A Good Marriage(110)

“Striking? Are you fucking kidding me!” I shouted. “So what? You’re saying you guys hooked up that night or something?”

“I can’t see how,” Sam said. “I’m just trying to tell you absolutely everything I know. I’m trying to come clean.”

“Great,” I whispered. “That’s so fucking great.”

Suddenly Sam stopped pacing and headed over to the clothes pile and started digging through like he was searching for something in particular. No, was all I could think. I don’t want to know anything more.

When he stood, he was holding out one of his white basketball sneakers. He pointed to a long brown streak across the side, about an inch wide and three inches long.

“Also, I found this earlier today.”

“What is that?”

Sam set the shoe down on our bureau, where we both stared at it. “It could be blood, right?”

“Sam, what the hell are you—” My voice cracked so hard I winced.

“I don’t know, Lizzie.”

“You hit your head that same night. That’s got to be your blood,” I said, even though all that blood was already nagging at me.

Sam shook his head. “I’d left my basketball sneakers out in the hall. Probably so I could sneak in quietly. I saw them out there when we got home from Methodist. I wore my Vans to the hospital.”

I stood. And the room began to spin.

“Well, then somebody must have seen you that night. At the time she was killed, I mean.” I moved away, backed up against the windows to steady myself. “What about the bartender after basketball—”

“I already asked,” Sam said. His face was all angles in the shadows, beautiful, but menacing now. “He doesn’t remember me.”

“Or bar receipts,” I pressed, frantic for anything to hold on to, for something to save us. “They put Amanda’s time of death between ten p.m. and eleven p.m. Basketball isn’t over until ten p.m., right? Even staying past eleven, that would hardly give you enough time for one or two drinks. Obviously, to be that drunk, you had way more than that.”

Sam shook his head again. “We didn’t end up playing basketball that night. There weren’t enough guys, beginning of summer and all that. We were at Freddy’s by seven. Somebody suggested doing shots. Wasn’t me, I swear. But I had a bunch in a row. I do remember that.”

“For Christ’s sake, Sam!” I screamed so loud this time it hurt my throat. “How many more fucking things are you leaving out!”

Sam wouldn’t even look at me now. We both knew what this meant. At that pace, he’d have been plenty drunk by the critical window.

“There’s nothing else, Lizzie. That’s—it’s everything.”

“Think, Sam!” I shouted, terrified and fucking furious.

“All I’ve done is think!” he shouted right back. “I’m sorry, Lizzie. All I want to do is tell you there’s no way I could have been with her that night, much less hurt her. That I could never hurt anybody. And like that?” Sam’s voice caught now. He closed his eyes and pressed his lips together. When he finally spoke again, it was with this determined sadness. “But I can’t lie anymore, Lizzie. I’ve blacked out so many times I’ve lost count. I’ve driven a car wasted, told my boss—a guy I liked—to fuck off. And I don’t remember any of it. Everybody has that dark part of themselves they keep safely locked away. When you’re drunk like that, your grip slips and out the dark part comes. Is that dark part of me someone who could kill? I sure as hell fucking hope not. But how can I say for sure, when he and I have never met?”

Anyone is capable of anything. I knew that, didn’t I? How many times had I pictured my own father plunging a knife into another man’s gut, then coming home to eat spaghetti? My skin was on fire. I wanted Sam’s denials back. I wanted our slow unraveling, not this free fall.

The fingerprints in Amanda’s blood. What if they were Sam’s?

I thought of the stairs in her home, of all that blood. Of the force it would have taken to bash Amanda’s head in with that golf club. I pressed my body harder against the windows, felt the cool glass behind my fingers. Wondered how hard I’d have to push to send myself sailing through.

My phone rang. I lunged for the nightstand, praying that whoever was calling might have something to say that would make it impossible that this man I loved, the man I’d forgiven so often, was a murderer. The call was from a random New York cell phone. It could have been anybody. But anybody was better than this conversation.

“Hello?” I gasped.

“It’s Sarah Novak.” She sounded tipsy. Drunk, actually. But the boozy book club was yesterday. Why was everyone always so fucking drunk? “It’s late, isn’t it? Sorry, I wasn’t even—I lost track. My husband said you came by yesterday? I got curious.”

“Oh, yeah,” I said, momentarily confused. I didn’t remember telling him my name. But then Sarah had probably told him to be on the lookout for me.

“And why, pray tell, did you come by?”

“I spoke with the accountant for the foundation,” I began, slipping numbly into professional mode.

There was a long silence. “Uh-huh.” And that was all. Even drunk, Sarah was too sharp to start accidentally confessing.