“Not since your house on Saturday.”
This is a lie. My sister is lying to me, and I don’t know why. And I can’t say it to her. I should. I should just ask her. We’re close. We always have been. But I can’t make myself say it.
Instead, I say goodbye, and sit on my bedroom floor staring at the receipt.
58
Jon
Wednesday
It’s Wednesday evening and Jon is sitting in the car in the driveway, unable to summon the will to go into the house. His mind goes back to this morning, leaving for work—Susan pretending to be asleep and him pretending he believed her. Is this how it will end, he wonders? Avoiding each other until one of them finally calls time on the marriage?
You already called time on the marriage, says a voice in his head,or what else would you consider an affair?
He hadn’t considered it at all, that was the problem. He is a horrific cliché, and he knows it. Post-partum wife, newborn baby, and he’s off finding himself a girlfriend. If hehadto explain, he’d call it a panicked response to fatherhood. A reaction to the baby-shaped permanent seal on his relationship. You can leave a marriage, but it’s a lot harder to leave a child. And the stupid thing is, he neverwantedto leave the marriage. He loved Susan and still does, and if he could turn back time and never meet Savannah, he would. Right now, he can’t think of a single thing he regrets more than the affair, something that was little more than a knee-jerk response to Bella’s arrival; a need to prove to himself that he was still youngand still had it. God, he makes himself sick.Not sick enough to stop though, was it?Nope. That’s the harsh reality. If Savannah was alive, he’d still be sleeping with her. But Savannah is dead and the police are investigating and his wife is caught up in it too. How much longer until she knows it was Savannah he was seeing? And how long before the gardaí come knocking on his door?
On autopilot, as he’s done a hundred times since last week, he retrieves his second phone from under the driver’s seat and reads Savannah’s final text:
I’ve had it up to here with ALL of you. My ex-husband is being a PRICK, turning up at my house because I’m with someone new, then I find out you’re MARRIED. Then you leave me with that bitch in my own home, jesus christ you have literally driven me to drink. She’s gone btw and if she ever comes back or you ever come back, I’m calling the police. I’m deleting your number. DO NOT EVER CONTACT ME AGAIN, YOU PRICK.
He wonders again about his anonymous call to the guards—why hadn’t they acted on it? Why was Albie Byrne, Savannah’s ex, giving newspaper interviews instead of garda interviews? Maybe because Jon called anonymously. Or maybe because he didn’t give Albie’s name? He hadn’t known Albie’s name at the time, in fairness. He’d seen Savannah’s wedding photo, but never noticed that the husband was the same guy as the one on election posters—now ten years older and twenty pounds heavier. Maybe it’s worth trying the guards again, but this time giving Albie’s name, he decides, hitting the number for Blackrock garda station on the pay-as-you-go phone he’d used to text Savannah.
“I have information about the Savannah Holmes murder,” he says as soon as the call is answered. “I can’t say who I am, but I know for a fact that her ex-husband, Albie Byrne, was harassing her right before her death. You need to question him.”
The garda tries to say something, but Jon keeps talking. “I called about this already last Wednesday, but I didn’t know who her ex was, so I didn’t give his name. I’ve since found out it was Albie Byrne, the politician. You have to question him; he was harassing her because she was—” He stops himself, and disconnects.
That should do it.
• • •
Outside, as he opens the car door, he spots Leesa walking up their driveway. Leesa is his least favorite of the three O’Donnell sisters and he suspects she knows it, though he works hard to disguise it. He wonders if he can slip back into the car and hide, before she launches into one of her streams of consciousness about a film he must see or a wine he must try or a thing she saw on Facebook. But no, she’s level with the car now and he’s not escaping without a chat.
“Hey, Jon, just popping in to see how Susan’s doing.” Leesa smiles warmly. She has no idea what he really thinks…She’s actually the best-looking of the three sisters—more athletic than Susan but curvier than Greta, and her golden hair gives her a fun, sunshiny look. If she talked a bit less…Jon shakes himself. This is exactly how it started with Savannah and he needs to cop on. He tunes in again to what Leesa is saying.
“…she was really stressed about the sunburn. Has it gone down? I told her it would. It’s not the end of the world. When we were kids, nobody knew about sun damage. We used to slather ourselves in baby oil, for god’s sake!”
Sunburn? Jon has no idea what she’s talking about, but then he didn’t see Susan last night, not properly. She went for a three-hour walk and crept into bed smelling of wine. She could have been burned head to toe and he wouldn’t have known.
“Yeah,” he says. “It’s fine now.”
“Good. Poor little mite. Sure she won’t remember a thing anyway.”
Leesa isn’t making a whole lot of sense, but she rarely does. He smiles agreement rather than asking questions; it’s quicker that way.
“When I had her last week, I didn’t even think to put sun cream on her, though I didn’t have her out in the garden, so I suppose that’s fine. And it wasn’t that hot on Wednesday anyway, was it?”
Is she waiting for a reply? Jon nods, feeling lost. “I’d better head inside.” Something stops him then. “Wait, Leesa, do you mean Bella? You were minding Bella on Wednesday?”
“Yeah, while Susan was at physio. Don’t tell her what I said about forgetting sun cream.”
Physio. That stops him cold.
“Are you sure she said ‘physio’?”
“Yeah, she said she thought she was all done but the pain flared up again. I remember when Aoife was born—”
Jon cuts her off. “And did you say Wednesday? You’re sure?”
