“Shudder. Glad he’s not my doctor.”
“Ugh. He happens to be mine, but not as of tomorrow.”
“This speculation is unfair to Dr. Kirkland. His wife cleans him out, and you’re all pointing fingers at him? He delivered all three of my children and is the kindest, most caring medical professional I’ve ever known. I’d recommend him to anyone.”
“I had a complication with this pregnancy and would have lost my mind with worry if not for the outstanding care of Dr. Kirkland. Appalling that our police would waste taxpayer money with this kind of witch hunt.”
She didn’t know whether to feel grateful that the damage done might be minimal, or horrified that arguable warning signs were so easily dismissed.
Clara averted her eyes and sipped her drink. The cool, familiar foam on her dry tongue emboldened her. “I want you to know I had nothing to do with that article,” she said. “I was just as surprised as you were to find it in my mailbox.” That sounded wrong. Like she was comparing her reaction to his. “I mean, maybe not as surprised—certainly not as horrified, I’m sure, though I was—really horrified. What I mean is—”
“Bryant told me,” he cut in. His dropping of the detective’s title seemed to convey a certain disdain. “Tough break for both of us, I guess.” He was looking straight at her now, and she looked away, taking in the once-homey kitchen where she’d had many a cup of coffee with Kristin while the kids made a mess of playdough on the floor, or kicked balls across the yard, or zoomed cars around the living room. The house felt different now. Unsettled. Off balance. Abandoned, even with Paul in it.
Benny spun his beer bottle slowly on the tabletop. “I know we don’t know each other all that well, but we feel for you. The idea that anything we might have been associated with could add to your stress at a time like this—” Benny shook his head. Clara wished he would stop saying we. She wasn’t sure she deserved his support just now. Then again, without it she wasn’t sure she’d have the stomach to deliver these necessary assurances on her own. “It’s the last thing we’d want,” Benny continued. “We didn’t have any role in what happened here, but still, we’re deeply sorry.”
Paul was still eying Clara. “The girl played you a recording of that conversation? Between me and Bryant and Detective What’s-Her-Face?”
Surely Detective Bryant had already told Paul the whole story? If she said no, would he lie about what had been said, say Hallie had distorted things? What she’d printed in the paper had been out of line, and it had painted him in a suspicious light, but it had been accurate. Behind Paul the too-clean window reflected back to Clara the memory of Detective Bryant chasing after the repair van, trailing behind him the dismal feeling that any potential evidence inside was already tainted. Inadmissible—a technical term for useless.
Clara nodded.
“You were with Kristin that night.” Upon closer examination, Paul’s eyes looked a bit glassy, and Clara wondered how many drinks he’d had and how much they might have lowered his inhibitions. “Do you have any idea what reason she might’ve had for Googling those things?”
Clara looked to Benny, feeling like a child who hopes her mother might answer a stranger’s question, but he remained frozen squarely at the midpoint of stoic and neighborly.
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” she said, turning her head to meet Paul dead on.
“There wasn’t anything anyone said, or—?”
She cocked her head and pursed her lips, and Benny kicked her under the table. Careful.
It was an odd place to be, caught between feeling angry enough to call him out and afraid enough to keep quiet. She knew she was lucky to have come to this place as an outsider—she could simply walk to the door and turn the knob. Anytime she wanted. Any minute now. Too many women couldn’t, and she wasn’t about to gamble on whether Kristin had been one of them. Her eyes bore into Paul’s, and he shrugged, letting the question drop.
“Well, I don’t know what was up with her search terms either, but I can tell you, they’re barking up the wrong tree. She’s out there with my kids—my kids—and every minute they spend looking at me is a minute they’re not spending looking for them.” He took an angry swig of his liquor and grimaced in the way of someone who didn’t typically forgo the mixers.
“I’m sure they’re doing all they can,” Benny said.
He scowled. “Every day they have a new theory. The latest nonsense is that I was trying to make her quit her job. As if that would even be in my interest now that we’re getting a divorce.” She wondered if Benny noticed, as she did, that Paul qualified the theory as ridiculous because their marriage was over. Was she just oversensitive to that sort of thing? “It’s clear they’re grasping at straws. I’m this close to hiring my own guy.”
Clara’s mouth went dry again. “A private investigator?”
“I know what you’re thinking. She wasn’t going to be my wife anymore anyway. I never adopted the twins. If I don’t care about the money, why not let them go?”
“Oh, I wasn’t—”
“I’m getting all this bullshit about stepparents not having custodial rights. ‘Visitation’ is all they call it. I need to make a case about my ‘standing’ with them. My standing! They’re children! I’m not some fly-by-night fill-in father. I’m their dad. And the fact that I never filed the paperwork to make that official…” His voice drifted off as his eyes fell on the corkboard tacked to the kitchen wall, and Clara followed his gaze to the display of the paperwork that came with four-year-olds dabbling in the business of becoming full-fledged kids. Lunch menus. Soccer schedules. A flyer about picture day. Tough though it was to look at, she couldn’t help but think what a handy collage it made—something to point at and say, I want that back.
There would be no reason for anyone to infer that what you were really after was the board itself, the thing those messy bits were attached to.
“I thought I had time. I never imagined Kristin and I would … come apart.”
He looked so sad right then, it almost escaped Clara’s attention that his fists were clenched on the table, as if barely containing themselves.
Benny cleared his throat. “I can’t tell you how many people come into my firm, distraught—about money, of course, which is ostensibly why they see an accountant, but that’s just on the surface. What they’re really distraught about is a divorce or a death or an investment gone bad or a mistake or an oversight. Every one of them thinks they’ve missed their chance to set things right. And you’d be surprised how often it turns out they haven’t missed their chance at all. Sometimes it just feels that way.”
Her husband looked so sincere that Clara wondered what she’d ever done to deserve such a good man. And then immediately wondered why anyone deserved less of one.
“I’m sure it felt like an eternity to you, but it didn’t take the reporters long to back away last time,” Benny continued. “They will again. Just give the police time to do their jobs.”
Paul took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “It’s an odd thing, searching for someone who doesn’t want to be found,” he said. “Even if you have good reason.”
Because that someone has a better reason? Clara knew she had to muster some sort of outward sympathy. But now that she was here, she found herself thinking not so much of Paul’s reaction but of what hers should have been earlier today. She wished she’d pressed Detective Bryant harder. She’d been so caught up in defending herself that she hadn’t asked the questions that had been noodling at her since Hallie first played the recording. Namely, how much suspicion was Paul under, exactly?
Clara knew that in volatile situations, the worst imaginable outcome was a possibility. She’d seen it once before. And one time had been too many.