His face morphed with shock as he realized what Nicole was implying.
“What are you saying? Are you thinking she had something to do with what happened to Katie? That’s impossible. She would never hurt the girls. She loves them so much. She raised Katie like she was her own mother, and of course Whitney is the most important person on the planet to her.”
“Okay,” Allison said carefully. “So she wouldn’t hurt the girls. But she would hurt you? Why do you think she did that?”
“Because she’s always held it over me that it was my fault that we had to get married. I got her drunk after my first wife’s funeral, I couldn’t control myself, I got her pregnant, and I left her no choice. She’s still so angry about it. She moved out of her parents’ house and straight into mine. She never got to go to college. She never even dated. And some-times that comes out as rage.”
He wiped his nose with the back of his hand. Jalape?o regarded him anxiously, tail thumping lightly on the floor.
“And she’s right,” Wayne continued. “It is my fault. I stole Valerie’s childhood from her. And as she got older, she realized how much she had missed, and she got angrier and angrier. It started with little things. If she thought I didn’t like the dinner, she would tip the plates on the floor. Then she started throwing the plates at me. And then just whatever was handy.”
“If you went to the shelter, why didn’t you let them help you?” Nicole asked quietly.
“If we both got up in court and each said the other one was beating us—who do you think most judges would believe? And then I wouldn’t see my girls again. And Valerie’s not always like that. Sometimes she can go for months and everything’s great, and I think she’s finally healed. But then something will happen to set her off again.”
They heard the sound of the front door opening. Nicole got to her feet, with Allison following a beat later. But it wasn’t just Valerie who walked around the corner. She had one arm around Cassidy’s stiff shoulders. And Valerie’s other hand pressed a gun against Cassidy’s ribs.
“Valerie—what are you doing with my gun?” Wayne asked.
Valerie didn’t answer. Instead, she said in a bright voice, “Wayne—look who I found trying to listen at the window outside! Isn’t this a nice surprise? Cassidy, the reporter who helped us.” Her voice tightened. “Cassidy, the reporter who is building her career on our tragedy.”
Sensing the rising tension, Jalape?o began to whine.
Wayne said, “Look, Valerie, they know.”
“They know?”
Allison had expected her to grow even angrier, but instead her shoulders slumped as if in relief. But the gun didn’t budge.
“Then they have to understand it was an accident. I just snapped. She knew how to push my buttons, and she just kept pushing and pushing them.”
“Wait—are you talking about Katie?” Wayne’s voice rose and broke. “I meant they knew that you beat me. What are you saying? Are you saying you killed Katie?”
Valerie lifted her head. “You don’t understand. All I wanted was for her to be quiet. If she had only been quiet, nothing would have happened.”
“Tell us what happened, Valerie,” Nicole said soothingly. “We want to know. We want to hear your side of the story.”
Her words tumbled out. “I followed Katie that day. I thought she was meeting a boy. When she heard me coming down the path, she said”— Valerie made her voice high and mincing—“‘What took you so long, James?’ There’s only one James we know. Our senator. A man old enough to be my father, let alone her father. So I slapped her. I slapped her and called her a fool.”
Jalape?o growled as if he could understand her, but Valerie paid him no mind, lost in the details of what had happened the month before. She had taken her arm from around Cassidy’s shoulder. But now, Allison noted with horror, the gun was pointed squarely at her. At her belly.
“But Katie told me they were in loove.” The word was loaded with sarcasm. “Love! Like she would know what that word meant! She’s seventeen! She knows nothing! I told her she was going to ruin her life. That she would turn up pregnant and have to walk around with her belly showing and her shame for everyone to see.”
Valerie’s eyes narrowed. “And then she told me that she was smarter than me. Smart enough to have taken care of it. Unlike me. And then I thought I heard someone. She was still shouting about things no one else had any business knowing about, so I told her to be quiet. But she wouldn’t. So I tried to put my hand over her mouth. Just to shush her. But she pushed me away. And the side of my hand hit her throat. And then suddenly she was on the ground making this terrible whistling noise. And her eyes—her eyes were so big. And then the whistling stopped.”