26

Jill and I stared through the rental car’s windshield at the lit-up second floor motel room. Garth, Frieda, and Polly were playing Crazy Eights inside. Beside us, the cars scudded along the freeway, their lights burrowing into the night. We didn’t look at each other. We had to talk. But what would those words—and all the thoughts behind them—do to our marriage?

Jill said, “Do you know what I thought when those detectives showed up at school?”

There was no good answer to that question.

“I thought this lunatic had killed you.”

I reached across the seat compartment between us to touch her shoulder. She moved away.

“The next day they brought a policewoman with them. You know why? To stay with Garth and Frieda. So they could talk with me alone.”

“To tell you I was—”

“I knew you couldn’t have murdered Elizabeth.”

What, then?

She turned. The motel lights reflected the tears in her eyes. It hit me. “Did they talk to you about my home office?”

She looked down at her lap. So here we were, finally at the core of what loomed between us. I imagined Hempel showing her the bottle of bourbon, then lifting the vape pen and the container of marijuana extract. Finally, the coup de grace, the copies of my father’s pictures. I could almost hear their questions. Did you know about the marijuana? Why didn’t he tell you about those pictures? How are your husband’s relationships with women? At that moment, I hated those detectives as much as I hated the killer.

“I knew you were drinking in your office at night,” she said. “I could smell the alcohol on you. Sometimes I thought I caught a whiff of marijuana. But I figured you needed those things. Because of your insomnia.”

I didn’t know how to begin.

“Say something,” she said.

“I can’t imagine what you thought.”

“You can’t imagine? That’s it?” She let out an exasperated sigh.

I said, “At night my whole body feels what he did.”

She nodded. Waited.

She said, “Your mother taught you to hide your hurts and worries, didn’t she? But not with me. Please, William.”

I looked up at the motel room where my sister watched over our children. I said, “At night I wonder if he escaped and I don’t know it. So I go on the internet. I look at the websites and make sure he’s still in prison, still at Stateville. I make sure one of his crazy fans doesn’t have a bead on us. But even when I know we’re safe, I feel him hovering. It’s like his evil is fidgeting and pacing in my body. All the guilt and shame just pours over me. It’s even worse since we had children. What if his genes are hiding inside Garth and Frieda? That’s why I have the bourbon and the vape pen.”

She stared up at the roof as if she were trying to see through the car to the stars. I knew what she was thinking about. Something far worse than bourbon and marijuana. But my mouth wouldn’t move.

She said, “I get how everyone has secrets. Shit, it wasn’t like you didn’t tell me about those photographs. But that was in Colombia. Years ago. Why would you have those things in our house?”

I had to get out of the car. My fingers snatched at the door handle. She set her hand on my shoulder. It was the lightness of her touch that stopped me. Her face was tender.

“Talk to me,” she said.

A terrible shame infused my cheeks. There were no words for such an old and disgraceful obsession.

“Please,” she said.

I had to say something—for the sake of our marriage. “I haven’t looked at them in years.”

She put her hand on my arm. “Is this your punishment? Each time you open your desk and see that steel box … you force yourself to face up to what he did.”

I swallowed. Forced out the words. “Those photographs prove I’ll never be like him.”

She slowly shook her head and turned to face the window. A sadness floated between us. We watched a car rumble through the parking lot and turn off its lights. A noisy family clunked up the stairs to their room.

“And you couldn’t talk to me about it?”

“What would you think? No normal man would keep those things close to his family.”

I felt her eyes reaching for me but I couldn’t look at her.

“You still believe you carry him inside you, don’t you?” she said.

The fear, the guilt, the shame, the years I’d tried to untangle my past … they were all woven into those photos. But most of all, his darkness lived there, the darkness that might also lurk in me. I said, “All his monstrous thoughts are locked inside that steel box. It’s as close as I can get to controlling what he did to my life.”

She sighed. We stared up at the motel room with our kids inside.

She said, “You’ve been trying to figure this out since you were a child, haven’t you?”

“I try to put words around it. But they’re just words.”

She reached across the space between us and her fingers caressed my hair. “Those women weren’t the only victims. He really messed you up too.”

“And Polly.”

She shook her head. “Thank God you two have each other. You know, when you were arrested, Polly insisted I bring the kids to her house. She said we had to deny the hysteria. She wouldn’t even let us turn on the TV. I was actually happy to hear her spout her opinions.”

We smiled. It encapsulated what we both cherished and couldn’t stand about Polly. “Don’t tell her this,” I said, “but sometimes she sounds just like Mama.”

Jill’s palm touched my cheek. “Polly says everyone believes she suffered the most because of your father. But she thinks you were more hurt. She wears her wounds, but you bury yours.”

My generous sister.

“When those detectives talked to me, I couldn’t believe they were describing my husband. This was the person I knew better than anyone in the world. How could I have thought that about him?”

I might not have heard what hid inside that last sentence but for the way Jill’s eyes flinched open and framed her betrayal. She leaned across the space between the seats and threw her arms around me. She began to weep. I looked down at her blonde hair, her face pushing into my chest. She held me as tightly as one of our children would.

A terrible fist clenched inside me. Would we ever love each other in the same way again? I told myself that thousands of betrayals can creep into a marriage and still not break it. How was her doubt any worse than the pictures I’d hidden inside our house? I put my arms around her. But something still balled inside my chest.

When we drew apart, our fingers interlaced. I stared at her watch, with its simple leather band. Jill’s eyelashes were as translucent and delicate as moth wings. I should have told her about the picture the killer had sent to Marta’s office. But I couldn’t. Not tonight.