Erin closes her eyes as the sound of her own panicked voice rips the curtain that has protected her from memories of that cold December morning. The woman on the other end of the line was calm, eerily so, and Erin had to repeat herself before the dispatcher seemed to understand the urgency of the situation.
“He’s cold, he’s blue, he’s not breathing,” Erin had said, pacing in the bedroom.
“Can you feel a pulse?”
Erin halted in midstep. Touch Jeffrey? Wake him up? He always got so angry when she disturbed him….
But this wasn’t sleep, this was something else. Something wrong.
“Just a minute. I’ll check.” Clutching the cordless phone, Erin crept toward her husband’s sleeping form. Jeffrey lay flat on his back, the covers pulled up to his chest. She caught her breath as she leaned forward and pressed two fingers to the side of his neck. The flesh felt like chilled leather. Nothing moved beneath the skin, no pulse, no breath, no life.
Frantically she jabbed at his shoulder, as if she might restore some loose connection and set everything to rights. “There’s nothing,” she told the emergency operator. “No pulse, no breath. He’s cold and blue.”
“Do you know how to do CPR?”
“Maybe, but you have to send someone!” Erin’s voice broke. “He’ll kill me if I mess this up. You need to send someone who knows what they’re doing.”
“I’ve already dispatched the rescue squad, ma’am. But you can help us if you calm down. Can you get him flat on his back?”
“He’s already flat. He’s…stiff.”
The phone slipped from Erin’s fingers as the truth struck with the ferocity of a blow. Her husband, her lover, her tormentor is dead. The center of her life throughout five years of marriage is gone.
And the thought of freedom brings unspeakable relief in its wake.
“Erin?”
Briley Lester’s voice draws her back to the present. She lifts her head and sees the black microphone, the smooth grain of the oak railing, the box filled with more than a dozen sets of curious faces. She sees her lawyer, wide-eyed and alarmed. “Yes?”
Briley inclines her head, her eyes snapping with concern. “You okay?”
“Yes.”
The lawyer seems to doubt this, but she turns toward the judge. “The defense has no further questions at this time, Your Honor.”
Erin grips the armrest of her chair as the tall prosecutor stands. But instead of stepping out from behind the table, Travis Bystrowski simply looks at her with challenge glittering in his eyes. “We have no questions at this time,” he says. “But we reserve the right to recall this witness.”
The judge voices his approval, and Erin is free to step down.