He lowered his head for a moment, then looked straight at me. “I’m not going to lie to you. We’re not in a good place. I have to prepare for every scenario.”
I looked at Billy Ray and saw his eyes widened in shock, his face a sickly pale.
“All right,” I managed to whisper, more for Billy’s sake than mine. I didn’t believe it. “It’s all right,” I repeated, gaining more courage as I spoke the words. “Dinner it is, if you say so.”
Regardless of what Colton had said, I still wanted the earth to split open and swallow me whole. I wasn’t ready to be looked at, judged, and convicted by the public before my trial even started. A few moments later, on the way to the restaurant, I bought an overpriced white silk scarf from a small store, and wrapped it around my head. With that and my shades, I could be any woman.
Only, I wasn’t. The waitresses at the restaurant started whispering and throwing mean glances my way. I caught one of them taking photos of me with her phone. I wanted to say something, but Colton put his hand over mine, and I let it happen. I wondered why I should touch any food that came from their hands.
We ate in silence, only occasionally making small, meaningless talk. I was painfully aware of the stares, of the phone cameras, and could barely eat anything. Billy Ray wolfed down his food in about a minute, scraping the plate clean and making me worry again that he wasn’t eating much at home.
After taking a sip of cold water, I leaned toward Colton and said, “I want to speak with Claire Donovan. I want to ask her why she did it.”
He dropped his fork on the plate and gawked at me. The rattling silverware drew a waitress’s attention, but he didn’t seem to care. “You can’t go anywhere near that woman! Do you understand me?”
“I just need to know why he’s dead,” I said, stubbornly digging my heels in.
“I’ll tell you why,” he hissed, shooting a dismissive look at the lingering waitress. “She was going to lose a lot of money. People do lots of things for so much money.”
“She wasn’t—” With a frustrated sigh, I stopped myself short of telling him she wasn’t going to lose anything. I’d given her everything she needed to beat the prenup and get a fair settlement in the divorce.
Unless ... she’d wanted it all. Winston’s half, too.
I remembered she’d asked me,Why not everything? You could have it all.
My glass froze in midair, inches away from my lips, and I shuddered. Claire must’ve been waiting for the right opportunity to strike, and I’d delivered that opportunity into her hands. But it hadn’t been about jealousy. It had been about money.
“What’s wrong?” Colton asked.
I set the glass down. “Nothing ... it’s just that I can’t believe how quick she was to kill him after she must’ve heard about our engagement. It only took her a few hours to do it.”
Colton frowned slightly. “How did she find out, by the way?” His eyes drilled into me again, searching for the truth I wasn’t willing to share.
Pretending I didn’t notice what he was doing, I shrugged. “Who knows? Winston made the proposal quite public, and he was well known. People talk. Someone must’ve talked right away. Or it’s all a coincidence.”
He leaned back in his seat and crossed his arms at his chest. A long breath of air escaped his lips in a low hiss. “You’re lying to me, Hattie. And I can’t defend you like this.” He raised his arms in the air for a moment, before yanking the napkin from his lap and throwing it on the table. “I can’t risk finding out the truth from prosecution witnesses, on the stand. You need to tell me everything.”
The air felt thinner, as if the oxygen had vanished and I was about to choke. I reached for my glass with a shaky hand, feeling his eyesdrilling into me as I took a sip. I forced some air into my lungs and raised my eyes to meet his.
“There’s nothing to tell, Colton. You need to trust me.” My throat felt dry, and my voice faltered. “I just ... fell in love with a married man, and his wife knew about it. End of story.”
For a long, loaded moment, he stared at me. He could probably tell I was lying, but he didn’t ask anything else. After the check had been taken care of, he stood and buttoned up his jacket.
“It’s possible you stepped on a spider, and it bit you,” he said grimly. “A black widow.”
37
Lies
The following days were almost identical. Dreary, endless, terrifying. As jury selection drew closer, I could sense Colton was under a lot of pressure. We worked together on my case, those long sessions sometimes turning into interrogation sessions I couldn’t wait to be done with. From early morning till late at night, we were the pacing prisoners of a working hell, each passing day reminding me that I had very little time left. I was restless and scared, unable to sleep at night.
Some nights, Colton grabbed a bit of shut-eye in the guest bedroom, and then went home to change in the morning. He’d cleared his entire schedule for me; I’d heard him explain things to someone over the phone, asking them to assign someone else to take over his open cases while he worked on mine. He had people working with him, but except for an assistant who dropped off and picked up paperwork on occasion, I hadn’t met anyone in person. He had an investigator he called every now and then, too, to send him on fact-finding missions. And there were others—people he asked to draw up paperwork for him, prepare filings, and do research. He’d done well for himself.
Meanwhile, I was worried about Billy Ray. He’d barely spoken a word, contenting himself with fixing our meals and watching TV. Hisears perked up at our conversations, though he pretended not to care. He’d told me he’d asked the old pastor to look after the horses while he was gone, but I could tell he was growing restless.
On Thursday evening, after an endless day of answering questions to the best of my ability to share the truth, deflect, and keep my lying to a minimum, Colton called me into the living room and asked me to take a seat.
“Let’s look at this murder-weapon issue again,” he said, running his hand over his face as if trying to rip through the web of tiredness layered over his handsome features. “How do you think it ended up in your car?”
