“He called me. What did you think, that he would keep it a secret? From me?” She laughs, and it is a harsh sound.
“Don’t think about going after my brother as a suspect,” she says, and it is a warning—a command, not a plea. “You won’t find anything to hold against him except that damn ticket. So my brother is a pothead. You’ll look like a fool in court.” The unspoken phrase was, even more than you do now.
“I’m tired of going over and over the same stuff,” she says. “You keep hounding me and asking me the same questions.”
“Actually, Claire Fanning is a new topic,” I say, and she turns on me fiercely.
“I told you, I didn’t know about this so-called fiancée. And what would I have done if I’d found out? While John was still alive? Why kill him, ha-ha. Seriously, I would have been pissed. Or as we say back home, really riled.” She exaggerates her Tennessee twang. Reely rawled. “And after I got over being angry? Then . . . then . . . we would have had a long talk. I know that makes me sound pathetic. But it’s really no different from finding out about the other wives, about Deborah and Helen. My husband’s other women. So what if there was one more?”
I catch movement at the entrance to the butterfly garden. Thomas is here. He comes forward quickly. He is frowning. I see what looks like genuine concern on his face as he sees his sister.
“What’s going on here. What have you done?” he hisses at me as he gets closer. I stand up, and move away from the bench. He takes my place, puts an arm around MJ. She doesn’t shrug it off so much as repel it with the same force that is sending me away.
I quietly make my exit. Two down, one to go.
47
Deborah
TODAY IS MY BIRTHDAY. I’M fifty-five. I must say, I don’t feel it. I don’t feel middle-aged. If I had to choose my age based on how I felt, I would say thirty-five, no older. Still alert. Still physically nimble. And certainly my desire for physical intimacy hasn’t gone away with age the way I would have expected. This is something that John and I talked about, oddly enough, just a couple days before he went missing. We always chatted in the early mornings when he came home, showered, and grabbed some breakfast. I insisted we sit down together, to have coffee at least. “Don’t you miss sex?” he’d asked. We never lost the ability to communicate easily about what others might consider difficult subjects. Well, of course I miss it, I told him. Of course. And then he reached out his hand and tried to touch—no, caress—mine. I was holding my coffee cup. His fingertips brushed across my knuckles. I couldn’t help it, couldn’t stop myself. I recoiled, so fast I spilled hot coffee on his fingers. The fact is I didn’t want him anymore. Not him. Whatever compatibility we’d had in that way was long gone. Replaced by something other than indifference, something darker. Bitterness, perhaps.
John surprised me then. I usually can predict every move. I know that sounds grandiose, but it’s true. Still, that morning I was taken aback when he pushed his chair away from the table. He then very deliberately walked to my chair and stood behind me. I tried to see what he was doing, but he had his hands anchoring my shoulders so I couldn’t move; I could only turn my head, which gave me a sideways view of his rather expansive chest. My cheek scraped against the buttons on his shirt, and I felt his breath on the back of my neck. It was incredibly unnerving. Then he took his right hand and, reaching over my shoulder, placed it on my breast. I immediately slapped it away, of course. But the feel of his hand lingered. He’d managed to give my nipple a slight pinch and I felt that most of all. I was enraged, but the anger was shot through with shame, and if I could have cut off my breast in that moment, I would have. Anything to erase the feel of that unyielding palm, that burning pinch. The brute. The brute. By the time I had composed myself, he was gone, out the door and to the hospital. And good riddance, I thought.
48
Samantha