I add, after a considered pause, “She’s suing us.”
Paul grunts. He shakes his head and kicks at the gravel. “That fucking bitch.”
At least he’s not pretending anymore.
After a long silence, he says, “I didn’t ask you to do what you did.”
“I know, Paul.”
“If anything, what I did was a cry for help, right?”
Murdering in cold blood is not a cry for help; it’s a sign of psychosis. But I don’t say this. “We’re all in the grip of some emotion or another at any given time,” I tell him. “You were jealous.”
“I wasn’t jealous. I was sickened.” Paul’s upper lip tugs into a snarl as he takes another step toward me. “Sickened by everything. Sickened by what we’d become. Those parties and those shallow people. The pursuit of . . . nothing.”
I stand unmoving, trying not to antagonize. His anger gradually abates, and he gives me a wistful look. “Remember what we were like? When we were young? When we met?”
“I do.”
“We were a good team, Em.”
“I know.”
His bloodshot eyes linger on me. Then he spreads his arms. He wants a hug.
I go to him, trying not to give away how terrified I am. It’s just instinct, to keep him calm, make him think everything is okay. But as he takes me in his arms, my gaze falls on a workbench in the garage. The tools hanging on the pegboard. The empty place for the hammer.
Paul smells like BO and fresh air, mixed. I feel his breath in my hair. “I was in the woods, Em. I’ve been out there, this whole time. Three weeks, right?”
“Yeah.” The word is muffled against his neck.
He rubs my back absently. “Helicopters, dogs — I evaded it all. I found a hunting camp and broke in, had some food for a while. I had no idea where I was. And then I found a logging trail that led toward the lake. I knew my way back from there. But I didn’t want to. I wasn’t ready yet. So I stayed right around here. Right on the lake. I raided the neighbors’ place.” Paul laughs, and I can feel it vibrate through his protruding ribs. “I knew they were gone and their security’s shit. But there’s other places; they don’t even lock up. So I just stayed here and there, moving around by night. Took a shower once or twice, stole some clothes. I kept going until I figured the cops gave up looking for me. They had to wind it down sometime, right? They had to figure I was more likely dead.”
Paul pulls away from me. Out of the hug, he looks in my eyes. “The detective — Starzyk — did he live?”
I nod. “He had a surgery. Left the hospital about a week later. He doesn’t remember much.”
“Seems to be catching,” Paul says distractedly. He looks at the lake house. “I watched the house. I watched everybody coming and going. Lots of cops. But they’ve been gone for three days. Just the ones that come in and check on you.”
He’s right.
“So what are you going to do?” I ask.
He gets a thoughtful look. It’s almost as if he’s considering it for the first time, but of course, that’s not true. He’s had weeks to think about it. “What I did is something that happens,” he says. “At any given moment, there are millions of people feeling murderous impulses. We resist because we’re scared. But I just stopped being scared.”
He’s talking about pleading insanity? A fit of passion, being out of his mind?
“And then you protected me. I didn’t even plan for that. You just did it. Because we were a team. We’re still a team, Em.”
“That sounds a little bit like a threat.”
He makes a face, like I’m being silly. “No, it’s not a threat. I mean you protected us then, our family, and you can do it again, now. We can get it all back. We can be a family.”
I search his eyes. If I’m totally honest, yes, there’s some part of me that wants to believe we can make this better. But I realize that’s just attachment. I’ve spent almost half my life with this man. The idea that it was all a lie, well — that’s hard to accept.
“If we’re a team,” I say, “then you need to admit what you did.”
“Admit what? What are you talking about?”
“I’m just saying, admit it to me. If we’re going to get through this, we need complete honesty, from this point forward. Nobody needs to know about Madison and Hunter, because no one saw it, or can prove anything anyway. And without new evidence, nothing can be done about David Bishop.”
Paul’s face is getting hard to read in the gathering dusk, features blending together. Does he think I’m trying to trap him?
“As far as anyone knows,” he says, “Michael could have killed the Tremont girl and her hippie boyfriend. And as far as David Bishop goes, you’re the only one who knows anything about that, wouldn’t you say?”
It’s true. Other than Paul, I’m the one with the most information. I’ve been desperate to stuff it back into the closet ever since Michael showed up, but it didn’t work. It couldn’t work.
His eyes find me. Just points of light in the semidarkness. “I wanted to get my family back, Em. That’s why I did what I did.”
I let the statement hang there a moment. “No,” I say next. “I need honesty, Paul. Or you get nothing from me.” I’m trembling from the inside out, but this is it. This is the moment. I look into Paul’s face — he’s feigning ignorance — and let him have it. “You cheated on me. On all of us. But she didn’t want you. She wanted him. So, you killed him.”
He starts shaking his head emphatically. “She was a mistake. All I ever wanted was you, Em. You and only you.”
“You’re not going to admit it? That you at least thought about it?”
“Fine. In the haze of our shitty lives back then, I thought I did. I thought I wanted her.”
“You wanted her so bad you killed her husband. It’s not because you were sickened. You were enraged with jealousy. Admit it.”
He stares at me. “Yes, Emily. I killed him because I was fucking jealous.”
There.
He said it.
He scowls at me. “This is what you want? This is what will bring us back together?”
“Well, we ought to try it,” I say. “We ought to try the truth.”
“That goes both ways.”
“Okay. Sure. What have you got?”
“You were a shitty mother. A neglectful mother. Always off working. Always hosting parties. Our daughter just wanted a mother.”
My voice goes up. “I know our daughter blames me for her problems. That she feels we loved Sean more than her. He was adventurous and outgoing; she was introverted and shy and resented everything we tried to get her into. I know she was insecure. I know that she felt unsafe. Because of how you and I were, how we fought. But, Jesus Christ, Paul. You tried to burn her. Your own daughter,” I say. “Jesus, Paul. And Madison and Hunter — what did they do? They were just in your way. Just like David had been in your way. Because something is missing in you. I thought maybe it was a crime of passion, something that just overcame you. Once. But it’s not. You’re sick, Paul. You need help.”