“A scheming psychopath.” I finish his sentence. He sighs. He tried to act like he’s being reasonable and I’m being outrageous.
“I’ve made a lot of mistakes. A lot, I know. I got away with it, and it—maybe it was exciting to—I don’t know. I just—That doesn’t mean I don’t love you, okay? Christ.” He’s red and flustered. He stands and then sits again. He tightens his facial features and presses his fingers into his eyes, then makes an exasperated sound. “All of this,” he says as he gestures lazily to the scattered evidence, “it looks bad. I know that, but it didn’t have anything to do with love. It was just sex, just midlife-crisis stupidity. I still lo—”
“Do not say you still love me, or I will literally scream at the top of my lungs until the neighbors call the police. Midlife crisis, huh? Like that’s an excuse, anyway. And also the first time I knew this happened was fifteen years ago. You were in your late twenties. I wasn’t wrong. This is just who you are. You’re a liar and a manipulator, and guess what, I’m an idiot for letting it happen, but I’ll say it again. I don’t care. It’s over. We’re over. What I do care about is this,” I say, showing him the bank statement that shows the money he put into Mia’s account.
“Do you wanna tell me what this is?” I ask. He looks over the bank statement. “And this,” I tap my finger on the thousand-dollar transfer that he does not know that I know was to Caleb.
“Why do you have my bank records? This isn’t our joint account. This is my private account! I don’t have to answer to you about anything.” He pushes it away.
“Oh, a second ago, you still loved me and people work these things out, but now you don’t have to answer to me about matters concerning our daughter?”
“Why do you have this?” he repeats, a muscle in his jaw twitching.
“Paige followed you. Did you really think she was obsessed with you? She told me you might actually be stupid enough to think that, but she was just trying to get all this, and you fell for it. You really can’t help yourself, can you? Even with my closest friend.”
“Jesus Christ.” He stands up. He goes to a laundry basket full of clean laundry I was planning to fold yesterday before my life crumbled, and he pulls on a white T-shirt as he starts to head out of the room.
“You want me out, I’m out.”
“Paige is going to the police, so before you go you might want to listen,” I say to his back.
He turns and laughs. “I know you wish it were, Cora, but last I checked, infidelity isn’t a criminal offense.”
“You transferred a thousand dollars to Caleb the day before he died. You have his number in your phone, and there are calls between you. You argued in his driveway. You have a meeting with him marked in your day planner, and you got the car fixed right after the hit-and-run. Is that enough probable cause for you?” I say, feeling like a lawyer on a bad court drama, but I have gone over these words in my head all night, and I need to see his face. I need an explanation. He turns, and his shoulders drop. He lets out a loud puff of breath and shakes his head in disbelief.
“Are you out of your mind? Mia hit a pole with the car at—”
“That’s the story. Did you pay her to say that?”
“Oh, my God. Are you—Ask her! What is the matter with you? This is why Paige has been all over me, to string together all this...bullshit to try to...I don’t even know what! This is—I got the car fixed for Mia. End of story!” he screams so loud, I’m sure Nicola can hear. I hope the other neighbors can’t, but I don’t tell him to keep his voice down. In fact, I meet his volume.
“End of story? How about the part where you give a thousand dollars to a kid you say you’ve never talked to and who’s now dead? How about that?” I scream back. He takes an exaggerated breath and lets it out slowly, as if I’m some unreasonable, nagging wife—an annoyance to be dealt with. He walks past me and sits on the couch in the living room. I follow him and stand in the arched doorframe, waiting for him to say something.
“That can all be explained,” he says, very quietly now.
“Good, because Paige is taking this all to the police. That’s not a threat from me. I had nothing to do with this. She brought it all to me. So if you can explain, you probably should, because she’s going either way.”
“She’s trying to point to me as a murderer because I talked to Caleb?” he says defiantly. I see that he’s trying to make his tone sound dismissive, but it makes him sound scared.
“He saw you in a car with some woman. Getting a blow job. When I told Paige about our prenup, she thought you paid him off to stay quiet ’cause you had a lot to lose. Motive. Then all of this,” I say, sitting across from him. His head is in his hands, and he’s just slowly shaking it back and forth. When he lifts his head, I think I see tears in his eyes. I think I hear him whisper,This is not happening, but he’s mumbling, and his eyes are wild.
“He sold pot,” he says. “I bought... I had his number for when I wanted a little... It wasn’t a big deal. Just a bit of fun now and then. That’s it. God, just fucking pot. And yes, fine. Mia saw me stash something in the garage and said she wouldn’t say anything. I did not ask her to hide it from you. She just said it wasn’t a biggie, and so yeah, whatever. I gave her some money... I appreciated her being cool about it. That’s it. But Paige going to the cops, that’s so—” He slams his hand on the coffee table. “That’s so Paige is what it is. She points the finger at everyone. She won’t be taken seriously. It’s ridiculous!”
“So when she does, and she will, you’re going to tell them that you bought a thousand dollars’ worth of pot from him. Um, really?” I say, feeling outside of my body somehow because this is all so surreal.
“Okay, Cora. You wanna know? Fine. I got some harder stuff.”
“Harder like what? Now you’re a crackhead. Seems fitting, as nothing surprises me anymore.”
“No. It was coke a couple of times. God, you act like nobody can have a little fun now and then, like it’s some—”
“Crime!” I finish whatever he was gonna say. “’Cause it is! So you smoked a thousand dollars’ worth of coke by yourself?”
“Jesus.” He shakes his head and rolls his eyes. “You don’t smoke coke.”
“Oh, that’s the part you’re grabbing on to. You’re finding an opportunity to correct me rather than telling me what the actual fuck you were doing with athousanddollars’ worth—”
“Okay. Just stop! Yes, fine. God! I’m a piece of shit, fine. I was hanging out with a woman, and she liked the recreational—ugh!—it was just a couple times. I—” He tries to explain, and I just start laughing. I can’t even believe how much more absurd this gets with every new thing I learn about him.
