I’ve never opened up like this, never said it all out loud before, and I hold my knees to my chest and tell myself that what happens next is out of my control. I can’t make Love love me. But I did the right thing. I told her what she wanted to know. I stopped lying.

The wait is eternal, and her eyes are fixed on a stain on the floor. I think of all the people who stayed in this room before and wonder if any of them have been like me.

And then, finally, she looks up.

“Okay,” she says. “I’m gonna tell you about Roosevelt.”

Roosevelt was a puppy they had when they were babies. Forty named him. She didn’t know why then, doesn’t know why now. “He’s weird that way,” she says, as if he’s still alive. “I mean, what six-year-old calls a puppy Roosevelt? And also, it’s not like he was precocious and into politics or whatever. He just liked the word Roosevelt.”

“It’s a good name,” I say.

She ignores me. “Anyway,” she says. “Roosevelt disappeared. And we looked everywhere and put up signs and all that. But then Forty woke me up in the middle of the night and he took me outside and showed me that Roosevelt wasn’t missing. He was dead.”

“Oh dear.”

She looks at me. She holds my hands. Now she is the one who’s not blinking, staring at me directly. “He tied Roosevelt to the wall,” she says. “He was mad at him because he kept wanting to sleep in my room instead of Forty’s. So he punished him. He starved him and muzzled him.”

“Love,” I say. I’ve never harmed an animal; I can’t imagine being that sort of monster. “Jesus Christ.”

She takes her hands away. “You have no idea what it is to be twinned with someone who does things like that.”

Her voice quavers when she says things like that and Roosevelt is not alone; there are other crimes, I’m sure. “Love,” I say. “I’m so sorry.”

“So it’s like this,” she says. “I love that fucking sicko. I know he is demented and I know he tied a dog to a wall but you know what? I didn’t tell anyone. And you know what else? Fuck that dog for ignoring him. Fuck that Monica for bailing on him for that loser friend of yours and fuck all the girls who act like there’s something defective about him, who don’t even pretend they want his money. Fuck my parents for not even pretending to think he’s talented and fuck Milo for being better at everything. Fuck everyone who’s, like, who was born first, you or Milo and fuck people who are never surprised when I’m like, I was born first because they’re like, of course you were, you seem so together. Fuck everyone, Joe. I mean, I will defend my fucked-up brother all day long because life isn’t fair. It isn’t. Roosevelt cried when Forty tried to hold him and Forty was the one who wanted Roosevelt in the first place. Who makes a world like that? Where you can’t hate anyone because ultimately everyone has some god-awful fucking thing they put up with and you have no way of knowing what it is exactly. I mean he’s got to be Forty but I’ve got to be his fucking sister. Who has it worse?” She shakes her head. “Tell me. Who has the right to hate anyone?”

Love is breathing heavily. It’s clear she’s never talked about this to anyone; you know when someone is opening up a box so private that there isn’t a key.

She looks at me. “All I know is how to love,” she says. “So I can deal with you.”

“Ouch.”

She takes my hand. “That’s a compliment,” she assures me. “This is why I hate it when people keep getting married like it’s so simple. It’s not. Finding someone who gets you is special.”

I kiss the back of her hand. “What kind of dog was it?”

“Golden,” she says. “Roosevelt was a golden.”

“I love you, Love.”

“I love you,” she says.

I flinch when a car brakes outside, the screech. I’m still nervous, still can’t quite believe it.

She smiles. “Look, Joe, I wouldn’t have come here if I didn’t know that it might be bad.”

“Bad,” I repeat.

She squeezes my hand. “This is it for me. In this messed-up way, I feel like this will work. You did all those awful things, but you also fell in love with a person who can forgive you.”

“I don’t know what to say,” I say, and I think of six-year-old Love staring at that dead puppy.

“Joe,” she says, and my name belongs to her now. There’s more. She says she knew when Trey died that if she ever found anyone again, it would be forever and she looks at the floor and then she looks at me. “I’m pregnant.”

Did I hear that right? “Pregnant?”

Yes, I heard that right. “Pregnant!”

Now there is permanence between us and it means her forgiveness is whole. True. If she were afraid of me on any level, she would have run out of this room and never told me about the baby, our baby.

And then it hits me. We’re gonna have a baby! We’re laughing and I’m kissing her belly and she’s telling me about taking the test—it’s early—and she had to come tell me in person and she’s glad she did.

“Me too,” I say. This baby is great equalizing force between us, the definition of the future. No matter what I did, a part of me is inside of Love. It’s the most beautiful thing in the world and Love and I are fixed, locked together, our genes intertwining, a little human, part me, part her, wholly triumphant. Watching Love doze off, I feel love like I have never have before.

“Sweet dreams,” I say, and I kiss the place between Love’s slumbering breasts, the hardness above her heart.

I go into the bathroom and turn on the shower and the cramped stall feels larger to me somehow. The whole world feels bigger now that someone else knows everything, someone who loves me. I understand why Peach Salinger was in such a dark place. Beck knew her. She did not love her.

I turn off the shower and tear the curtain aside, but I when I try the door, it is stuck. I didn’t lock it and it locks from the inside and I don’t understand. I push the door but it won’t budge. Alarm bells go off and I try the knob again but the door is clearly blocked from the outside. I panic. I bang on the door. I call out to Love and hurl my body against the door. No answer. She trapped me in here and she probably invented Roosevelt and our baby and all that empathy just so she could safely get away from me. It worked.

49

I am a monster now. I live in the white, tacky bathroom and I am a monkey on steroids. I know I can’t get out but still I pound into the door. I use my body and I am bruised. I am blue. I am black. I am swollen. When my ribs won’t stop stinging I use my feet. I kick. I have broken the shower stall and I have torn the lid off the toilet. I have screamed help and it’s a shitty motel and someone must hear me. The people below, if there are people below, they don’t care. I run the shower and the water and when it’s cold it stings my wounds and when it’s hot it scalds me. There is no love for me in Little Compton and I knew this going in and that’s the thought that drives me to my feet, which are streaked with blood. I slam into the door. Bad Joe. Gently, Joseph, Mr. Mooney used to caution me when I was a boy, when there was hope. Was there ever hope?

I don’t know. Bam goes my torso and that time I think an organ moved. I will not use the shattered glass from that shitty mirror to kill myself. I want to go out with a BANG and I drive my other side into the door. The door is my enemy, stronger, more powerful, always ready for me, always locked, always hard, always NO. I breathe. I do cry.

There is no baby. I know that now. The Corinthians tell you that love is patient and kind, but Love is also smart. She is older, wiser. She was married twice. She knows things. She knows men. She knew how to win my trust. And now she is with the police.