Page 23 of The Wife He Accused

"I do." For the first time there was something like urgency in it. "Melody, I —"

"You don't. Not when it matters. And I have been telling myself that the feeling of being almost-believed in my own marriage was something I was imagining, because the alternative was too lonely to live with. Last night you proved I wasn't imagining it. And this afternoon, when Rivera handed you the file, you proved something worse."

"What?”

"That the way to get my husband to believe me is to have another man tell him I'm telling the truth. And I'm not going to spend the rest of my life in a marriage where that is the mechanism."

He was looking at her the way a man looked at a thing he had been holding and had not noticed slipping out of his grasp until it was already on the floor.

"I apologized," he said finally.

"I know."

"I told you I was wrong."

"I know."

"I came here as soon as I could."

"I know you did, Alexander. And I am telling you that theas soon as I couldis the part of this I am going to remember for the rest of my life. Becauseas soon as I couldwas after Rivera.As soon as I couldwas after the file.As soon as I couldwas notas soon as you told me.I told you in the suite. I told you with my own mouth. And you did not come home last night. You did not come home at all. You called Agnes and you told her to pack a bag for me, and then you came here because Rivera had given you permission to believe me."

He opened his mouth. Closed it.

There was no structured response for this. No clean rebuttal. The deal was not on the table. The deal had never been on the table. The deal had been a thing he had drafted in the car on the way over and she was refusing to sign it.”

“I’m not coming home," she said. "I want a lawyer. I want you to have your lawyer call mine. I want this to be clean, and I want it to be fast, and I want you to understand that I am not saying any of this in the heat of a bad night. I’m saying it because I finally know what I have been living inside of, and I am not going to live inside of it for another day."

A long moment. Then something in him seemed to shift. He nodded once.

"Very well," he said. "I think you're making a mistake."

"I know you do."

Another pause. He looked at her, as if waiting for something. A change. A softening. The closing sentence he had walked in expecting to deliver.

It did not come.

He turned, opened the door, and left.

The apartment was quiet again.

Melody stood in the middle of the room, exactly where he had left her, her hands still at her sides.

For a moment nothing happened.

Then, slowly, the shape of the day — of the hope she had been carrying so carefully since morning — collapsed inward on itself.

She pressed her hand flat against the cold glass and made herself a small private promise, the way her mother had used to make herself promises in the mornings after bad nights.Not tonight,she told herself.Tonight you don't cry. Tonight you stand at the window and you let him drive away. Tomorrow you can cry. Tomorrow, after you've called a lawyer, after you've told Angelica, after you've drunk the coffee she is goingto make you. Tomorrow is allowed to be the crying day. Tonight is the standing day.

She kept her hand on the glass.

She did not cry.

CHAPTER 8

ALEXANDER

Alexander went home.