I have just put a name in the mouth of a detective who is going to write the name down on a yellow legal pad and pin a string between the name and the house and the body in the house and the missing wife, and the string is not going to come back to Max Hale.
I have just lied to a police officer.
I have just protected the woman who set the fire that killed my husband.
I have just done it knowing she did it.
She killed my husband. She kidnapped me. I love her. All these things are true.
I get up.
I walk back to the kitchen.
---
Margot is on the terrace.
The terrace is glass and steel and there are heaters above two leather chairs and a small table with a second cup of coffee on it for me. The foothills are at the level of Margot's hair. The city is below us in a grid of grey and gold. The wind is light. The sky is the colour of clean laundry.
I sit in the leather chair.
Margot does not look at me.
"Done."
"Done."
"You all right."
"Yes."
"You want to tell me?”
"No."
She nods.
I drink the coffee.
The coffee is good.
I miss her. Max.
I sit in the leather chair on the terrace of a penthouse in Boise and I think about her finding the note.
I left her a note.
I do not know what the note said when I wrote it.
I was upstairs in the bedroom in her sweater and her wool socks with the chief downstairs in the front room and the cab coming up the road, and I had a piece of paper from the small notebook by the bed, and I wrote four words, and I put the paper under the brass dish, and I put the ring in the dish, and I went down the stairs.
I know what you did.
It is the only thing I could write.
It was true.
It is still true.
