The man who proposed to me by the lighthouse as purple flames lapped at the cold night air is not a monster. He loves me, in his way. How could he have stayed with me for twelve years otherwise? There must be a less sinister explanation for him burying my gun at my house than trying to frame me for murder. Perhaps, panicked after shooting his boyfriend, he hid it in the one place he considered safe, somewhere he thought no one would ever look. If I confront him, he will explain that. He’ll tell me the truth.
Now that I’ve had a healthy dose of reality, I need to know everything that happened. Ignorance is never bliss. It is to walk around with a cancer in your colon, one that could be cut out safely within seven years but is instead allowed to grow, undisturbed, while you focus on other matters, unaware that it is spreading to your gut, infiltrating your bone marrow, your blood, all your vital organs until it has twisted your body into something grotesque and unsustainable. Until you’re too sick to survive.
I need to know.
*
The headache subsides during the drive home. When I hand the keys to the garage attendant, my thoughts have stopped throbbing. For the second time in two days, I feel an unnatural calm, as though somebody else—not I—will imminently accuse my husband of killing his homosexual lover.
The peace comes with heightened senses. As I enter my apartment, I feel David’s presence in the house. I drop my purse on the glass dining table and remove the gun from the zippered interior pocket. I place the weapon beside my bag. Sunlight seeps through the French doors and saturates the metal. David will see it as soon as he exits the bedroom. He won’t be able to deny that he had anything to do with Nick’s death with the evidence staring him in the face.
“Dave?” I head to the master, listening for sounds of his activity. Is he sleeping? Working? Waiting for me?
The door is open, revealing him at my desk, back to the exit. He’s hunched over his laptop, head close to the screen. I hear crying. Whatever he’s reading is engrossing and upsetting. Another letter from Nick?
He doesn’t seem to know I’m here. I slip into the room and round the bed, trying not to startle him. When I get close enough to touch his shoulder, I clear my throat. “David. Come with me into the living room. We need to talk.”
He bolts upright as though he’s heard a ghost. For a moment, I don’t recognize the man standing in front of me. Fault lines carve his cheeks from his gaping mouth. His brow bulges above narrowed eyes. This man is capable of violence.
He raises a hand as if to hit me. I backtrack without thinking, stopping only when I feel the wall behind my shoulders. The bed blocks my escape to the living room. I’m penned in the corner, a trapped rat. David’s hands wrap around my biceps.
“Did you think I wouldn’t find out?” Spittle hits my face as he screams the question. My bare heels leave the hardwood. He’s lifting me to his level so that there’s no escape, no choice but to witness the pain twisting his features. “Did you think I wouldn’t read it?”
I feel my lips part, my jaw drop, but his sheer volume silences me. My tongue fails to swell into any discernible syllable. The thick muscle hides behind my teeth, a snail cowering in its shell. His grip loosens enough for my feet to again feel the floor. “Answer me.” He whispers this time, the hiss of a kettle before the boil.
His question doesn’t make sense. What is he accusing me of? Has his guilt-riddled brain erased his memory of the murder? Has he convinced himself that I’m somehow to blame?
“I didn’t do anything.” Tears drown my words.
His blue eyes burn with an insane intensity, like the hottest part of a flame. His crime has driven him mad. In his warped mind, I’m the villain. My denial is expected. Criminals don’t confess to the executioner. They invent alibis. Plead for mercy. I should be begging. I made a grave mistake coming here.
“Why, Liza? Tell me why he had to die.” His speech is measured. I wish he would swear, call me names. This focused fury is worse than a fit of anger. If he were out of control, I could calm him down, negotiate, maybe even convince him that everything has been a misunderstanding. He is the murderer, not me. But he’s resolved. His questions are rhetorical. The gun is on the dining table.
“Please.” Sobs fold me in half. I press my hand to the wall, seeking leverage to stand.
He yanks my arm, forcing me from the corner. My knee slams against the jutting edge of the bed as he pulls me toward the oak writing desk and open laptop. The offending document lies on the screen. I’m pushed down into the desk chair and rolled forward.
“You expect me to believe this is a coincidence?” His index finger jabs at the monitor.
I recognize the structure of the paragraphs. Sentence-filled scenes followed by short bits of spaced dialogue. This is my book. David must have searched through my e-mail and found my story. He has my passwords. He knows I send myself copies. But why would he care about my novel?
The realization hits me like a gut punch. He’s read my story and convinced himself that it’s a retelling of my crime.
“It’s a story,” I plead. “It’s only a story.”
Though I catch the hand in my peripheral vision, I can’t calculate the trajectory fast enough. It lands on his laptop, flinging it across the desk and onto the floor. Metal parts rattle. The bottom panel breaks off and skitters across the hardwood with the screech of an oncoming subway car.
“Liar.” He turns my chair, wresting my attention from the ruined computer. A fist rises toward my face. He’s been building up to this. I shut my eyes. “You’re a fucking liar.”
I don’t protest. He’s right. Blurring fact and fantasy is my trade. I am a con artist. A prevaricator. I make up stories. So why does he think this one is real?
The chair careens backward, smashing into the side of the bed. “You’re going to pay for what you did to him.” Tears tracks stain his cheeks. He wipes them away with the back of his arm. “I’m going straight to the cops.”
He storms from the room. My gun is out there. He will tell police that I brought him the murder weapon, intending to admit to my crime. He may even believe it.
“I didn’t do anything,” I shout as I follow him. “Please, just wait a minute. Let’s talk about this. Why would I kill Nick?”
He stops in the hall, right before it opens up into the main space. Dining area on the left, kitchen on the right. He can get to the front door through either the kitchen or the living room. He can only get to my gun if he chooses left.
“Why?” He whirls to face me. “To keep me! You thought I’d stay closeted if he was gone.”
“That’s not true. I didn’t know you were gay. I didn’t even know Nick was gay.” I approach him and touch his arm. “Please. Think for a moment.”
He recoils from my hand as though it’s coated in Nick’s blood. “Why are you still lying? I read the book. You saw us at the restaurant. I know—”
“It was just dinner, David. Just a made-up dinner at a made-up restaurant. I never saw you and Nick.” I slip past him, stride into the dining room, and stand in front of the glass table, positioning my body to block the gun. I wasn’t expecting David to be in denial. I can’t show him the murder weapon until he is ready to accept responsibility.
He is watching my face, scowling at me rather than looking at the table.
“It was Italian.”
“Half of the restaurants in the city are Italian.”
“No!” David screams the word. “The river? The fact that he was shot? Bludgeoned? You . . . you did it. You . . . It can’t all be coincidence.”
A warm breeze brushes my back. The French doors are cracked to circulate the air in the stuffy apartment. I debate throwing them open, screaming for help. I can’t trust David to listen to reason in this state, to not hurt me.
“I knew that you were looking for Nick and that the police were searching the river,” I explain. “That was in my head while I was writing. That’s why the body ended up in there in my story.”
“No.” David shakes his head as he advances toward me. I see the doubt in his eyes, though. He wants me to convince him of my innocence as much as I’d wanted him to tell me he hadn’t meant to frame me.