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14
Then
WITHIN SIX WEEKS OF THE MURDER, AS SPRING FLOWERSwere beginning to bloom, Emma moved into the small one-bedroom rental on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The sale of the New Jersey house wasn’t set to close for another five weeks, but since she had access to her and Derrick’s joint bank accounts, she was able to handle most expenses, and her parents surprised her with a cash gift to not only cover attorney fees but also to help her move. As detached as her parents could be, they were clearly distraught on her behalf and mistakenly assumed it was too hard for her to live in the house without Derrick there.
Faster than she thought, she’d managed to sell off most of the furniture from the house and went on to purchase some new basic pieces from affordable places like West Elm. At moments it seemed like she’d regressed a dozen years at least, living like she had when she first moved to the city aftercollege, and yet she hadn’t cared. The silence—free of criticism, scoffing, nasty comments, or freeze-outs—was pure bliss.
Dunne wasn’t happy about the relocation. His advice to Emma had been “No sudden moves.”
“There’s a chance they’ll be watching you,” he’d warned when she made it clear she couldn’t stay in the house.
“There’ll be nothing to see,” she’d told him.
For a while she did sense she was being observed in the city, and her heart raced every time she stepped out of her building. But within a few weeks that feeling passed. The third interview with the police turned out to be the last, though she called Lennox twice after it to see if there were any updates. A short time later Kyle backed off, too, perhaps deciding that if the police weren’t taking her seriously as a suspect, he shouldn’t bother to, either.
By then Emma was consulting for Halliday, taking the train to Westport a couple of times a week. Though her life still felt unsettled and fraught at times, there were other moments when she was at peace, excited for a new beginning.
Dunne called her in late June, just to check in. “You doing okay, Emma?” he’d asked.
“Yes, I have my ups and downs, but overall I’m okay.”
A long pause followed.He’s still not a hundred percent sure about me, she thought. Though she’d stressed to him on several occasions that she was innocent, and the police had clearly found no evidence implicating her, Emma sensed Dunne had his doubts, that some small part of him suspected that any day a secret lover would step from the shadows and shack up with her in Manhattan.
He hears guilt in my voice, she told herself. He’d heard it from the beginning.
But what Dunne didn’t realize—and she guessed the cops didn’t, either—was that her guilt sprang from an entirely separate source: her indifference that Derrick was no longer part of her life. Yes, she felt sad that someone she once loved had died young and in horrible circumstances, that his life had been cruelly snatched away from him. But she didn’tmisshim.
It bothered her that Dunne might think the worst of her, and it had scared her when the cops thought that, too. But the truth was she hadn’t killed her husband. Nor had she paid someone to do it for her.
That’s not the kind of woman she was.
