“What about your gun?” he asks.
I step to the side, revealing the weapon on the table. “I found it buried at the house.” I speak slowly, watching David’s eyes open wider with every word. “You hid it in the same place that I got rid of the weapon in Drowned Secrets.”
“What are you talking about?”
“David, I didn’t kill Nick. Don’t you see? You must have done it.”
“No. You’re crazy.”
“I guess you took my gun because you were concerned going into Nick’s bad neighborhood and—”
“No.” His voice is louder now.
“You and Nick got into a fight and you were already conflicted about coming out. Maybe he threatened to tell me or he said he’d leave if you didn’t choose him. I don’t know. Maybe he broke up with you for not asking for a divorce fast enough.”
His lips pull in and press together. He shakes his head.
“You must have shot him, David. It’s the only explanation.”
“No.” He lunges at me and grasps my arms. “Stop it.” A vein pops from between his eyebrows. His face is red with blood and fury. “I am not crazy. I did not kill Nick. I loved him. I loved him! I did not kill Nick.”
Every word feels like a punch to the back of my head. He keeps holding my arms, screaming into my face. “I loved Nick. I loved him!” Suddenly, he releases me and grabs the gun off the table. He aims it, point blank, at my chest. “You lying bitch. You did it. You!”
The sight of the gun barrel between my breasts spurs an animalistic flight response. Before I realize it, I am running. Blood rushes to my extremities as I round the table and backtrack from David toward the balcony doors. My hand flails as I reach for the knob and throw it open.
I step onto the one-foot balcony. Wind takes my hair and twirls it around my neck, whips it in my face. For a moment, I consider letting it take me, falling backward and floating on air, far away from this mess of a life.
“You could have left us,” David shouts over the rush of the wind and traffic below. “We would have been happy.”
He flings open the other French door so it crashes against the apartment wall with a bang. The gun is in his right hand, braced by his left. He raises it at my head.
“Please, David. I didn’t know anything about you and Nick,” I scream. “You buried the gun. But I won’t tell anyone. I didn’t come here to urge you to turn yourself in. I came for the tru—”
A click interrupts my pleading. David stands in front of me in the doorway, finger on the trigger. He takes another step out onto the balcony and raises the gun to my eye level. Again, he aims and presses. Blood rushes to my head, sharp and painful as a brain freeze. I wince and hear another click, like snapped fingers only softer.
In my mind’s eye, I see myself throwing the magazine into the hole. I remember clearing the chamber and tossing the round into the dirt. I had brought an empty gun to confront David. Not a loaded weapon.
“You tried to shoot me.” A hot rage rushes through my veins, burning through my muscles and shaking my limbs. “You tried to kill me.”
David’s blinks at me, shocked that I am still breathing, that the gun in his hands is as deadly as a toy. “You’re a murderer,” he says.
Fight replaces my flight instinct. I fling myself at him, determined to rip the gun from his fingers, to tear the flesh off his body. After everything that I was willing to forgive, he tried to kill me.
There is no control. No rational voice cautioning me to go back inside, to call the police. There are only fists and flailing. Fury, as powerful as a mother’s hormonal instincts, ignites inside me, incinerating all the feelings I have or ever had for my husband. I am blind with it. I barely see David’s forearms rise to his face to block my blows or his back press against the railing as I slam my weight into his chest. I see his mouth make shapes of yelling, but I can’t make out the words. It is as though a bomb went off beside me. I hear a high-pitched whine and my own internal monologue: He cannot pin Nick’s murder on me. He will not do this to me. I would rather die. I would rather them both die, Beth says.
I shove both my fists into David’s neck. His head snaps back, then his torso. I step back and watch his upper body disappear over the side of the railing as though he were a gymnast executing a back bend. His legs rise. His feet kick out toward me, threatening my stomach. I jump back to protect my belly.
There is a scream, too high to be David’s voice, followed by a crunching sound. A car alarm. Shouts to call 9-1-1.
I lean forward from the doorway to peer down to the street below. David lies atop a parked car, below our balcony. His legs and arms are spread away from his body. His face looks up at me, forehead sunken from his skull exploding against the SUV below.
I stumble from the doorway and fall to my knees. I did that to my husband. David was right. I am a murderer.
Within minutes, the doorman is outside, announcing that the police will be coming in. I am ready for them, sitting on the couch, twisting a tissue between my hands. The tears I expect haven’t come. A cool detachment has descended over me.
The police demand that I stand up, raise my hands. I tell them that my missing gun is on the balcony. My husband, I explain, murdered his boyfriend and hid the weapon at my mother’s house. When I stumbled upon it and confronted him, he tried to shoot me and then throw me off the balcony. We fought. He fell.
They take me to the police station, where I sit on a gray metal stool beside a gray table in a windowless gray room and repeat my story a dozen times. Detective Campos and his buddies want every detail. When did David tell me about the affair? (After his arrest.) How long had he and Nick been seeing each other? (At least since Nick sent that note that the police found, maybe longer.) What was their relationship like? (Best friends turned lovers, apparently.) Did David want to be with Nick? (Yes.) Did Nick want to be with David? (I don’t know.) Was I upset about the affair? (Of course. Wouldn’t you be?)
On and on for hours, I provide monotonous responses to their questions. They take impressions of my fingerprints and pictures of my bruised arms where David had grabbed me in the bedroom. Everything is done “to rule me out.” I’m no fool. I know David’s death has made me even more of a suspect in Nick’s murder. I don’t care. My head hurts. I want to go home.
“When can I leave?” I ask.
Detective Campos brushes a hand over his thick dark hair. It’s so black that it’s nearly reflective under the bright fluorescent bulbs in the airless interrogation room. I’ve had so long to take in the details of the detective that I’ve committed his face to memory. He could be a character in my next book.
His lips press into a condescending smile. I’m frustrating him. All this questioning and my story hasn’t changed. It’s almost as if I’m telling the truth.
“Just a few more facts to nail down,” he says. “What was Nick’s note to David written on again?”
He is trying to trick me by implying that I told him already. “I don’t know. I never saw it.”
“Care to venture a guess?” He shrugs, as though the prize for the right answer isn’t a life sentence. “Legal stationary. Parchment paper.”
“I have no idea.”
“A receipt?” he asks.
The memory floods my mind as though I’ve been plunged under water. Suddenly, it’s all around me, all I can see: a small piece of paper in my palm, dog eared and crumpled like it has been read, folded, and reread many times. On the front is a bill for $150 from an Italian restaurant where David took me on an anniversary. On the back is Nick’s tight cursive: “David, I love you. I always have. I admit that now. —Yours always, Nicholas.”