Allison tucked her hair behind her ear impatiently. “What did she say? Was she horrified? What restaurant is she at? We’ll go pick her up.”
Caroline bit her lip, another gesture that indicated extreme agitation. Caroline didn’t have bad habits. She froze bad habits with the force of her will.
“She’s not at a restaurant. She’s at Damien’s apartment.”
Jamie clapped her hand over her mouth. “Caroline! She’s at his apartment and you told her that he’s a murderer?”
“Well, I didn’t know when I told her!” Caroline’s cheeks flushed an angry red.
“Okay, this could be bad.” Allison’s long legs ate up the living room as she paced back and forth. “What did Mandy say?”
“Nothing. She just hung up on me.”
“Well, she must not think he did it. And she knows him better than we do. She’s probably right.” Jamie looked at both of them. “Right?” She didn’t want to think that the man who’d shown such interest, such concern for Mandy could be a cold-blooded murderer. “They didn’t indict him, after all.”
“Because they didn’t have any evidence, not because he didn’t do it!” Caroline dropped the phone on the couch. “Damn, I’ve made a mess out of this. What if she confronts him and he...does something to her?”
Jamie didn’t think that was likely, really, she was sure he wouldn’t. But what if he did?
“Oh, shoot. We have to call her back!”
Mandy’s phone rang again as she sat heavily down on Damien’s bed. A glance at it showed it was Caroline again. She turned it to vibrate and ignored it.
Damien was staring at her. “What’s the matter? You look all flushed. Is talking about a nursery here too soon? Am I rushing you?”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she whispered, though she supposed she knew the answer. It was something of a miracle that Damien had shared with her what he had. But she wished she had known the full truth about Jessica right from the start, because it explained so much.
“Tell you what?” A cautiousness slid over his face.
“That you were arrested for killing Jessica.”
Shock sprang into his eyes. “Who the hell told you that?”
“Caroline. Just now. Apparently she read a newspaper article.”
He turned away from her, paced the room, voice bitter. “And do you think I did it?”
That startled her. “No. Of course not. Absolutely not! But why didn’t you tell me when you talked about Jessica last night? It must have been so painful for you...so horrible to be accused like that.”
She could only scratch the surface of imaginings of what he had been through. He had loved his wife. She had been killed, after they’d argued. And then in that intense, soul-shattering grief, he had been arrested for doing such a heinous act.
His thumb twitched, but he stopped walking. “Horrible? Oh, yeah, it was horrible. That’s why I didn’t tell you, Mandy. How do I find the words to tell you that the cops thought I followed my wife, angry that she’d spent too much money, angry that she flirted with other men, and I closed my fingers around her neck and squeezed the life out of her?”
His voice cracked.
“Damien...” Even she could hear the pity in her own voice.
“Don’t.” He raised his hand. “Please don’t feel sorry for me. I saw that so many times at first, the deep pity people felt for me. They meant well, but it was smothering to look at so many faces and never feel normal, never have them understand that my life was over just as sure as Jessica’s. Then the looks turned, and they started to suspect, started to question, started to remember all the times that Jessica and I had fought, how she’d complained about my stinginess, how she ran around with other men, and really who could blame a husband for being angry about that? But murder...it was there in all their eyes, in the cold, hard stare of the detectives, in the prosecutor. They all thought I did it.”
Damien clamped his mouth shut to stem the words. He hadn’t meant to tell her this, any of this, ever. But he couldn’t stop it all from spewing out of his mouth. “I didn’t tell you because there’s nothing to tell. It’s ugly, it’s bitter and hateful, and it’s thankfully over. But if you want, I’ll tell you all the evidence they supposedly had against me, and I’ll tell you why they didn’t indict if that would make you feel better. Tell you all aboutforensic evidence and how my semen was found in her, and my skin under her fingernails, because before our argument we had sex—I mean, how crazy is that? A man sleeping with his own wife?”
It still rankled that they had used that against him, his desire and love for Jessica. That the only thing that had saved him had been a lack of conclusive evidence, a few stray fibers on her body that didn’t match anything he owned, video footage of her leaving the bar with another man, and a damn good defense attorney.
“I don’tneedto hear any of that,” she said in a quiet voice. “I only need to hear what you’re willing to tell, what you want to share with me. But if we’re going to spend the rest of our lives together, which I’m sincerely hoping we will, then you need to trust me with the ugliness as well as the good things.”
Her dignity, her calm, controlled tone, jerked him out of his ranting. His shoulders fell and he leaned back against the wall, then sank to the floor, too tired to stand anymore. It was just as exhausting now as it had been three years ago. He wasn’t over a damn thing. “Christ, Mandy, I didn’t want to ever bring you into any of this. You deserve better than this.”
“Better than what? A man who loves me? A man who loves my child?” She stood up and came toward him, dropping onto the floor in front of him. “It’s not your fault, damn it. You didn’t do anything. You didn’t kill Jessica and it doesn’t matter what those cops thought. You know the truth here.” She jabbed her finger in his chest, right over his heart. “AndIknow the truth.”
