Blood Sugar(75)

I called Ellie first. Then my parents. “I’m free!” They were immensely relieved and overjoyed, and now that the insidious pressure was removed, there was room for all the tendrils of their true feelings to spread and slither out. It’s classic human nature to lie about worry when the worrying won’t be helpful. And then to tell the full truth of the extent of the worry once the danger is over.

For months my family had told me not to panic. “Don’t borrow trouble.” “You’re innocent and justice will prevail.” “Roman won’t let you down.” “Everything is going to be okay.” And now that the horror show was officially over, they all said, “Oh, thank God. We thought you were going to prison for life!”

After the hearing, Roman and I drank two bottles of Champagne and danced around my house. I laughed manically because I was both overtired and euphoric. He had his usual hotel room booked at the Soho Beach House, but he stayed with me instead and we curled up in bed together like we used to do at his parents’ house. It was the first time anyone had been on Jason’s side of the bed since he died almost a year ago. I had bought a new mattress and bedding. It was just too macabre to sleep on the same ones that once held his corpse. But I kept the bed frame. And seeing Roman lie there was surreal. But it felt safe and right. I rested my face against his rock-hard shirtless chest, so aware of his intrinsic attractiveness and yet so aware of the platonic feelings in my core. I tried to match my breath with his, our chests expanding and deflating in time. I looked up at him. He had never asked me if I had done it. Any of it. And he never would.

I fell asleep. Heavy and uninterrupted. My first truly deep sleep since I had missed the beep. When my eyes slowly found their way open, I stretched and looked at the time. I’d been asleep for fifteen hours. I turned toward Jason’s side and found I was alone. A little note sat on his pillow. It told me that Roman had taken an early flight back to DC. I was out of danger, so his attention turned back to his life, back to his other clients. His work here was done.

I lay in bed another minute and felt like a little kid when my parents left me at home alone for the first time. That nervous excitement when they pulled out of the driveway, down the street, and out of sight. Like I was finally a grown-up, trusted with the TV and the thermostat and the contents of the fridge. Left alone to make my own decisions, both good and bad. It was exhilarating and scary all at once. It was autonomy.

There was a buzz in my belly. I was completely free and completely alone to do as I pleased. I got out of bed and walked around my empty house. I had a funny little feeling that I had gotten away with something, somehow.

I made coffee and I fed Mr. Cat. And then I sat at the kitchen island. What was I supposed to do now? For the past year my entire focus had been worrying about being accused of killing Jason. It took all my energy, and now that it had been removed, I felt like I was free-falling. As horrific as the worry was, it spread out and filled the void that Jason’s death had left. But now that the worry was gone, there was just the void.

I finished my coffee and walked through the empty house again. I rambled to Mr. Cat. I had nowhere to go, nowhere to be. I had no clients, no office, no plans, no local friends, no hope of anonymity or privacy. I had lost the city I loved. I knew the press would be descending upon me soon, once news of my case being dropped reached people’s desks. But for now there was a stillness.

I checked my phone and did see the press had already swarmed Gertrude’s house. Her accidental admission of my innocence virally spread around town, and even made it all the way up north to Georgia. Where Jason’s high school sweetheart, Cindy, was interviewed by the local news and spoke up about him being abandoned and raised without a mother. Gertrude’s character was finally being attacked, rightly so, and the best part about it was that my hands were clean.

I noticed the empty bottles of Champagne from the night before, and a sick feeling crept in. I wanted to keep celebrating my exoneration, but Jason was still dead. His closets were still empty. The kitchen countertops were still clean and bare. All my fantasies about having less clutter and more open space seemed so misguided now. Here it was and there was absolutely nothing comforting about it.

I found Mr. Cat inside the primary bedroom closet and stood with him. He circled my ankles a few times and threw his flank against me. Everything was still so quiet. My clothes looked sparse along the rows and rows of wood dowels. Large gaps between each hanger. Like a forest that had been excessively culled. The calm after the storm had arrived, and slowly thoughts of normal daily life breezed through me. I accepted in that moment that my existence as I knew it was over and it would never go back to how it had been. And that I desperately needed a haircut.





CHAPTER 51


    LOS ANGELES



There continued to be shouts and whispers that maybe the Purple Widow had killed dozens of people over the years. That Jason plus the other three were just the tip of my murdering iceberg. But I knew it was only the three. And because my mind organized things in terms of syllabi, it did occur to me that I had a bit of a schedule. When I was five, when I was sixteen, and when I was twenty-five. About one person every decade. Similar to my number of sex partners, when I thought about that number in a larger context, one murder every ten years seemed extremely reasonable. We all encounter bad people all the time. Backstabbing coworkers. Assholes who litter. Fathers who hit. Mothers who neglect. People who run puppy mills. And on and on. But I was not in the business of killing off every jerk who crossed my path. I was not a homicide slut.