“I’m so glad you’re home.” Willow buried her face in Tom’s shoulder, clutching his arm, breathing in his citrus and coffee fragrance, feeling the damp skin of his neck on her cheek. They’d be fine. They would. She’d done the right thing. The police were gone. She’d explained it all the moment Tom walked in the door. By the time they were climbing the stairs to their bedroom, together, her voice following him, she’d told him the whole story. Most of it. And now she was safe, safe in his arms.
“They hardly stayed ten minutes.” Her words—fudging on the time just the smallest bit, but how could that matter—went into the wilting collar of Tom’s pale blue shirt. She felt the knot of his loosened tie against her throat. He was home, and everything would be all right.
“Willow.” Tom’s voice had a knife-edge, her name a slash as he took one step away from her. “Why in hell would you do that?”
She felt his words, cutting through her very being. She couldn’t move.
“Honey? I’m sorry.” Tom came closer again, put his hands on her, one on each bare shoulder.
She could feel his heat as if he were the sun, her private sun. As long as he kept touching her, she’d be fine.
“I know it’s nerve-racking for you,” he said. “But why would you call the cops? It’s the last thing … You allowed the cops into our house?”
“What else could I do?” She would float off the floor without those hands grounding her.
But Tom had turned away again, back to the window, flattening his palms on the pane, peering out.
Willow tried to look through his eyes, see the tree, Avery’s backyard, the forsythia hedge, that dark blue watery corner of the pool. Her brain revved with anxiety. She needed another pill. Maybe she hadn’t really seen it? But she had. Popcorn barking and barking. The dark shape in the water, and someone leaving. Maybe.
It was wrong, and awful, and she, a human being, could not ignore that.
“No one’s down there now,” Tom said, talking to the window. “Are you sure? What you saw? What time was it? What time did the police come?”
He turned to her, raking one hand through his hair. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter. Because you called the police. Now we’re on their radar. The person who calls is always a suspect, Willow. Haven’t you learned anything?”
She felt her resolve failing, her knees unreliable. Should she have turned her back on Avery?
“I had to call, didn’t I?” She needed to explain. “I had no idea she was dead. What if she wasn’t dead? What if there was a burglar? The dog was so upset, and I’m here by myself, and—”
Tom touched one finger to her lips. “Shhh,” he said. “You’ll be fine.”
He kissed her palm, then lowered her arm to her side. She stood, still feeling the ghost of his kiss as he moved away from her and went back to the window. He looked out again, his chest rising, then falling. With a quick motion, he pulled down the tawny raffia shade. The room dimmed, their personal night falling, as the raffia lowered inch by inch.
“It’s all good.” Tom was almost a silhouette on the shade, a lock of his newly grayed hair falling across his forehead. “But, honey? We have to keep to ourselves. That’s why we moved here. That’s why we chose this. If you hadn’t gone to dinner at her house, you’d never have even known her.”
He knew about that? She frowned, tilting her head, trying to remember.
Tom clicked on the nightstand light. “You told me, silly one,” he said.
Maybe she had. “I can’t cut myself off from the world, Tom,” she whispered. “No matter what happened back home.”
“We’re not going to talk about that.” Tom straightened the lamp shade, tilting the white pleated fabric. “This is home. All the other is gone, over, in the past. No, not in the past. It never happened. It’s erased. We weren’t there. I’m Tom, you’re Willow, and so it shall be.”
Willow. She’d bend like a willow in the wind. Whatever she had to do to survive, she’d do it. That’s why she picked the name. And maybe Tom was right. Maybe she’d been wrong to call. Maybe someone else would have called, and then the police would have gone to someone else’s house. But now she’d made her bed, their bed, and they’d both have to face the consequences.
“The police will come again. They said so.” She felt the tears welling, tears of fear and uncertainty. “What will I tell them? What will you?”
Tom pulled the tie from around his neck, then silently coiled the strip of fabric around his hand, pulling it, striping his hand in red-and-black silk. Willow saw his fingers flex. Then he unwrapped the tie, one loop, then another, then another. Hung it on a steel hook next to his others in his closet, smoothed it flat.
“We’ll tell them the truth,” Tom said.
Willow remembered that first day she’d met him at the studio, when she was auditioning, and he was visiting, and it all had moved as fast as a movie script. He’d reached out for her then, and she for him. They could never resist, they couldn’t stop touching or even standing next to each other, at the office, or at the beach, or even in the grocery, their force fields connected and braided together and they were one person. Soon after, she gave up her movie search, and he got deeper into it, and their life was happy and normal and California-fine.
Until it wasn’t. Until they needed a new fine. And now—they’d lost it. Again. Because of her.
“We’ll tell them our truth.” Tom unbuttoned his shirt, one button at a time, as if it were a difficult task, important and significant. He turned to her, at last, his chest bare, tanned, the tails of his shirt loose and hanging over his khakis. “Our new truth. You were merely acquaintances. You saw the dog.”
“Tom, I—” There was something wrong. She saw it in the set of his chin, and his stiffening shoulders. Maybe he was scared, too. And it was her fault. “Heard the dog, too,” she said.
“‘Saw the dog,’ ‘heard the dog.’ Fine. And that I’d never met her. I didn’t know her.”
“Okay,” she said. Because now that was true.
“And that’s all there is, right? Willow? All?”
“That’s right. Nothing more.”
Willow searched for the answer that would free them. Maybe she could un-remember what she’d seen. She pushed the vision from her brain, carapacing it over. If they asked—Can you identify the person? Even tell us whether it was male or female?—she could say, No, no I can’t.
“Maybe it was an accident?” Her other fears were unspeakable. She would not bring them up, she would bury them, and not think of them. If it was an accident, this would all go away.
“An accident.” She repeated the words to make them real.
“Maybe,” Tom said. “So again. When the police call, we’ll tell them the truth.”
“I’m sorry, Tom. I wish—”
Tom stepped toward her, across the divide of their fear, pulled her, just like he was her California husband, to the edge of their bed.
She almost cried, with his touch, and the anxiety, and the uncertainty, and she felt breakable, not like a willow, not at all, she wanted their old lives, with sunshine and possibilities. And now Tom had his arm around her, and the night was soft, and they were together, even here, and it would all be okay.
“We’ll tell the truth about your past connections with Avery Morgan, because they don’t exist.” Tom held her close. “Then they’ll go away and find whoever killed her.”
“Or whatever happened,” Willow said.
“Right. Or whatever happened.”
“The police will solve this on their own,” Willow reassured herself, reassured them both, reassured the universe. “They don’t need me. I won’t have to say a word.”