“For what?”
“Just thank you.”
“You know, it’s taken me a long while to grasp this. But sometimes justice is served in ways that have precious little to do with the criminal justice system.”
? ? ?
THAT NIGHT, SITTING cross-legged on Madame Aubuchon’s bed, I laid two objects on the white sheets.
The first was the disposable phone, reduced now to a mere forty--three euros in credit. I had used it to remotely access my old voice mail and had discovered no fewer than nine messages from Will Zartman. The first eight were short, only a few seconds each in duration, presumably of the Call me, would you please call me variety. I deleted them. But the last one ran nearly three minutes long. I couldn’t bring myself either to erase it or to listen. Next to the phone I unfolded the second object, a piece of paper from inside the leather pouch knotted around my neck. I smoothed it flat against the sheets. Angular handwriting, black ink, the name Fran?ois, and a phone number.
My hand hovered. Hesitated. I reached for the phone and dialed.
“Hey,” I said when he answered, then leaned back against the pillows.
“Hello?” came the cautious response. “Caroline? Is that you?”
“It’s me.”
Will heaved a deep breath. “Thank God. Are you okay? Where are you?”
“In Paris. Long story.”
“But you’re okay? How’s your neck? Your wrist?”
“Fine. Better every day.”
“Thank God,” he breathed again. “Marshall Gellert said you missed your last two appointments. That you didn’t refill your painkiller prescription. I didn’t know if you—”
“My brothers said you moved out.” I didn’t have the patience to beat around the bush.
“Oh,” answered Will in a quiet voice. “Yes. We’re separated. My wife and me. Caroline? I made a terrible mistake not telling you, I know that. There was never a—”
“Never a good time? Is that what you were about to say? See, because I would argue that before you kissed me that night in Atlanta would have been a good time.”
“I know. I know. I thought you’d run screaming for the hills.”
“Well, that’s true. I can’t say I was exactly yearning to get involved with a married man with two kids and a soft spot for Garth Brooks.”
“You make me sound like quite the catch.”
“Make that a married, middle-aged baseball fanatic, with kids and a house in the suburbs and—”
“Yet you called,” he cut me off gently. “Why?”
Why indeed? Why risk my heart on a man with baggage, a man who had lied to me, a man who might—who knew—be lying even now about being separated?
“I miss you,” I said. But it was more than that. I had allowed Will to touch me at a level deeper than I had allowed any of my previous, predictable lovers. Perhaps deeper than I had been capable of, just weeks ago. If he came with baggage, then so be it. I was carrying quite a lot of baggage of my own by now.
“I miss you, too. Come home.”
? ? ?
NOT UNTIL SOMETIME after midnight did I stir beneath the white sheets, open my eyes, and realize that Betsy Sinclare was still lying.
I had been dreaming of a girl with dark hair tied back in pink ribbons. Still in your pink pigtails, Betsy had said, hiding behind your mother’s skirts. Pink pigtails. That detail had not appeared in the press accounts at the time of the murders. To my knowledge, no photograph of me from that day had been released. Possibly Ethan had described my appearance to his wife, but it seemed an odd detail to have mentioned. So how could she have known? How could she have known the color of my ribbons unless she had been there and seen me?
I sat up in bed and ran my fingers through my now-short, now-blond hair. Watched a shadow crawl across the bedroom wall, cast by the headlights of a passing car. What was Betsy up to?
The phone in Atlanta rang and rang. I was about to hang up and redial a third time when she picked up. She sounded exhausted. “I told you never to contact me again,” she rasped. “I’m going to hang up, and if you have the slightest scrap of sense, you’ll do the same.”
“How did you know I was hiding behind my mother’s skirt when she died? Betsy? Or that my hair was tied in pink pigtails?”
Several seconds of silence, then: “I have no idea what your hair looked like. I don’t even remember saying that. What kind of crazy questions are these? Caroline, if you keep harassing me . . . God is my witness, I will tell the police the truth. I’ll tell them who shot Ethan. Do you hear me? I will call them right now.”
“I think you were there. In the house on Eulalia Road that day. I think you saw me.”
“You are out of your mind.”
“No, I’m not. You were there. You saw it. Tell me what happened.”
She was breathing fast, little pants of air whistling down the phone line.
“They’re all dead, Betsy. Everyone who was in that room, except you and me. Who are you protecting anymore?”
She held out another few seconds. When she spoke, it was in a snarl. “Your mother knew how to provoke a person. You have no idea. Sadie Rawson would stand there, all snooty and superior, in her too-short skirt and her too-high heels, wiggling her bottom. Just throwing it in your face, like the floozy she was. I only went over there to make her give me the necklace. To make her stop parading it around all over Buckhead.”
“What necklace?”
“The one Ethan gave her. A sapphire floating on a gold chain. Maier and Berkele mailed the bill to our house. I had to write them a check for it. To keep our account in good standing. Do you have any idea what that feels like?” Her voice rose to a shriek.