“It seems pertinent. A spot of Nick’s blood on a piece of paper shouldn’t be enough to call out the cavalry.”
“Who said it was a spot?”
“You did. Didn’t you?”
His eyes narrow. “What do you think it said?”
His questions are squeezing my brain. I stand up, finally angry. “How the hell would I know, David? You’re ranting about a note that has made the police think you murdered your best friend. Naturally, I want to know what the note said.”
The fight that had flashed across David’s face vanishes. He moves back to the couch and slumps onto the cushion. He rubs his eyes with the heel of his hands, pressing them into his eye sockets to a point that seems painful. “Nick wrote that he was in love with me. He said he’d been in love with me for years.”
David confesses like a lawyer. He’s not admitting any guilt. Nick wanted him. He’s not volunteering whether or not he reciprocated those feelings. But I know already. David at least explored a romantic relationship. He’d kissed Nick. And my heart says that if David kissed another man, the experimentation didn’t stop there.
“Did you love him too?”
David has to say it. Otherwise, I might stay. I’ll invent a melodramatic fiction in which a lovesick Nick kissed David and then, rejected, shot himself before diving into the East River with his last breath. I’ll keep pretending that the man whom I fell for so many years ago wants a life with me.
Lying to myself is in my nature. When my father left, I convinced myself that he was coming back even though everyone kept telling me that he was gone for good. Chris. My mother. My grandparents. When he didn’t return after a year, I became depressed. I don’t remember all the details. I do remember talking to doctors.
David looks at me miserably. “He was my best friend.”
“I mean, did you love him like he loved you? Did you want to be with him?”
David’s mouth contorts like a stroke victim. I fear a blood vessel in his head will burst or that his heart will give out right here. “Yes.” The word slips out, so quiet that it could be the hiss of wind beyond the window.
I close my eyes, prepared to be battered by waves of pain. Instead, a strange warmth radiates from my belly to my extremities. As it tingles to the edges of my fingertips, an extreme calm washes over me. It’s as though my soul has left my body and is watching me, unfeeling, from a distance. I see myself rise from the couch, hear myself speak. “I need to be alone for a while. I’m going to the house.”
I watch as I pick through my disheveled closet, selecting jean shorts off the floor and tank tops from a shelf, choosing bras and underwear from disturbed drawers. I grab sunscreen. My laptop. Everything is stuffed into a canvas shoulder bag unearthed by the police search.
As I walk through the living room, David calls my name. He attempts a smile, but the look is so pained, it resembles a grimace. “I want you to know that this—our life—hasn’t been playacting. I wanted, so much, to give you a baby. I love you too.” His voice breaks. “Just, differently.”
The acknowledgement that my husband has never felt for me like I have for him should be a corkscrew twisted in my heart. Yet I don’t feel anything. It’s as though the man sharing this admission is a stranger. I nod at him and walk through the foyer. My only vague discomfort is the slap of the bag against my butt.
It’s not until the door slams behind me that I slide back into my body with a long slow breath. It’s safe to come back now, I suppose. Hope is gone. My marriage is over. There will not be kids. School pickups. Family vacations. David will go to prison for Nick’s murder, or he won’t. It doesn’t matter. Either way, he won’t be with me.
As I walk down the hallway, a beep sounds inside my purse. I fish inside for the handset and see that I have a new message from an unknown number. Probably it’s the police wanting to know about my role in this: How long has David had access to my gun? Did I realize it was missing?
I click the icon and listen to the voice mail. “Hi, Ms. Cole.” The voice is young. Male. Uncertain. He doesn’t sound like a cop. “My coworker Frank at Le Bonhomme said I should give you a call. I was there the night that Nick came in with his new friend. The one in the photo.”
The bartender leaves a number. I wait until I am in the garage, in the seclusion of the driver’s seat, to call him back. Though I’m resigned to hearing about Nick and David on a date, I can’t promise that the details won’t set off the waterworks again.
The kid answers on the third ring. From the clinking glasses and background chatter, I can tell that he’s probably in the bar right now.
“Hi, this is Liza. I’m returning your call about my missing—” I choke on the word “friend.” “About Nick.”
“Right. Yeah. Hold on.” His voice is muffled as he shouts something to another patron. When he returns to the line, the background noise is more of a murmur. “Well, like I told police, Nick was a regular. He lived in the area. He had started coming with the new guy in July, a few weeks before the papers said Nick disappeared. Usually they came during the week, right around when we’d open. That Saturday was the first time I’d seen them together on a weekend.”
The revelation doesn’t have any impact. I am dead inside. “Okay, thanks.”
“And you wanted to know about the woman, yeah?”
I’d forgotten. “Yes. Right.” My muscles tighten even though I know that she can’t have been me. Dr. Frankel assured me that I wouldn’t forget anything life-changing. Learning that my husband had a gay lover would certainly register on the earth-shattering meter.
“I’d never seen her before,” the bartender says. “I remember her being really striking though. She was tall, maybe in her thirties.”
I stare at the concrete wall beyond the windshield and flip through my mental database of Nick’s dates. They were all striking and tall, at least compared to him. Most of the women were probably in their twenties rather than in their thirties. But Botox and alcohol can blur the difference.
“Anything else you can tell me about her?”
“Yeah. She had red hair. Not that brick color like everyone is dyeing it now, more like reddish orange. Ginger, I guess. Natural like.”
I exhale, a long drawn-out whoosh like the breathing exercise at the end of a tough gym class. Though I didn’t believe I was the woman in the bar, it feels good to have confirmation. In no world would I ever be described as a natural redhead.
“And freckles. Lots of them. Cheeks. Forehead. Everywhere.”
My relief vanishes. Natural redheaded women with freckles are rarities, like white peacocks or black swans. I’m sure that I know the only one in the world who would be furious at seeing Nick and David together, who would want to break up their relationship at any cost.
I turn the key in the ignition. Chris is my best friend. She’s always taken care of me. She’s always said that she’d do anything for me.
I never thought that meant murder.
Chapter 17
Tyler is not happy to see me. He opens his apartment door with a tight-lipped smile appropriate for a funeral and doesn’t welcome me in, despite the baby carriage at my side. “Beth, you’re here. Is everything okay?”
I dab at my dry eyes. “Jake was home when I got there. He’s in a rage about the police coming to the house this morning. I’m sorry. I needed to get out. I told him I was taking Vicky for a walk, but it’s too hot to stay outside for long, and I’m afraid to go back to our apartment . . .”
I trail off and stare up at him. His lips are parted. The invitation is right there on the tip of his tongue. I only need to coax it out.
“I am trying to come up with an excuse to go to my mother’s, but she’s still at work, and she’s not answering her phone.” Again, I pretend to fight tears.