strong, able to impregnate anyone at any time. Rose bit her tongue from sayingNatalie never got pregnant. Maybe you’re the problem.
Oren bought them an incredible home on the bluffs of Siasconsett—just three miles from where he’d once lived with Natalie and a mile and a half from the Waldens. Rose decided she didn’t care about that. She decided to throw herself into redecorating their luxurious home. She’d never lived anywhere half as gorgeous and had never had such a dense bank account to play around with, and she ordered just about every luxury item she couldthink of—chandeliers and top-quality mattresses and ornate rugs and sofas that were both regal and terribly soft. She wanted to make a home where Oren would fall in love with her again.
But Oren seemed distracted. Did he have another woman?
Rose felt sure she would get pregnant once they were in Nantucket, and she wasn’t wrong. By autumn, she was pregnant again. Oren was overjoyed. It was practically the same scene as last year. Oren picked her up and whirled her around in a circle, then they talked for hours into the night about how excited and in love they were.
The miscarriage came earlier this time. Rose was grateful for that. At least she wasn’t already in her fourth month.
That rhythm carried on for many years. Rose got pregnant five more times after that for a total of seven pregnancies. None of them were viable, no matter what she did. She stayed in bed. She took supplements. She lost weight. She gained weight. When she finally did go to the doctor, they were stumped about why she couldn’t keep a pregnancy. They suggested she was stressed, and she insisted she’d never been happier in her life.
She was getting really good at lying to everyone, including herself.
Oren hit her exactly six times between 1995 and 2001. Three of those times, he hit her in the face, then sobbed and sobbed, telling her he loved her, telling her that he wouldn’t know what to do without her. Rose always comforted him. Rose always told him it would be all right and that it wasn’t his fault.
She knew he wanted a child so badly.
Rose lived in fear of one of his mistresses giving him what she couldn’t.
Rose was thirty-two years old when Oren announced he wanted a divorce. They were on the veranda of their Nantucket home with a roasted chicken set between them. Rose was thinner than she’d been in years, having worked diligently at Pilates and eating very little all winter. Now that it was finally spring, Oren had decided he was done “messing around in a life he didn’t even like.” Rose crumpled. She raced to her private room and locked the door behind her. She fell to the floor and sobbed and sobbed as quietly as she could. All she could think about was Natalie. Was this what had happened before Oren set fire to the house?
He didn’t set fire to the house. He didn’t kill Natalie. I’ve known him for eleven years. I would know if he murdered someone.
Wouldn’t I?
Oren was gone by the time she left the room.
Rose stayed in the Nantucket house by herself for a little more than a week before she hired a divorce lawyer and decided to figure out the next steps. The prenup dictated that she got nothing. She got nothing despite offering eleven years of emotional support, eleven years of love and tenderness. It was as though she’d been a piece of furniture in his life. He’d decided to throw her out.
“At least you don’t have children,” said a friend over the phone. “That would make everything so much more complicated.”
Rose hung up the phone immediately and decided she was done with Oren’s society.
She remembered, now, what Mrs. Walden had saidabout Oren’s class.You’ll never fit in.Rose realized she never really had.
Mrs. Walden had been right.
Not long after, Rose was waiting in her divorce lawyer's office. She knew she was about to get kicked out of Oren’s place—their place—and she was at the end of her rope. But a blond woman sat across from her, doing a crossword. She looked normal. She had a little less money than she needed, but she made it all right. Something about her felt familiar to Rose.
So Rose asked, “Are you getting divorced, too?”
The woman raised her chin and smiled. “My friend is. I’m just here to help her.”
“That’s nice of you,” Rose said. Something about the woman’s eyes electrified her. “I wish I had a friend who would do that.” She laughed nervously, then added, “I was the kind of woman who threw herself totally into the marriage. What a dummy, right?”
The woman tilted her head. “I don’t think that makes you dumb. I think it makes you romantic. Who doesn’t want to feel a little romance now and again?”
