anger get the best of me and said things I didn’t mean. But Joanna could push my buttons so easily, flirting with men right in front of me. Spending outrageous amounts on bags or shoes or dresses she’d never wear, just to wave the bill in my face. She’d go out partying with Rachael or Lora and stay out until dawn, and then confront me as if I were the one in the wrong. Like clockwork, I’d lose control first. She’d forgive me in the morning of course, when tempers simmered down, but I never deserved her mercy. She would push me to say horrible, unforgiveable things that no husband should ever say to his wife, no matter the circumstances. On the surface, to everyone around us, we had everything. We were so much in love, with the perfect house, the perfect life. The perfect marriage. But hatred and bitterness simmered beneath the surface.
“Tell me something, then.” Heather’s voice is getting a little shrill, and I flinch. “If you loved my sister so much, why would you let her walk away without making the slightest attempt to get her back? She was carrying your child, Michael. The last time you talked to her was in July, when she left you? The baby would’ve been born in November, and you—not one time in the months since then—never thought about getting in touch with her? About calling her up and asking how she and your child were doing? Even if you didn’t kill her, you have to understand that makes you a different kind of monster, but a monster just the same.”
“You don’t know anything,” I bite out. “I wanted her to come back. I waited for months.”
“All that waiting must’ve been so difficult while you were banging your secretary.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Fair?” she seethes, stabbing a finger into my chest. “I’m about to bury my sister, and you don’t think I’m being fair to you? You probably did kill her, you narcissistic bastard!”
“I’m sorry,” a voice calls from the door. It’s the woman in the suit. She stands in the doorway, a fat binder cradled in her arms. “I’ll give you two another minute….”
“Thank you,” I manage, but I feel sore, beat up, my insides pulverized.
I don’t even give a damn what she overheard. What does it matter if one more person believes I killed my wife?
Without saying another word, I fish my cell out of my back pocket and press the messages app on my phone, leading me to a long list of texts. There, near the bottom, is Joanna’s final message.
A reminder of what I lost.
“I haven’t showed anyone this,” I say, handing over the phone. “Not even the police. It was the last text Joanna ever sent me. Maybe you’ll understand.”
“July sixteenth, 10:04 P.M.,” she reads aloud, her voice sounding eerily like Joanna’s. “Michael, I don’t know how to tell you this, but the baby growing inside me isn’t yours. I’m in love with the baby’s father, and the only way we can have a future is if I bury you in the past. I’m sorry. Please understand. J x.” Heather pauses, and then looks up into my eyes. “She never mentioned any of this to me.”
“It doesn’t matter. That’s the reason I didn’t try to win her back, Heather. Right there.”
She hands the phone back with a curse.
“She’d been cheating on me,” I say. “That baby was his, whoever the hell he was. What good would it have done to call her, or check up on the child that wasn’t mine?” A dull numbness blooms through my chest. “It wouldn’t have changed anything. I was so hurt. And angry. I’d lost her, Heather. She didn’t want to come back.”
She stares at me a moment. Then she snatches back the phone and rereads the message. “Wait. According to what the police told me, Joanna should’ve been five months along at the time she was killed, but she was no longer pregnant. That means she either went into labor before the murder—and the baby wouldn’t have