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“Very much.”
I smiled and settled back against his side, and to this day, I can’t say what made me say what I said next.
“When Duke died, I thought his blood looked almost black. But it was dark and there was so much of it.”
Andrew’s hand stilled on my hair, but the words kept coming out of me. “That’s why I can never read those thrillers of yours. They never seem to get it right. What it feels like, what it looks like, when someone dies violently. How much blood there is, the sounds they make. When Duke died, there was this rattling noise in his chest like nothing I’d ever heard before, but in those books, it’s always silent.”
I sat up then, looking at him, and he watched me with his sad eyes, interested, but not alarmed.
Not even when he said, “I thought Duke was already dead when you found him.”
And so I told him.
It was—more or less—the same version of events I told you, so you can go back and reread that letter if you want to. I can’t imagine what your face looked like as you learned the true story of Duke’s death, but Andrew’s never changed. I waited for shock or horror to sink in, for those dark eyes I loved so much to shutter closed to me, but he just listened andwhen I was done, he leaned over, his hand a warm weight on the back of my neck as he kissed my forehead.
“You brave girl,” he murmured, and it cracked something open inside me.
Not a monster. Not a murderess, a liar, a lunatic.
Brave.
The love I felt for him overflowed from that crack in my heart, the understanding in his face a balm I hadn’t known I needed, and I felt almost drunk with gratitude, with the freedom that came from saying it all out loud.
Like I said.
Soft. Stupid.
Stupid enough to get greedy, to want that same love and understanding poured over Hugh’s death as well, for both of my darkest sins to be washed clean.
If I hadn’t been so giddy with the relief of it all, maybe I would’ve found better words or known to soften the story. But it felt so good, you see, spilling all this darkness into a welcoming vessel, and so I didn’t catch the shock—the horror—that I had been waiting for when recounting Duke’s death slowly slide into his eyes as I described Hugh’s.
I didn’t notice how the fingers of his left hand, resting on the back of the couch near my head, began curling tightly inward like he was afraid he might touch me accidentally.
I didn’t realize I’d lost him until it was too late.
The silence stretched between us once the story was over, and he tried to smile at me, but it wobbled on his face. He cleared his throat and said, “What things to keep in your heart.”
Then he sat back, his book sliding off his lap and hitting the floor, pages bending. He didn’t pick it up. He only rubbed a hand over his mouth, and muttered, “What things to keep in mine.”
I knew then that he’d never tell anyone.
I want you to understand, that’s not what I was afraid of. I didn’t think he’d go running to the police or the press. I didn’t think he’d leave me, either.
Honestly, Iwishhe’d done either of those things. That would’ve been better. It would’ve been easier.
Instead, we went on as before, like nothing had changed, but everything had, of course. I’d catch him watching me, and the look in those eyes that I loved so much––the very first thing I had noticed about him––became worse than any prison sentence. Worse than a hangman’s noose.
I hope you never have to watch the one person you love most in the world, the person who loves you just as fiercely in return, lose that love, day by day, bit by bit, a steady draining away until there’s nothing left. Until they’re just a person who sleeps inches from you at night, and eats meals across a table from you, and reads books at your side, even smiles at you or laughs with you, but whose heart has shut you out forever.
Andrew was a good man. Truly. I think he loved me very much, and even after he knew the worst of me, he stillwantedto love me. I think he tried.
But he couldn’t.
And if he couldn’t, I realized, no one could. No one everwould.
I waited for him to leave me. I would’ve let him go. I want you to understand that, before we get to this next part. If Andrew had only left, if he’d only told me he couldn’t stay married to me knowing what I’d done, I would have signed any papers he wanted, given him all the money in the world.
But he didn’t leave.
