Chương 3
I would not run back to Michael screaming accusations.
I would not warn him.
I would not give him another chance to decide how I died.
For as long as he believed the mountain had buried me, Michael Carter would live inside the lie he had created.
And I would use every minute of it.
The first thing Detective Brooks asked me the next morning was whether Michael had access to my personal email.
“He had access to everything,” I said.
Brooks sat beside the window with her hated coffee balanced on one knee and a legal pad resting against the other.
“That answer usually means more than people realize.”
“We were married.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
I looked toward Noah’s empty bassinet, though I knew he was still in the NICU two floors away.
“Yes.”
“Passwords?”
“Some.”
“Banking?”
“Our joint accounts, obviously.”
“Your separate accounts?”
“I don’t think so.”
Brooks raised one eyebrow.
I corrected myself.
“I don’t know.”
That admission embarrassed me more than it should have.
I had spent twelve years building a medical software company from a rented office above a dentist in Fort Collins, survived lawsuits, investor revolts, product failures, and one spectacularly stupid expansion into Europe, yet I could not say with certainty whether my husband knew the password to my private checking account.
Marriage had made certain invasions look like convenience.
Michael knew the code to my phone because he sometimes changed the music while I drove.
He knew the password to my laptop because he had once printed boarding passes from it.
He knew the answers to security questions because most of them were facts from my life.
Brooks tapped her pen against the legal pad.
“Who controls the life insurance policy?”
“The policy is on me.”
“I understand.”
“Michael is the beneficiary.”
“Primary beneficiary?”
“Yes.”
“Any secondary?”
“My sister, Rebecca.”
“Where is she?”
“Seattle.”
“Does she know?”
Brooks shook her head.
“Not from us.”
I closed my eyes.
Rebecca and I had not spoken in seven months.
Our last conversation had ended with her calling Michael a parasite and me calling her jealous.
At the time, I had believed both statements were cruel.
Only one of them had been wrong.
“Michael may already have told her I’m dead.”
“That’s possible.”
“She’ll come.”
“Probably.”
“And then what?”
Brooks folded one corner of the coffee sleeve back and forth.
“Then your husband has more people watching him than he realizes.”
I opened my eyes.
“You’re using my funeral.”
“If there is a funeral.”
“There will be.”
“You sound sure.”
“Michael likes ceremonies where people watch him.”
Brooks studied me for a moment.
“That sounds personal.”
“It is personal.”
She nodded and let the silence sit.
A nurse entered with a blood pressure cuff, apologized for interrupting, and began wrapping it around my arm.
Brooks waited.
The machine hummed.
The nurse frowned at the number.
“Try not to get her worked up.”
Brooks glanced at me.
“I’ll endeavor to be less charming.”
The nurse did not laugh.
I did.
It hurt my incision, and I pressed a pillow against my stomach.
The nurse gave Brooks a pointed look before leaving.
“See?” Brooks said.
“Already causing trouble.”
The tiny laugh changed something in the room.
Not much.
Enough.
Brooks leaned forward.
“We recovered your phone.”
My hand tightened around the pillow.
“From the trail?”
“From your vehicle.”
“I had it with me.”
“You’re certain?”
“Yes.”
I remembered checking the time less than ten minutes before Michael pushed me.
I remembered the blue case in my glove.
I remembered taking a photograph of the snow trapped in the branches because it looked like powdered sugar.
“Then somebody moved it.”
Brooks did not write that down.
She already knew.
“Your phone was found powered off in the center console.”
“Michael.”
“Maybe.”
“It was Michael.”
“Claire.”
“I know.”
My irritation rose instantly.
“You need evidence.”
“Yes.”
“I need you to stop saying that like I don’t understand English.”
Her mouth tightened.
“Fair enough.”
She slid the legal pad onto the small table.
“Your statement is evidence.”
That stopped me.
“It matters.”
“Then why do you keep acting like it doesn’t?”
“Because testimony is tested.”
Brooks’s voice stayed level.
“His will be tested too.”
I looked down at my hands.
The swelling had begun to fade, leaving pale grooves where my wedding ring used to sit.
“What is he saying?”
“That you became upset during the hike.”
“About what?”
“He claims you accused him of having an affair.”
My head came up.
Brooks watched me carefully.
“Did you?”
“No.”
“Did you suspect one?”
“No.”
That answer came too quickly.
Ashley’s perfume on Michael’s jacket three weeks earlier flashed through my mind.
A hotel receipt in Denver on a night he told me he had been working late.
The way Ashley stopped talking when I walked into Michael’s office at the company Christmas party.
I had noticed all of it.
I had simply chosen explanations that allowed me to keep sleeping beside him.
Brooks saw something change in my face.
“What?”
“I didn’t accuse him.”
“That’s not the same as not suspecting.”
“I thought maybe.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know.”
“Claire.”
“Months.”
The word tasted humiliating.
“Why didn’t you confront him?”
“Because I was pregnant.”
Brooks waited.
“That isn’t the whole answer.”
“No.”
I stared at the television mounted on the wall.
A morning news program played silently beneath captions about a highway closure.
“I didn’t want to know.”
Brooks nodded once.
That bothered me more than sympathy would have.
She stood and crossed to the door.
“I’ll be back this afternoon.”
“Where are you going?”
“To find out who turned off your phone.”
After she left, I spent twenty minutes staring at the plastic bag containing my wedding ring.
Then I asked Emily to put it in the bottom drawer.
I could not throw it away.
I could not look at it either.
May you like
By noon, Noah had improved enough that the respiratory therapist lowered his oxygen support.
The neonatologist explained numbers to me that I pretended to understand.
