she’d planned to at Hanna’s last night and had more wine than she should have. It felt good to lean on Hanna, to dwell in her comfort and normalcy. She’d wanted to confide in her. Now she’s afraid she’d let slip a bit too much – about her doubts. But she hadn’t said anything about the polygraph.
She goes back to the front page of the newspaper. She has a few minutes, the babies happy in the living room before she gets them ready to go out. They will walk to the grocery store this morning, pick up a few things. She hopes she doesn’t run into anybody she knows, although she probably will. She always does.
An article on the second page catches her attention. It’s a lurid story about a man in Albany who has killed his two children, his wife and then himself. She tells herself not to read it, but of course she does. She can’t help herself. There are always stories like this, and she always reads them. The man smothered the two young children before his estranged wife returned home from work. When the mother arrived home, he stabbed her several times in the chest. And then he calmly got into his car and drove off a bridge.
She sits back, her head swimming at the horror of it.
These sorts of things happen all the time. And no one ever seems to see it coming.
The phone rings in the kitchen, making her jump. She glances at it, reluctant to pick it up. Whoever it is, it can only be bad news. She can’t imagine anything else these days.
She picks it up. ‘Yes?’
‘Hello, Stephanie, it’s Robert Lange.’
Her heart sinks. What now? ‘What is it?’ she asks.
‘I wanted to let you know that Patrick will be going before a judge this morning for the arraignment.’
She can’t think of anything to say.
‘If they do go ahead with this – and I still don’t see how they can, realistically – we’d be probably looking at a trial date sometime next spring or early summer.’
She closes her eyes, and leans against the counter. ‘Okay.’
‘I’ll need a retainer.’
Somehow, the days crawl by. Even when everything is falling apart, the sun still rises and sets, Stephanie still needs to eat and sleep. The babies need to be taken care of – fed and dressed and changed. She has to answer the phone when Patrick calls from jail.
Their conversations are false, stilted, unnatural. How could they be otherwise? The time apart is quickly making them grow more distant, as they share less and less of the day to day. It’s always that way when couples are apart, Stephanie thinks; it’s much worse when one of them is in jail on a murder charge, and the other one isn’t entirely convinced he didn’t do it.
‘Stephanie,’ Patrick always says, ‘you must believe me. I didn’t do it.’
‘I know,’ she says automatically. She knows she doesn’t sound especially convinced. She sounds detached, dismissive.
‘They’ll have to drop the charges. I’m going to get out of here and come home,’ he says.
‘I know,’ she repeats tonelessly, staring blankly out the window. She doesn’t feel anything when she talks to him.
‘Lange says that if they can’t find any other evidence, it won’t be enough to go to trial – it will be her word against mine about the affair, and an affair isn’t sufficient proof that I killed my wife. Neither is the insurance. They have no direct evidence that I meant to kill Lindsey.’
She isn’t really listening.
Suddenly Stephanie remembers something Erica said to her, that day on the porch. That her neighbours might have seen him coming and going from her apartment, might have heard them in bed, through the wall. If they find just one neighbour who saw him there, she thinks, on more than two occasions – that would prove he was lying. Patrick said he’d only gone to her apartment twice.
‘Stephanie, you have to be strong for me, okay? For me and for the twins.’
She can hear a note of desperation in his voice now; his mask has slipped a bit. He’s scared. Of course he is. ‘Lange wanted a retainer,’ she says.
‘Yeah, he told me he called you.’
‘It’s a lot of money.’
‘I know. And I’m sorry.’ He sounds contrite. ‘When this is all over and I’m back on my feet, it won’t matter, Stephanie. It’s just money. I’ll start my own firm, earn it all back. People have short memories. A few years from now this