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Just ask my husband. Not that you can, because he’s dead asleep.
The alarm chimed persistently, growing louder and louder by the second, reminding me this is reality. This is happening. Finally. Even in the thick of sleep, I am keenly aware this isn’t the normal alarm. It is the alarm. The one I’ve been waiting for, for the past fourteen months.
Rubbing my eyes, I checked his Dexcom monitor. Three characters told me everything I needed to know, which wasn’t much. But enough. The situation was dire. There wasn’t even a numerical reading. It just read: low. Thank the Lord.
I lurched out of bed, picking up pace as I half-stumbled down the hall, slowing only when I got to the stairs, then power-walking as I rounded the corner into the kitchen. I opened the fridge, grabbed one of the two-dozen bottles of orange juice we keep on hand precisely for this kind of situation.
I wiped my sweaty, shaky hands on a dishrag, took a deep breath, and then deftly twisted the cap off the juice. I grabbed a straw from the drawer, flung it in, and took a seat on the sofa. I checked the time. Two forty-seven in the morning. I don’t know how long these things take, but it’s safe to say my husband will probably be dead by sunrise. God willing.
It was unfortunate that this couldn’t have happened a little later, so that at least I could have gotten my eight hours in. It would be nice if I could just fall back to sleep, but I’m too wired. It helped, certainly, that my mind had already lurched into the future, ticking off items on my to-do list. It’s Friday. A tennis lesson. A massage. Dinner with friends. No. Wait. That’s wrong. It’s not Friday. As usual, I’m ahead of myself. Today is Thursday…A derm appointment. Botox…that’s it. After that, my schedule is free and clear.
Not that it mattered. No matter what was on the agenda, I’d be exhausted. Another thought flittered in and then out. It’ll help you sell the story. With any luck, I could very well be spending the afternoon making funeral arrangements. I shook my head. It’s better not to count your chickens before they hatch. I maintain a vise-like grip on the cold juice as I suck it down. Then I flip on the TV and I wait.
Epilogue
Max Hastings
Twelve Years Later
We have a saying in Texas: big hat, no cattle. It’s about appearing one way but being another. There’s another I’m quite fond of as well: never trade what you want most for what you want now at the moment. If only it were a lesson I’d learned sooner. It took me a long time to work out if and why Laurel would have killed Nina. I couldn’t see a
motive. I suppose my own guilt about the affair, and in getting my wife mixed up in it, came to play.
In the end, I had been looking at it all wrong.
The truth unraveled slowly, as truth tends to do. Shortly after my sentencing, a donation came through. Initially, following my arrest, my brother had taken Ellie in. But when it became obvious that my stay was not going to be a relatively short one, Nina posthumously got her way. I signed papers for my daughter to be placed in a care facility. Jonathan was not equipped to raise a child, particularly not one with Ellie’s circumstances. My brother took out a second mortgage on his house to cover it. The sale of mine had paid for my defense. Almost.
It wasn’t a spectacular care facility; I could assimilate that, given the price. My brother’s expression when we spoke about it provided verification that my assumptions were correct. If I hadn’t slept well in jail, prison—combined with the situation with my daughter—elevated that ten-fold. Anyhow, when the anonymous donation came in, it came with a note about a facility. Ellie was moved two weeks later. Had things not have unfolded the way they had, I may have never truly been able to say for sure that Laurel Dunaway killed my wife. Experience has taught me that guilt is a powerful motivator. It tends to bring things to light.
I’m not sure whether it was guilt or if Laurel was simply toying with me, rubbing her freedom and my lack thereof in my face. It’s hard to say when you realize a person you thought you knew is not someone you ever really knew at all.
Not long after Ellie was moved, I learned about the sale of the Dunaways’ business. Jonathan never offered me much in the way of Laurel Dunaway, just bits and pieces here and there. He didn’t think it was healthy to speak of her. On many occasions, he accused me of being obsessed. And more than once, I saw the look in his eyes, one that said he wondered if I actually had killed Nina.
Three years into my prison sentence, by way of an obituary, I learned of the death of James Dunaway. It was written that he went into a diabetic coma and passed away eight days later, a victim of his disease. I was both surprised and not.
I was released from prison on a Wednesday. Laurel Dunaway would be found hanging from the stairwell of her home the following Friday. One good thing, and maybe the only good thing about prison, is that it affords you the opportunity to see a variety of “suicides,” so you get to know which ones work and which ones lead to tacked on sentences.
I would like to say that she was surprised to see me standing at her bedside in the dark. But I don’t think she was. I selected the same manner of death that she had chosen for my wife. An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, she said.
I was once blind but now I see, I had replied. That made her smile.
I would also like to say that I felt nothing during the process. Dying is, after all, a process, but that would be untrue. Laurel Dunaway was the same, all those years later, that she had been the day I first laid eyes on her. Charming, seductive. Cunning. Helpless. Someone looking to be saved.
Although, she could not be saved in the end. None of us could.
Police did their due diligence, which is how Laurel’s journal was discovered. It turned out there was a lot about the Dunaways that folks didn’t know. No doubt Laurel wanted it this way. She liked the limelight just as much as she understood she had to hide from it.
Twenty-six months later, I would provide testimony in front of the senate about false confessions and botched evidence. Two months after that, I would receive a settlement from the state. The money doesn’t negate what happened to me. It will never buy me back all the years I lost. But I try not to think too much about that.
These days, my daughter and I live in an undisclosed location. I do not date much.
