Chương 3
Flynn looked at me.
His face emptied.
“No.”
I said nothing.
“Mabel.”
He took another step.
Dr. Reed moved between us.
Flynn barely seemed to notice him.
“You knew?”
“Yes.”
His knees appeared to weaken.
He caught the back of the chair.
“How long?”
“Four weeks.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
The question was so astonishing that I almost laughed.
Instead, I looked at the white roses lying beside his shoe.
“I tried.”
His eyes filled.
“When?”
I pictured the little box in my drawer.
The oak door.
Selina’s voice on the other side.
His answer.
“You were busy.”
“Mabel, please.”
“You killed them.”
His face crumpled.
“I didn’t know.”
“That doesn’t make them less dead.”
“I swear to you, if I had known—”
I looked up at him.
There it was.
The defense he would probably repeat for the rest of his life.
If I had known.
As though the only reason not to stab his wife was the possibility that she might be carrying his children.
I reached for the call button beside my bed.
“I want a divorce.”
Flynn stared at me as if I had spoken in a language he had never heard.
“No.”
The answer came quietly.
For three years, I had mistaken that tone for calm.
Now I heard what it really was.
Authority.
“I wasn’t asking.”
“Mabel, you’re hurt.”
“Yes.”
“You’ve been through major surgery.”
“Yes.”
“You’re grieving.”
“So are you, apparently.”
His eyes flinched.
“That’s not fair.”
I looked at him until he seemed to hear himself.
Dr. Reed shifted beside the bed.
Flynn rubbed both hands over his face.
“I shouldn’t have said that.”
“No.”
“I don’t know what I’m saying.”
“That makes two of us, because I don’t know why you’re still standing here.”
“Mabel.”
“Get out.”
His mouth opened.
“Mr. Vance,” Dr. Reed said, “she has asked you to leave.”
Flynn’s gaze remained on me.
“I love you.”
I had spent years wanting those words from him without qualification.
I had wanted them when he missed our anniversary dinner because Selina called him from a hotel lobby after breaking up with someone.
I had wanted them when his mother seated Selina beside him at a charity luncheon and told me not to be insecure.
I had wanted them when he stopped reaching for me in his sleep.
Now they made me tired.
“Get out.”
He left the roses on the floor.
A nurse collected them twenty minutes later and asked whether I wanted them thrown away.
“Give them to somebody downstairs.”
She smiled faintly.
“There’s a maternity unit downstairs.”
I closed my eyes.
“Anywhere else.”
Her smile disappeared.
“Of course.”
By evening, Detective Ruiz returned with news that made the room feel colder.
Selina had given a formal statement.
According to her, I had confronted her outside a café in Lincoln Park shortly after noon, accused her of sleeping with Flynn, grabbed her arm, and shoved her against a metal railing.
She claimed she had driven directly to my house afterward because she was afraid I would tell Flynn a distorted version first.
“She says you followed her there from another location,” Ruiz said.
“I didn’t leave the house.”
“Can anyone confirm that?”
“Mrs. Alvarez was here.”
“She went grocery shopping between eleven fifteen and twelve forty.”
I turned my head toward her.
Ruiz had already checked.
That was why she was asking.
“What about the house security system?”
“We’re working on it.”
“There are cameras outside.”
“There are.”
“Then you know I didn’t leave.”
“The front camera stopped recording at eleven twenty-three.”
My pulse ticked faster on the monitor.
“The garage?”
“Same system.”
“It stopped too?”
“Yes.”
“That doesn’t happen.”
Ruiz took a sip of coffee and made a face at it.
“Usually when someone tells me something never happens, I eventually learn that it happened.”
“Our system sends alerts if it loses power.”
“Did you get one?”
“No.”
“Did your husband?”
“I don’t know.”
She set the cup on the windowsill.
“Do you know who has administrator access?”
“Flynn and me.”
“Anyone else?”
“Our security company.”
“Passwords?”
“Flynn changed them after a burglary scare last winter.”
She looked at me.
“Did he give you the new one?”
I didn’t answer immediately.
The silence was answer enough.
Ruiz picked up her cup again.
“Ms. Cole has photographs of bruising on her upper arm.”
“There wasn’t bruising when she came into my house.”
“That matters.”
“She had a scratch.”
“I know.”
“Mrs. Alvarez saw it.”
“She did.”
“Then why are you telling me about bruises?”
“Because the pictures were taken about two hours after you were admitted.”
I stared at her.
“That’s convenient.”
“It might be.”
Ruiz did not sound impressed by convenience.
“She also has a café receipt with a timestamp from twelve oh-seven.”
“I don’t care where she was.”
“It establishes where she was.”
“It doesn’t establish where I was.”
“Exactly.”
That was the first moment I began to understand how dangerous Selina’s accusation could become even though I was the one lying in a hospital bed with two stab wounds.
Flynn’s violence was obvious.
The motive behind it was not.
If Selina could prove I had attacked her, Flynn’s attorneys could shape the stabbing into a panicked intervention rather than what it had been.
Ruiz seemed to read something on my face.
“This is not me telling you I believe her.”
“Then what are you telling me?”
“I’m telling you evidence doesn’t care which person I like.”
“I thought cops were supposed to say facts.”
“I’m too old to pretend facts arrive without people attached to them.”
She stood.
“Rest.”
“Detective.”
She paused.
“Check my phone.”
“We will.”
“No, I mean the health app.”
Her expression changed slightly.
“I track my steps.”
“How much?”
“Everything.”
She pulled out a notebook.
“My phone was with me all morning.”
“You’re certain?”
“I was listening to a podcast while I made lunch.”
“What kind of phone?”
I told her.
She wrote it down.
May you like
Then I remembered something else.
“My watch.”
