“All I’ve done is think!” he shouted right back. “I’m sorry, Lizzie. All I want to do is tell you there’s no way I could have been with her that night, much less hurt her. That I could never hurt anybody. And like that?” Sam’s voice caught now. He closed his eyes and pressed his lips together. When he finally spoke again, it was with this determined sadness. “But I can’t lie anymore, Lizzie. I’ve blacked out so many times I’ve lost count. I’ve driven a car wasted, told my boss—a guy I liked—to fuck off. And I don’t remember any of it. Everybody has that dark part of themselves they keep safely locked away. When you’re drunk like that, your grip slips and out the dark part comes. Is that dark part of me someone who could kill? I sure as hell fucking hope not. But how can I say for sure, when he and I have never met?”
Anyone is capable of anything.I knew that, didn’t I? How many times had I pictured my own father plunging a knife into another man’s gut, then coming home to eat spaghetti? My skin was on fire. I wanted Sam’s denials back. I wanted our slow unraveling, not this free fall.
The fingerprints in Amanda’s blood. What if they were Sam’s?
I thought of the stairs in her home, of all that blood. Of the force it would have taken to bash Amanda’s head in with that golf club. I pressed my body harder against the windows, felt the cool glass behind my fingers. Wondered how hard I’d have to push to send myself sailing through.
My phone rang. I lunged for the nightstand, praying that whoever was calling might have something to say that would make it impossible that this man I loved, the man I’d forgiven so often, was a murderer. The call was from a random New York cell phone. It could have been anybody. But anybody was better than this conversation.
“Hello?” I gasped.
“It’s Sarah Novak.” She sounded tipsy. Drunk, actually. But the boozy book club was yesterday. Why was everyone always so fucking drunk? “It’s late, isn’t it? Sorry, I wasn’t even—I lost track. My husband said you came by yesterday? I got curious.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said, momentarily confused. I didn’t remember telling him my name. But then Sarah had probably told him to be on the lookout for me.
“Andwhy, pray tell, did you come by?”
“I spoke with the accountant for the foundation,” I began, slipping numbly into professional mode.
There was a long silence. “Uh-huh.” And that was all. Even drunk, Sarah was too sharp to start accidentally confessing.
“I think maybe I misunderstood when we spoke the other day,” I went on, carving her the out of a “misunderstanding.” “I didn’t realize that you ended up meeting with Teddy Buckley, the accountant for the foundation, yourself.”
“Ugh, yes, I did meet with him in the end.” She was drawing out her words like a disgusted child. “And yeah, I didn’t tell you because I was worried he might—I wassurehe wouldn’t have very nice things to say about me.” The more she spoke, the drunker she sounded. “Anyway, being bankrupt only makes your client lookmoreguilty.”
“He mentioned that you were very upset that you might lose your job if the foundation had no money.”
She took another breath. “That’s true. And if that’s all he said about me, then he’s a very nice person, because I totally lost it on him. Look, my husband was laid off recently. I was worried you’d start askingquestions about why I was so upset about losing my pathetic salary. Eventually, it might have come out that my husband is unemployed. I couldn’t bear the thought. It’s absurd, I know, butthat’show ashamed I am, and I’m not even the one who lost their job. Fucking marriage.” She was whispering now, which made her seem even more wasted. “We both thought my husband would be right back to work. Or at leastIdid. But he hasn’t exactly been pounding the pavement.”That’s because he watches Wimbledon, I wanted to say.And eats pizza.She sighed dramatically. “So now I’m the breadwinner. Or thecrumbwinner. It’s not exactly what I signed up for, if you know what I mean.”
I did know exactly what she meant.
“Did you tell Amanda?”
“Are you kidding?” she exclaimed. “I haven’t told anyone. What part of I’m-mortified-my-husband-got-laid-off didn’t you understand? I know it’s appalling that I lied to my friends. I love my friends. But sometimes it’s easier to stay married if you pretend. Willful blindness, isn’t that what you lawyers call it?”
It was easier to pretend. Sarah was right about that, too. “I didn’t mean about your husband’s job. I meant did you tell Amanda what the accountant told you, about the foundation not having any money?”
“Oh, that,” Sarah said dismissively. “I was going to tell her, but not at Maude’s party. Itwasa party, and I didn’t want to stress her out. Besides, Zach was there. It would have been really awkward. Maude thought I should tell Amanda anyway. But Maude wasn’t exactly thinking clearly because of everything with Sophia.”
“You told Maude about the foundation’s financial problems?”
“Of course! The second I saw her at the party. I mean, the foundation bust, and all of Zach’s millionaire bullshit a lie? It was too great. I know that’s petty, but I never claimed to be perfect,” she said, her words slurring even more. “Anyway, Maude cared more about the email investigation.”
“Email investigation?” I asked, though Sarah had mentioned itbefore.
“Yup. Some of the Country Day families’ computers have been hacked into.” Sarah sighed. “And all their dirty laundry is now out in the open. I told Maude it was an inside job, a parent, they think—one of the investigators slipped and told me. Maude and I spend half our time saying: ‘Don’t tell anyone I told you this, but …’ Maude did the same thing when she told me about the golf club. Right away she was like, ‘Oh, wait, don’t tell anyone about that.’”
“The golf club?” I asked, remembering how Sarah had thrown that in my face during our first conversation, proof of exactly what a monster Zach was. “I thought the police told you about that.”
“The police? Please. They pumpedmefor information about who was at the party, but they wouldn’t tell me shit,” Sarah said. “Maude told me about the golf club. She said they found it at the bottom of the stairs in Amanda’s house. Right next to her body. Zach might as well have signed his name to the scene of the crime.”
“When did Maude tell you about the golf club?”
“The morning after Amanda died,” she said. “The police must have told her.”
But Maude hadn’t spoken to anyone until today, when Wendy Wallace showed up at her house. Certainly she shouldn’t have known about the golf club only hours after Amanda was killed with it. It was hard to think with that whooshing sound back in my ears. I looked over at Sam, staring at me from his spot on the wall.
I gripped the phone tighter.Maude and not Sam.A flicker of hope.
