“Because he’s wanted for a wrongful death in Saskatchewan,” the officer explained. “He’ll be transferred back there to face charges.” He watched her carefully while she processed this information.
“Wrongful death? Are you telling me ... he might have killed someone?”
“He never spoke to you about this?”
“No.”
Matthew woke and began to fuss, so Emma bent over the pram, found his soother in the folds of the blanket, and used it to settle him.
The officer’s expression softened. “Is this your baby? With Mr. Baxter?”
“Yes.”
In that moment, Ruth drove up in her car, pulled over at the curb, and got out. She slammed the door shut behind her and ran to Emma. “I came as fast as I could.”
“Did you know about this?”
“Yes,” Ruth replied. “They came to the school this morning looking for Logan, so I told them he was staying with me. I had no way to find you.” She stared at Emma in dismay. “I’m so sorry.”
Emma was floating on waves of shock and denial. “I don’t understand what’s happening. I don’t know what he did.”
“I’m going to need a full statement from you,” Sergeant MacIntosh said. “You’ll have to come to the station for that.”
“Should she have a lawyer?” Ruth asked.
“That’s up to Mrs. Baxter.”
Emma didn’t know what to say. She had no experience with this sort of thing, the machinations of the real world. “I had nothing to do with whatever happened in Saskatchewan. I’ve never even been there, and he never told me anything about anyone’s death.”
“No? Well, I’ll be the one to tell you, then. Your husband is facing a murder charge.”
Emma’s heart began to beat raggedly in her chest. “No. That can’t be right.”
It had to be a mistake. Logan wasn’t perfect, but Emma could never accept that he would kill someone. Intentionally.
“I need to talk to him,” she said. “When can I see him?”
“I’m not sure about that,” Sergeant MacIntosh replied. “First, we’ll need a full statement from you. Can you come to the station now?”
Confused and rattled, Emma couldn’t form words. Her brain wasn’t working properly.
Ruth laid a hand on her shoulder. “I’ll look after Matthew. You go and do what you need to do.”
“All right.” Emma bent over the pram and kissed Matthew on the forehead. Still half-dazed, she followed the policeman to his car.
The next twenty minutes in the back seat of the paddy wagon was like walking slowly out of a thick fog. It gave Emma the time she needed to comprehend the situation: Logan coming to Sable Island and wanting to stay there forever, hidden from the world; Logan growing depressedand irritable when he knew he had to return to the mainland; Logan impatient to return to the seclusion of Sable.
Like a thunderbolt, Emma realized that for most of the past year, she’d been living in a romantic fantasy with a man who’d come to her home with an agenda. But now a treacherous wave was washing her onto the shores of reality.
She’d wanted so badly to be loved. How could she not have seen or felt that Logan was hiding something momentous from her?
Two days later, Emma walked into the city jail. She was taken through a heavy door and down a gray-painted corridor to a cell where Logan was incarcerated.
As soon as he saw her, he stood up from the cot, approached the bars, and fell to his knees, where he rested his forehead on the cement floor and wept inconsolably.
The policeman uneasily backed away and left Emma to look down at her husband, who reached through the cell bars and wrapped his hands around her ankles.
Emma had always been a compassionate soul, but after two days of speculating about what he had done—and what else he might have kept from her—strangely, she felt nothing. Her body was completely numb. Her emotions were dead and flat. All she could do was stand there, waiting for him to gather his composure.
