"Come home if you want to." I stepped in, hot breath all in his face. "Just know I can't be held responsible for what might happen to you in your sleep. I'd stay here, if I were you."
His mouth fell open, then he glared at me. "Youthreateningme, Alyssa?"
I tried to laugh. "Baby, you don’t know what a threat is yet. But don’t worry, by the time I'm through with your ass, you'll look back at tonight and think of it as thegoodpart."
I gathered Micah up in my arms, walked us out into the night, and I didn't look back. That, out of everything,is the part I'd take back if I could. That I didn't turn around and see his face one more time, when he was still only my cheating husband and not a dead man attached to a headline.
Two dayslater Malik came home, and we spent the next two weeks in a cold war of not speaking. He was in and out, timing it so he'd only turn his key once he was sure I'd be asleep, then crash in the guest room, gone again before I woke.
Every cell in me wanted to pack Micah and go to one of my sisters'. But I knew you don't walk out of the marital home when you're the one with the case. Leaving looks like abandonment, staying looks like standing your ground. So I stayed, and I hated every day of it.
One night I sat at the kitchen table working on my exit. A list of divorce attorneys to call for consults, a list of known assets, reasons why full custody was non-negotiable. Then came the knock.
It was 10:07 on a Tuesday. Two officers, a man and a woman, stood under my porch light, and my stomach was on the floor before I got the door open.
"Mrs. Alyssa Chambers?"
“Carter,” I corrected, my mouth suddenly dry. “What's this about?”
“Ma'am, we need to speak with you about your husband, Malik Chambers. Can we come in?”
I stepped back and opened the door all the way. My heart began racing. “Is he hurt? Was there an accident?”
They stepped inside and walked to my living room, positioning themselves on either side of the coffee table.
“Mrs. Carter,” the male officer said gently. “Please, sit down.”
“Just tell me,” I snapped, as panic began to crawl up my body. “Is he hurt?”
“Ma'am, we’re very sorry to have to tell you this,” he said. “Your husband was killed this evening.”
“Killed?” It came out as a whisper. “What do you mean? This has to be a mistake.”
“He was shot, ma'am. In a home in Brookside.”
My brain couldn’t compute what I was being told. “I-I don't understand. He's a banker. He doesn't have enemies. This has to be a mistake.”
The officers exchanged looks, then the female officer spoke gently, gesturing for me to sit down. I wouldn’t.
“There's no mistake, ma'am. The shooting was carried out by the homeowner. He returned home and discovered your husband…” She cleared her throat. “…with his wife, and?—”
“With hiswife?” I cut her off, stupefied.
“Yes, ma'am. The incident happened around five in the evening. The residence belongs to Ryan and Rebecca Marsh,” she said. “Mr. Marsh opened fire on both of them. Mrs. Marsh is in stable condition. Your husband died at the scene. We’re very sorry for your loss.”
Rebecca Marsh?
My legs gave out and I sank onto my couch. My head ringing, the room was spinning. My hands were shaking so violently I had to clasp them together. Somewhere far under the ringing, one clear thought surfaced and would not go back down.That’s not her name. The woman at the hotel wasn’t named Rebecca.
I sat there with two strangers watching me and understood, all at once, that I had been wrong about the size of it. That Danielle had not beenthesecret. Danielle had beenonesecret. I recognized the name. Rebecca Marsh was a senior underwriter at Malik's bank. I had met her at their holiday party months ago. She’d complimented my dress.
As the officers continued to talk, their voices bleeding into a high-pitched buzz, realization washed over me. In the space of a singlebreath, I had become a widow, and in the next, realized that I had never actually been a wife.
Malik always loved an audience,so it fit that his funeral was standing-room only. I sat in the front pew in a tailored black dress with Micah on my lap while a parade of colleagues and cousins and church members filed past to tell me what an extraordinary man my husband had been. I nodded and thanked them, because the truth was a mouthful of glass I wasn’t going to spit at their grieving.
After the service, I found myself at my house with my three sisters, my mother, and my brother Raschad, who’d flown in after a game in LA. The NBA season was in full swing, and he'd had to get special permission from the general manager to leave to attend the funeral.
Micah slept in Tamika’s arms, worn out by a day he was too young to understand.
