Her feeling of nausea passed. “He thought he was doing right, Owen. He thought that he could somehow fix the past by taking care of Charlie.”
“You can’t fix the past. You can only go forward. We’re going to do that.”
“David is going to prison. That’s on us.”
“No. No, it isn’t. It was a choice he made.”
Liz turned to face him. “Because you told him about Brad Collins. Don’t lie to me. I know you were doing what you do best, Owen. A button pusher. That’s you.”
“You’re not thinking clearly,” he said.
There was truth to that. Her mind had been firing nonstop since the fight in the basement. She knew it was all real, but she didn’t feel like herself at all.
“Maybe,” she said. “But I know for certain that what I did ruined David and Carole’s lives. It was me, Owen. I was the one who started all of this.”
“Right. I’ll give you that. You also ended it.”
Salesman again.
“Did I?” she asked. “Because it doesn’t feel like I ended anything. Not for anyone. I can still see Charlie wrapped in that tarp. How could we have done that when he was alive? How could we have done that at all?”
“You need to stop thinking about this,” he said. “It’s over.”
Liz knew better. She knew that it would never really be over. It would be like Diamond Lake, haunting her for the rest of her life. The lie would grow into a disease. Cancer, probably. It would come for her when she least expected it.
Although she would always know it was on its way.
Owen undressed for the shower. “We’ll need to go back to the hospital,” he said. “Carole will expect us to be there. They are keeping Charlie overnight.”
“I can’t face her again,” Liz said.
“You have to,” he said. “You are the hero. The press will be there. So will the detectives. You’ll have to pull yourself together, Liz. This is done. You’ve been handed a gift. We both have. This is a happy ending.”
Owen stepped out of sight into the bathroom and turned on the water. The old pipes creaked, and he stepped inside the shower.
It didn’t feel happy. Not at all.
Liz picked up Owen’s expensive jeans, which he had left in a heap on the floor. They were his favorite, dark dyed and not too skinny. She removed the leather belt and coiled it to place it in the top drawer. She’d grown to hate him since the accident. Shifting the contents of the drawer, she noticed some paperwork underneath his growing collection of cashmere and cotton socks. Her husband was becoming a clotheshorse. He dressed better than she did. He told her that he had to look the part.
“Dress for what you want to be,” he’d said.
She’d wanted to be a lawyer. She would never be that.
A quarter-folded sheet of light blue paper caught her eye. She recognized it immediately as the stationery that Owen had bought for her birthday the year before. “Almost a dollar a sheet,” he had said, in that grandiose way he had about certain things. It was teasing but true at the same time. “Don’t waste it on shopping lists.”
What was it doing there?
She looked over her shoulder at the bathroom door as the water in the shower poured over her husband.
It was a typewritten note.
I’m sorry for all the pain that I’ve caused. I am a failure as a wife and friend. I no longer want to be a burden to anyone.
Her signature concluded the short missive.
Liz heard Owen pull the curtain back and step out onto the mat. She could feel her heart race.
Although she had imagined killing herself and even planned to do so, she’d never actually written a suicide note. She’d never taken that concrete step toward truly attempting what she thought was her only way out.
To save Owen.
To ease Carole and David’s enduring heartbreak.
To fade away.
She sat there until Owen emerged, a towel wrapped around his waist. She turned and faced him, the slip of paper now unfolded in her hand.
“What is this, Owen?”
“I don’t know,” he said, running his fingers through his damp hair.
“Don’t lie to me, Owen. You wrote a suicide note. For me. Why would you do that? What were you going to do to me?”
“Liz,” he said, “calm down. I wasn’t going to do anything. I thought you were going to kill yourself. You talked about it. I was thinking that if you did, then you should say something. You know, I thought you would want it that way. And you know they always blame the husband. I had to protect myself in case you didn’t leave a note.”
There he was again, doing what he did best. Lying. Looking for a solution that would sound good to others and absolve Owen of any blame. Liz was sure everyone at Lumatyx hated him.
“You wanted me to die,” she said. “You were probably hoping the whole time that I would end it all so you could play the victim card and move on with your life. All that money. A dead wife. That’s what you wanted, Owen.”
“I didn’t want a dead wife. I didn’t want to lose everything. You did all of this to us and—yes, all right, I really did think that if you killed yourself . . . well, that it would be all right.”
“How would it be all right?”
“I thought you killed Charlie. I thought we’d never, ever be able to undo that. If you killed yourself, out of guilt for what you’d done, I’d be able to move past all of this. Don’t blame me. None of this is my fault. All of this is on you.”
Liz could feel the blood drain from her face. “Owen, why did I even fall in love with you? I don’t know who you are. You can’t have changed so much from that man I married.”
“Honey,” he said, reaching for her. “I am the man you married. I didn’t know what to do. I was just trying to survive. Is that so wrong?”
“You wanted me dead, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t,” he said. “I can’t lie. You know me.”
“Lying is all that you do, Owen. You must have been very disappointed that I’m still alive.”
“No,” he said, trying to hold her. She stepped back and held her hand out to stop him. “This is our chance to start over.”
“We had our chance,” she said. “We’re done. You’re going to leave soon. Not right away. I don’t want anyone to make a thing about our breakup.”
“What breakup?” he asked. “I don’t get you at all. We’re home free.”
She sucked in some oxygen. It was like she could breathe for the first time.
“I want to be free of you,” she said. “I know that you wanted me dead. I know that this whole thing was about your job at Lumatyx. The money. Well, it’s not going to happen.”
“You’re insane,” he said. “You’ve gone off the rails. I’m not going to be pushed around by the likes of you.”
Liz didn’t say anything for a long time. She just looked at the man who had played upon her weaknesses for his own personal gain. They had no marriage. He had a career path. The path to the big house on the river. He wanted to be like the Franklins.
“You don’t even like me, Owen,” she said.
“That’s not true,” he said. “I love you.”