As long as they had Jay in custody, the marshals weren’t really interested in pursuing charges against me or Wil, so they had released us right there at the town dock. Thank God we’d gotten out of there before any of the bystanders could contact the local news stations. My business did not need the kind of publicity I would have gotten if the news trucks had shown up. Still, that was the only bright spot in an otherwise devastating day. I was heartbroken knowing that Jay was on his way back to prison. We’d all been through so much and had tried so hard to help him, so fucking hard, and in the end, he was right back where this all started. Everything was in vain. A thousand times I considered turning my car around to go find some hole-in-the-wall bar and drink the night away. I just wanted to forget everything. But I couldn’t, because there was some unfinished business to tend to between me and my wife.
It was pretty quiet when I entered the house—not what I was expecting. I was half expecting to be hit in the face with a handful of confetti and then handed a glass of champagne. By now Jay’s capture had probably been all over the eleven o’clock news, and I had no doubt my wife was ecstatic.
I headed to my bedroom and realized I was right about Lisa’s mood, at least partially. There were candles flickering throughout the room, and rose petals scattered across the floor, leading to the bed, where Lisa was lying in a silky negligee.
“I don’t want to fight anymore,” she said once we made eye contact. “Let’s go back to who we were just a few weeks ago, before…” She wasn’t exactly celebrating, but she was making it very clear that to her, Jay was just a bad dream that was over, and we could get on with our lives now that he was locked away.
“You mean before Jay escaped?”
She didn’t miss the bitterness in my tone. “Yes. Is that so bad?”
“So you don’t want to fight anymore, huh?” I said mockingly. “How convenient now that there’s nothing to fight about. Jay got locked up again—but I’m sure you knew that already.”
“I’m sorry, Kyle.” Lisa crawled down to the foot of the bed where I was standing. She got up on her knees and ran her hands over my chest, rubbing my shoulders and kissing my neck.
“Please forgive me,” she moaned into my ear.
“I’ll forgive you,” I said. She smiled and then leaned in for another kiss. I pulled back. “After you tell me exactly what it is you’re sorry for.”
“What do you mean?” She sat her bottom on her feet. The fact that she put that distance between us and couldn’t even look me in the eyes said it all.
“I know, Lisa.”
I could hear her swallow hard. “Oh, God. You know what?” She was trying to sound dismissive, like I was being ridiculous. I might have been a little out of sorts lately, but I wasn’t paranoid. I knew what she had done to my friend.
“Don’t play with me, Lisa. I know that you overheard my conversation with Jay’s friend and you called Deputy Franklin to tell him where we were meeting. I hope you’re proud of yourself, because you’re the reason that Jay is on his way back to prison for a crime he didn’t commit.”
She exhaled, and her shoulders sank in defeat. “Okay, so I called Franklin. But I did it for us.”
“You didn’t just call him once,” I snapped. “You called twice. Hell, the first time you sent them to Allen’s home, and three of us got arrested.”
She had the nerve to roll her eyes. “I mean, nothing happened. You were locked up all of two hours. They weren’t going to do anything to you. Try to get you to rat out Jay, maybe, but nothing serious.”
“Nothing serious? You’re kidding me right now, right?” I threw my arms up in exasperation. “I’m a black man, Lisa. Any time you put me in the position of dealing with law enforcement it could turn into a big deal. Do you not watch the news? Do you not know what’s happening out there to black men? The last place I ever want to be is in police custody.” At that moment, I was overwhelmed by a desire to hurt her. “You fucking betrayed me. And you don’t know what the fuck could have happened to me in that place.”
“Stop cussing at me already,” she snapped back.
“You’re lucky all I’m doing right now is cussing at you,” I seethed. “I swear to God I could—”
“You could what?” Lisa asked. “Go ahead, Kyle, say it. You could what? Divorce me?”
I glared at her for a moment, trying to rein in my anger somehow before I lashed out and hit her. To stop myself from doing that, I grabbed a pillow off the bed and started squeezing, to release some of my pent-up rage. She looked down at what I was doing to the pillow, and then looked up at me. I saw something in her eyes I’d never seen—it was fear. My wife was afraid of me.
Truthfully, I was a little afraid of myself. My anger had reached such a peak that there was no telling what I was capable of. It was better for me to remove myself from this situation before things turned ugly. I headed for the door.
“Wait. Where are you going?”
“To my boat,” I said.
“But, but I—” She hopped up out of the bed. “I did all of this for us, Kyle.” She held her hands up, signaling toward the rose petals and the candles.
“Then you did it all for nothing.”