AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She considered the suggestion, finally nodded, and said, “Okay.”
I followed her into the house.
Jayne already had a pot of coffee going, so she poured me some, refilled her own cup, and we sat down at the kitchen table. She looked particularly fragile. Her chin trembled ever so slightly, the mug shaking as she set it in front of me.
“I should have told you,” I said.
Jayne’s eyes were moist, and it was a safe bet she’d been crying.
“When we started going out, I kept thinking, I should tell you everything, and the more time that went by, the more difficult it was for me. Because the closer we got to each other, the more there was to lose.”
I wasn’t lying about that.
“I figured, if I told you everything, about Brie’s disappearance, about the police investigation, how Detective Hardy considered me the prime suspect for a long time, I’d lose you. And I wouldn’t have blamed you for bailing. If things had been reversed, I don’t know what I would have done. I know I’d have felt the way you do right now. Duped. Betrayed. Lied to. And this isn’t much of a defense, but I don’t think I ever lied to you. Not outright. But by omission, yeah, I plead guilty to that.”
Jayne had said nothing through all this.
“The thing is, you’re the one who saved me,” I said. “I was lost. I was coming out of a pretty low point, but I was still struggling up that hill. If I could have had some answers, if what had happened to Brie had been resolved, I might have been able to put my life together. I’d been drinking a lot. Unable to focus on work. Greg, you know, my friend, was with me the night Brie went missing. We’d gone up to our places on Sorrow Bay. I told you about that cabin I had, the one I ended up selling a few years ago because I needed the money when I wasn’t getting much work. I was spending too much time in my own head. Drinking. A lot. I was pretty depressed there for a while. Spent a lot of time just sitting on my ass, trying to find the energy to get back on my feet again.”
I took a breath, and a sip of the coffee. I picked up a paper napkin on the table and tore off a tiny corner of it, started balling it up with my fingers.
“Took me about four years to start coming out of it, to get my life back into some kind of order. I changed my name, legally. In this part of Connecticut, people remembered. If I said I was Andrew Mason, people would wrinkle their foreheads and say, hey, aren’t you the guy who killed his wife? What do you say to something like that? So I became Andrew Carville. Carville was my mother’s last name, so at least I was hanging on to something from the family, you know?”
My mouth was dry. I thought maybe if I paused Jayne would have something to say, but she showed no signs of ending the silence. So I had more coffee and kept on going.
“And going back a bit,” I said, “there was the matter of the house. When Brie and I bought it, the idea was that we’d fix it up. It needed a lot of work, but the basic structure was sound. I was going to redo pretty much everything. Knock out some walls, make the kitchen bigger, modernize the bathrooms. It would have taken a lot of time, but we got the house for a good price and whatever I didn’t know how to do myself, which wasn’t much, I knew the best people to do it. But after Brie vanished, I didn’t have any enthusiasm for anything, let alone fixing up that house, maybe flipping it for a profit. And then there was the fact that everyone knew where I lived. For a long time, I’d have reporters waiting to talk to me when I came out the front door. Gawkers, driving by, pointing, you know, hey, that’s the house that lady disappeared from.”
I set the pea-sized paper ball on my thumb and flicked it. It flew across the table and sailed across the room, landing just in front of the fridge. Jayne snatched the rest of the shredded napkin away from me and wadded it up into her fist. She did not look amused.
I went on with my story.
“So I put the house on the market, got what I could for it. And the new owners, they decided it made more sense to rip it down and start over, which, to be honest, was probably the smartest thing to do. And there was a part of me that was relieved, you know? If I happened to drive down that street, which I went to great pains not to do, at least I wouldn’t see the place where Brie and I had lived.”
I sighed. “And I guess Detective Hardy told you about Natalie Simmons.”
Jayne’s eyebrows popped up, as good a clue as any that Hardy had not, in fact, brought up the subject of Natalie Simmons.
Shit.
“Oh,” I said. “I’m that guy digging a hole and thinks the best way to get out is to keep on digging.” I tried a weak laugh, but if I thought Jayne was going to respond with a chuckle I was reading the room wrong.
I continued: “I need to back up a bit. Brie and I had gone through a bad patch. You know they say finances are the biggest cause of problems in a marriage. Anyway, it was how I made a living that was a source of stress for us. Fixing up homes, flipping them, never settling in one place. Brie was done with it, and I was too dumb at the time to appreciate why. We were hardly talking to each other, and that was around the time I met Natalie. It wasn’t a big thing, and it didn’t last long. A little after that, Brie kind of cheated on me, too. Once. I don’t know how, exactly, but we came to our senses, talked it through, forgave each other, and tried to move on. And I said that last house, if she wanted to stay there when it was fixed up, we would. If she didn’t, the next house would be permanent. We came through it, but we hurt each other along the way.”
I had a sip of cold coffee before continuing.
“No matter what Detective Hardy might have thought at the time, my lapse had nothing to do with Brie’s disappearance. The detective tried to turn it into a big deal. This Natalie woman, it wasn’t serious. At least, not for me. Maybe it meant more to her, but I broke it off and that was that.”
Jayne remained mute.
I pushed the chair back, stood up, paced the kitchen. I wanted Jayne to react. I wanted her to get angry. I wanted her to start screaming at me, throw something. She had every right. But she just sat there, watching me.
“Look, I should have told you. There’s nothing I can do about that. I fucked up. You deserved to know. I’ll understand if you can’t excuse that. I’m not going to ask for forgiveness. I don’t deserve it. All I can tell you is that you’re the best thing that’s happened to me in the last six years. You brought me back from the edge. Maybe that sounds like bullshit, like I’m laying it on thick so you won’t walk out that door and take Tyler with you. But it’s the truth.”
I put a hand to my forehead, stopped my pacing, and leaned my back up against the fridge, knocking a couple of magnets to the floor.
“I’ve got nuthin’ else,” I said. “Christ, say something.”
Maybe now, I thought. Maybe she’d ask me now.
