He sighed. Or maybe it was a heavyhearted laugh. “Who are you?” He sounded genuinely curious.
I leaned my head back against my desk. “I don’t think I can tell you. Not yet.”
“Why not?”
“I want to.” I raked my hair back, my nails dragging over the phantom itch in my scalp. “I just… need to clear some things up first.”
“Are you in some kind of trouble?”
“I don’t want to be,” I said, fighting back tears. “I keep trying to do the right thing, and somehow it keeps backfiring.” All I had wanted was a chance to hold on to my kids. To prove to Steven that he was wrong about me. But what if he wasn’t?
“Did this Mickler guy—the one who went missing,” he asked gently, “did he hurt you?”
“No,” I said. But I thought about all those names on his phone. “Not me.”
“Did you hurt him?” There was no insinuation of guilt. No condemnation or judgment. Maybe there should have been.
“No. But I doubt anyone would believe me.”
“Maybe if you tell me what happened, I could help.” He sounded so earnest. So honest. I wondered if it would feel like confessing at church, to pour all my ugly truths into the phone to him. I wished I could utter a few Hail Marys and the rest of the world would absolve me the way Julian seemed to want to.
“I can’t. This thing I’m tangled up in… It’s complicated.” It was wrong of me to drag him into this. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called—”
“Why did you?” he asked before I could hang up.
The question pulled me up short. I picked at the fraying knee of my jeans. “I guess I just wanted you to know that I’m not a terrible person. And I never wanted to mislead you. If things weren’t so screwed up right now, I would tell you my name. I’d take you up on that offer to go out for pizza and tell you everything over a beer. But…”
“It’s complicated,” he said softly. “I know.”
“Do you believe me?” I closed my eyes and braced for his answer, surprised by the wash of relief I felt when he finally spoke.
“Yeah, I do.”
“Why?”
“Ever heard of Hanlon’s razor?” I tipped my head back and closed my eyes. The low timbre of his voice was even and calm, a balm on my frazzled nerves. “There’s an old saying that goes something like… ‘Let us not attribute to malice and cruelty what may be referred to less criminal motives.’ I make it a point never to assume the worst about people.”
“Maybe you should.”
“Sometimes people just make mistakes.”
We both fell quiet. I wondered if he would feel the same wayif he knew the depths of the mistakes we were talking about. If he knew Harris Mickler’s body was buried at the bottom of them. “I should probably get rid of this phone and never call you again.”
“Is that what you want?”
“No.”
“Then keep it.” It was the voice of a lawyer giving counsel. There was something reassuring in it, something solid I could hold on to. “I still don’t know your name,” he reminded me. “This could be anyone’s number in my phone. The detective’s only interested in some woman named Theresa, and since your name isn’t Theresa, there’s no reason for me to tell him about you. Is there?”
I swallowed the painful lump in my throat. “No.”
“Promise me if you need help, you’ll call.”
I wished I could tell him this wasn’t as simple as a bad alternator. That I was in way over my head, and it was going to take more than a set of jumper cables and a wet wipe to fix the mess I’d made.
“I’ll be okay,” I said as I disconnected the call. I only wished I believed it.
CHAPTER 33
