Not death. The detective still talked as if Patrick could walk through the door, sit down, and offer an explanation.
The bones destroyed that fantasy.
The FBI agent picked up the bag and studied the bracelet. “Is this yours, Ms. Richards? I mean, how many women named Marni are there in Sleepy Hollow?”
The detective answered. “Just one.”
The agent touching something so private and personal. A memory I stored deep in the shadows, walled off in my mind after years of grieving. The one I dragged out when the pain crested and loneliness thumped too hard for me to sleep.
“The bracelet belongs to Ms. Richards,” my attorney explained. “She was a friend of the Tanner family and especially close to Victoria Tanner. They spent a lot of time together at both Tanner homes.”
The lawyerly response aimed for the neutral space between denial and arrest, but the carefulness of it damned me. I had to get out in front of the allegations. To prove I had nothing to hide even though I did. “It’s mine.”
The attorney’s leg shifted under the table until it leaned against mine in a not-so-subtle reminder to shut up. Understood and ignored.
“But it’s not a friendship bracelet, is it?” The detective pretended to take a closer look. “I admit I’m a practical guy, but this sounds like a pretty romantic inscription.”
The FBI agent nodded. “I’d be devastated if I lost something so special.”
Breathe in for four. Hold for seven. Exhale for eight.
The breathing exercise worked that time. Their practiced show didn’t make me want to cough up any new information.
The FBI agent continued. “After all, you wouldn’t give this to your wife’s friend as a thank-you or even for a birthday. This meant far more.”
Seven months. That’s how long we’d been together the last time. On and off for years before that. The bracelet was a symbol of a future. A promise that we weren’t once again rekindling a secret relationship. This time we were starting something new.
He’d given a speech at West Point. We used the event as an excuse to escape to the Berkshires. He surprised me with the bracelet and the name of the divorce attorney he planned to usewith Victoria. I both rejoiced and panicked but the pain of betraying Victoria didn’t trump the love I had for Patrick... no matter how hard I wanted it to.
Back during the years when the town whispered about Patrick sleeping with Hanna, he’d been sleeping with me. I asked but Patrick never directly answered my questions about if he’d ever had sex with Hanna. He let me think maybe. He had no problem using her as cover and as a way to get a jealous rise out of me.
He let Victoria aim her anger at Hanna, which left me out of the firing line. A choice I regretted now but at the time the thrill of our illicit relationship fed something deep inside me. A pulsing need I didn’t even know I possessed.
“This is the kind of bracelet that might be a Valentine’s Day gift. Something I’d get my wife for an anniversary.” The detective continued to examine the bracelet through the bag.
A thin strand of alternating diamonds and sapphires. A small sum to Patrick. Everything to me.
Patrick started out as my friend’s hot husband. Tall and sure. Charming and brilliant. Flirty with a killer smile. A man so different from the forgetful, weak playboy husband Victoria whined about as lacking drive. The dissonance had me checking in, spending more time at the house, watching him. Until the day I noticed him looking back.
He had this ability to make big ideas sound relatable. I could listen to him for hours, but the sexiest part is how he listened to me. With him, I could say or do anything. I felt beautiful and free. Only the guilt drove us to shaky ground.
“Did you report the jewelry missing? Or was it stolen?” the detective asked.
“I never...” Every explanation sounded wrong in my head. “I lost it.”
The attorney looked at me and nodded. I knew he hoped I’d stop answering and stay silent.
What I really wanted was to grab the bag and slip the bracelet on. Let the platinum warm my skin. But I couldn’t. I knew this game. The detective and the FBI agent bantered back and forth, pretending not to know what every person in the room already knew.
“A romantic gift from your best friend’s husband.” The FBI agent had suggested something similar before but targeted the words now. “I bet Victoria didn’t like that. Did she know the truth about you and Patrick?”
Victoria. People saw her as too... everything. Pretty. Smug. Wealthy. All unfair. They judged her based on her last name, which she threw around at first because she could but later out of desperation. I saw through the façade because I watched her cry over Aubrey’s spiraling behavior. I knew Victoria loved her family and yearned for her life to morph into the perfect picture she presented to the public.
Victoria had an idealized vision of what her marriage and motherhood should be and when reality came up short and all that money didn’t solve her problems, her frustration changed her. She went from craving stability to demanding more, thinking if she found that one missing piece she’d fix the dysfunction. I understood. We shared similar histories. We knew what it was like to stand on the outside, begging to get in.
Even before I had any feelings for Patrick I pleaded with her toleave him so she could outrun the unhappiness slowly overtaking her world. Her sense of being penned in and trapped never went away. I assumed they’d both be happier if they were free, but I stopped offering marital advice when I fell for him.
I was no longer qualified or worthy of being Victoria’s confidante. My life became a nonstop push and pull between wanting her to find peace and wanting him to choose me. Two states that could never work together.
