Chương 5
Daniel whipped around.
“Emily.”
I looked at the hallway.
Then at him.
My wedding ring felt strangely heavy.
“Yes,” I said.
Daniel’s expression emptied.
Hale nodded to Ruiz.
Ruiz disappeared down the hall.
Daniel stared at me as if this, finally, was the betrayal.
“You have no idea what you’re doing.”
I looked back at him.
“No.”
I slipped the ring off my finger.
The skin beneath it was pale.
“But I’m starting to.”
Daniel stared at the ring in my palm as though it were a weapon I had just taken from him.
For years he had joked that I never removed it, not for showers, not for gardening, not even when I kneaded bread and dough collected beneath the band.
Now the skin underneath felt naked and tender.
He said my name once.
Not sharply this time.
Almost carefully.
I closed my fingers around the ring.
Hale watched both of us, then looked toward the hallway where Ruiz had disappeared.
“Mr. Carter, you need to stay in this room.”
Daniel did not seem to hear him.
“You’re really doing this?”
I looked at him.
“You brought officers here because you thought they would scare me into taking the blame.”
“That’s not what I thought.”
“What did you think?”
His mouth opened.
Whatever answer he had prepared died before it reached the room.
Patricia began gathering the shredded pieces of tissue in front of her.
She had torn it without noticing.
“I need some water,” she said.
I moved automatically toward the cabinet.
Then I stopped.
For fourteen years, I had been the person who moved first.
Someone mentioned coffee, and I made it.
Someone needed a charger, and I knew where it was.
Patricia wanted water, and my body had already volunteered before my mind caught up.
I hated how small that realization was and how much it hurt.
Patricia noticed.
“I can get it.”
She stood slowly.
Hale stepped aside to let her pass.
Her hand shook against the glass.
Daniel watched his mother at the sink.
“I’ll pay you back.”
Patricia kept the faucet running.
“You said that last time.”
Silence fell so completely that even Hale looked at her.
Daniel’s face changed.
“What last time?” I asked.
Patricia shut off the water.
She stared into the glass instead of drinking.
“Last winter.”
Daniel said, “Mom.”
“What happened last winter?”
Patricia turned around.
“He borrowed money.”
“How much?”
“Five thousand.”
Daniel’s shoulders tightened.
“It was a loan.”
“From her?”
“Yes.”
I looked at Patricia.
“Did he pay you back?”
She took a sip of water.
“No.”
Daniel spoke quickly.
“I paid some.”
“You paid six hundred dollars,” Patricia said.
“I was going to finish.”
“When?”
He looked at her with open irritation now.
That, more than the debt itself, made something in her face close.
“You told me Emily knew.”
My head turned toward him.
Daniel’s cheeks flushed.
Patricia looked at me.
“He said you both were having trouble because of medical bills and the roof.”
The roof had been replaced three years earlier.
Insurance had covered most of it.
We had no medical bills beyond routine copays.
I stared at Daniel.
“You used me.”
He shook his head.
“It wasn’t like that.”
“You told your mother I needed five thousand dollars.”
“I said we needed it.”
“You said it was medical.”
“I didn’t give her some detailed story.”
Patricia laughed then.
The sound was more wounded than angry.
“You said Emily’s insurance wouldn’t cover a procedure.”
Daniel went completely still.
My fingers tightened around the wedding ring.
“What procedure?”
Patricia’s eyes filled again.
“He didn’t say.”
Daniel stepped toward me.
Hale moved between us without touching him.
“I panicked,” Daniel said.
“That was months ago.”
“I’ve been panicking for months.”
“That doesn’t make it better.”
“I know.”
“No, you keep saying that because it sounds like remorse.”
His face hardened.
“You want me to beg?”
“I want one true thing without me dragging it out of you.”
“I’m telling you the truth now.”
“No.”
I shook my head.
“You’re telling the truth that survived the last lie.”
He looked away.
Ruiz returned from the hallway.
“The office door is closed.”
He looked at Hale.
“Nobody went in.”
Hale nodded.
Then he addressed Daniel.
“Do you have any weapons in the house?”
Daniel blinked.
“No.”
“Any firearms?”
“No.”
“Anything in the office that could be dangerous to an officer?”
“No.”
Hale wrote something down.
Daniel’s eyes flicked toward the hallway again.
Hale caught it.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Then keep your attention here.”
Daniel breathed through his nose.
“I want a lawyer.”
Hale nodded immediately.
“That’s your right.”
“I’m done talking.”
“Then don’t talk.”
Daniel seemed almost disappointed by how easily the conversation ended.
He sat down at the table and folded his arms.
For several minutes nobody said much.
Hale stepped outside to make calls.
Ruiz remained near the doorway.
Patricia sat again.
I found myself staring at the apples.
One had a brown crescent along its side where Daniel had dropped the grocery bag two days earlier and complained that the paper handles were useless.
That had been Sunday.
We had eaten grilled cheese that night and watched half a documentary before he fell asleep on the couch.
I had covered him with the blue blanket because the air conditioning made the room cold after ten.
It seemed obscene that a marriage could contain a moment like that forty-eight hours before police stood in the kitchen.
Patricia whispered, “I should have called you.”
I did not look at her.
“Yes.”
“I thought you’d be angry.”
“I would have been.”
“I didn’t want to make things worse.”
I almost told her she had achieved the opposite.
The sentence rose to my tongue, sharp and satisfying.
I swallowed it.
She was not innocent.
But she was not the person I had married.
“What did he tell you would happen if you didn’t give him the money?”
Patricia looked toward Daniel.
May you like
He stared at the wall.
“He said people might come to the house.”
