Blood Sugar(66)

She gave me a little squeeze of encouragement and walked out with the guard. I smiled a bit—at least I still had the ability to appreciate the irony of the tides as they turned. And I waited for my own name to be called. Having no idea if it would be in minutes, or in days.





CHAPTER 45


    WALLS



I had spent another hour in the holding tank when Roman came to get me out. Just in time, minutes before I was to be moved into a jail cell to spend the night. At my arraignment that afternoon, I stood before a judge and pleaded not guilty. And Roman argued that I was born and raised in Miami, had deep ties to the community, my parents were still in town, and I ran a successful business. I was clearly not a flight risk. The judge listened, then set my bail at $2 million, double the standard for a homicide case. The city was watching, and so I was to be made an example of and was lucky to have been granted bail at all.

I put my house up as collateral and my parents put their house up as collateral. They didn’t for a moment think I’d murdered Jason. They knew me, and they knew if I was unhappy, having an affair or whatever nonsense, I simply would have gotten a divorce. And they knew the idea that I would kill him for money was completely off base. If having money was my end-all mission in life, I would have gone to business school after Yale, and not gotten a doctorate in psychology. It was a wonderful way to make a good living, it was a career I was passionate about, it was fulfilling and challenging, and it certainly didn’t scream money-hungry murdering bitch, no matter how Detective Keith Jackson and Gertrude tried to spin it.

Knowing my parents believed I was innocent gave me comfort. And the idea that my childhood home was being used to keep me from spending months in jail while awaiting my trial made all my memories there even more profound. Those walls raised me, and now those walls were still keeping me safe as long as they could. I would never run and let the government take those walls away from my parents. I would stay in my hometown, and face whatever was to come next.

Once my bail was posted, I walked out of jail with Roman by my side, and although this was a huge moment for me, I could only think of Gabrielle. I had to tell her what I had overheard at the police station as soon as possible. As I walked away from the building toward the car Roman had waiting for me, hordes of people with cameras yelled, “Over here!” and, “Ruby, did you do it?” and, “What’s your defense?” They snapped photo after photo of me, and the chaos ripped me away from my thoughts about Gabrielle. I didn’t know where to look, where to turn. I tried to lean into Roman to use him as a shield, without seeming meek.

I noticed an ABC news van parked up ahead and my stomach flipped. Like a Pavlovian response my brain lit up and I thought, Jason must be here! I miss him so much. Maybe I can see him soon. He must be one of the men behind the giant news cameras resting on a sturdy shoulder. Then I remembered, Of course he’s not here. He’s dead. I’m here because he’s dead. A ripple of sadness shuddered through me in that second, and I heard click, click, click. Dozens of photographers caught the moment. And that would be the picture that was most shown by my supporters. “Look at her face. You can’t fake that kind of sorrow. Clearly Ruby Simon is a grieving widow, being mishandled by the justice system and the gossipmongers.”

But there was another side to the coin. The people who were sure I was guilty had their own favorite picture of me, often printed next to headlines that read something like, “Hometown Husband Killer.” That picture was also taken outside the jail, several moments after my ripple of sadness smoothed out, and a wry smile passed over my lips. As Roman directed me through the stinging swarm of reporters, he whispered about how ridiculously hot the stenographer was at the bail hearing. His comment was comforting because it reminded me that no matter how bad life got, there were constants I could count on. Like him being a lothario. And so I smiled, a tiny little bit. And it felt nice to allow my mouth to turn upward after months of frowns. But that wry smile was captured on camera and was plastered everywhere to give a visual of the callous husband killer, now out on bail.

Roman apologized profusely for his bad timing with his extremely out-of-vogue objectification of the hot lady, but I knew the rabble would have gotten the shot they wanted one way or another. If it wasn’t at that moment, it would have been another moment in which I had the audacity to briefly seem happy or at peace. I didn’t blame him.

Just as I got past the densest mash of people outside the jailhouse, and thought I might be safe from any further serious trauma, I heard a voice I recognized. My skin crawled with malice.

“Ruby!”

I looked over, and there, on the outskirts of the crowd, wearing a modest black mourning dress with one tasteful frog brooch pinned to the neck, was Gertrude. I wanted to rush ahead and dive into my waiting car. She had already stolen so much from me, I did not want to give her another second of my time. But my feet stopped moving. They planted down. My lizard brain would not flee from her. It wanted to fight. I squared my shoulders and stood still. My stillness got the attention of the throng and everyone hushed. It was so quiet for a moment the only sound was the click click click of cameras. All eyes were on the mother and the widow, having a standoff like two cowboys in the center of a dusty town, ready to draw and shoot.

I knew Gertrude wanted me to lash out and seem like a maniac. And that her move would be to seem calm and sane and heartbroken. To look like a saint in front of all this press. So I had to get there first.