I smile wearily at him. “My whole life has been a trauma,” I remind him. “Tonight wasn’t my first rodeo.”
He stands back, slipping his hands into his pockets, shaking the fabric of his sweatpants nervously. “Okay. But just so you know, I’ll be keeping watch from the front of the property in case your husband turns up.”
As if Henry would be stupid enough to pull straight into the parking lot for anyone to see. But I don’t say that. I just nod and give him my thanks, desperate to lie down.
As he walks away, Bart dances around his legs, looking up at him adoringly. “Bart!” I call. He stops, cocking his head at me, then dashes after the handsome investigator, smitten.
“Stupid dog,” I mutter, knowing I can never stay mad at Bart, the same as Myrtle could never stay mad at Ed. I thought they were supposed to beloyalanimals, but I can’t blame him. There is something unabashedly charming and boyish about the Charleston cop when you get past that crusty exterior. Maybe it’s his larger-than-life heart, the kind of compassion that makes a man drive across the country to protect a woman he barely knows from her demonic husband. I’m doubly glad I saved Emil now. Betweensaving him and taking down the Strangler, I’ve left the world a little bit better than I found it.
Inside, I close and lock the door, leaning back against it with the smallest of smiles. For a while, I just close my eyes and breathe. When I open them, I think I feel her in the room with me, a quiet presence. Maybe I’m forgiven. “We did it, Myrtle,” I say out loud. “We got him.”
I push off the door and slip the robe off my shoulders, slumping it over the back of a chair. My eyes fall on the table where the brown paper bag full of Spanish berries had been sitting, but I don’t see it. Knowing traces up my back, from my ankles to my scalp, setting my skin alive with electric fear. I have only a second to register its meaning.
“Looking for this?” he asks.
When I turn, he is standing with his back to me across the living room, staring out the un-shuttered windows. He turns slowly and holds the bag up, now open.
“You seem to have a thing for berries,” he says flatly. “I never knew.”
I swallow the bile threatening to rise, and my throat aches from it. “There’s a lot you never knew about me,” I say quietly. I will not give him the satisfaction of a reaction.
“Apparently.” He tosses the bag onto a nearby table and despite myself, I flinch. “I underestimated you, Piers. Forgive me.” There is a mocking note beneath the words. He must realize how much I longed to hear something of the kind for the last two years. It delights him to dangle it before me now, knowing he doesn’t mean it, knowing I know it, too.
“What are you doing here, Henry?” I want to hear him say it.
“I’m your husband,” he returns. “Aren’t I?”
I shake my head. “Not anymore. Piers is dead. I killed her myself. I’m not the woman you remember.”
“You belong to me!” he spits, the words flying from his lips on a spray of saliva.
I shut my eyes against them. When I open them, he is still there, still fuming, still ready to pounce. “I belong to no one,” I say pointedly. “Not you. Not the venery. I am mine and mine alone.”
The strangeness of the word catches him off guard. I see his composure slip, something closer to shock peeks through the rage. He is trying to maintain control in a world he does not recognize, and he knows it. “What are you talking about?” He circles toward me slowly. “You’re not making any sense.”
“I told you, there’s a lot that you don’t know,” I repeat.
His head cocks the way a bird’s does when it’s listening for worms underground. “Like what?”
“Like the fact that there’s a room full of sheriff’s deputies three-hundred feet from here.”
He smiles like it’s a joke. “My funny wife. You lie.”
I glare at him. “Do I?”
“Why are they here, then?” he asks coyly, enjoying the game, thinking he’s still a step ahead.
“To investigate a murder,” I tell him plainly.
That stops him in his tracks. His confidence falters for a moment, the look on his face contorting.
“A murderIcommitted,” I continue, just to watch him squirm. Now it is my turn to begin circling. I step into the living room, moving away from him and toward the back wall, the windows and table where the bryony berries wait.
“I don’t believe it,” he tells me. “You’re too weak. Too pathetic. You don’t have it in you.”
I laugh. I can’t help myself. The irony is just too rich to ignore. The sound unnerves him. “Oh, Henry, you can be so incredibly blind where your ego is concerned. I’ve killed four men since I left your side. At first, it was hard for me to swallow, too. But now, it’s becoming second nature.” I pause beside the sofa and meet his glare, leaning against it as I tell him, “I made one of them actually shit himself first. I take a little pride in that to be honest.”
His eyes narrow and his head shakes, sending wispy blondhairs floating on the charged air. He doesn’t know what to say. His speechlessness empowers me, makes me bold with triumph.
