A Good Marriage(32)

It was bothering me. That was the honest truth. The Zach I knew from law school was meticulous about details. There was no way he had simply forgotten about the warrant. He hadn’t mentioned it because he didn’t want me to know. As I turned the key, I realized I still wasn’t sure if it was the fact of the warrant or that Zach had tried to hide it from me that bothered me more.

Even the way Zach’s front door popped open with a gentle whoosh was fancy. I kept my eyes down as I stepped inside the dim, no doubt lovely foyer, careful to avoid having to face the stairs. The typical layout of Park Slope brownstones would put them straight ahead—the stairs and the blood and the brain matter. My mouth already felt tacky. I needed to stay focused on the here and now, the task at hand.

Zach had said that the papers about Case’s camp would be in Amanda’s small desk in the front room. I didn’t look up until I’d stepped safely into the vast, thoroughly updated open living room. It was sparkling white with fashionable midcentury modern furniture. The air was a little stale, but that was the only sign anything was amiss.

The desk—slim and graceful like Amanda—was near the windows. I headed over, stopping first for a closer look at the photos in a sleek built-in along the wall. They were in coordinating frames and so carefully curated that even the poses in the photos—taken over years—seemed somehow to have been planned to one day work together. The idyllic images made it hard to imagine that Zach and Amanda ever had an unhappy moment, much less a violent altercation that had ended in Amanda’s death.

The pictures also confirmed what I’d noticed at Rikers: Zach was much more attractive than he’d been in law school. More definition in his face, brought on by age, or the twenty pounds of muscle he looked to have put on. Or maybe it was the confidence that came with success. The old twitchiness I’d noticed at Rikers had likely been an aberration brought on by the stress of the situation, or maybe by seeing an old friend. Regardless, there was no doubt that Zach had come into his own. And, appallingly, I had a momentary flicker of regret.

I tried to shake it off, to pretend I hadn’t felt it—desire for a man whose dead wife’s blood was all over the stairs only feet behind me. Whatever I was feeling obviously wasn’t about Zach anyway.

I picked up one of the framed pictures of Amanda and Zach on their wedding day, on a beach somewhere tropical. Amanda looked stunning in a simple lace wedding dress, holding casually arranged exotic flowers; Zach was smiling in a light linen suit. They looked effortlessly happy in the way of people who have everything.

I wondered what the pictures of Sam and me from our wedding day would say. All I remembered was feeling grateful and, God, so impossibly in love. Sam had arranged our entire wedding himself. Wedding planning without my mother would have been too hard, and Sam had known that intuitively. From the moment we met, we’d been like that—connected in one continuous loop.

We were married in the beautiful backyard of a West Village town house owned by a wealthy boarding-school friend of Sam’s. Sam had personally strung every inch of the backyard with the twinkling white lights I’d talked about loving on our first date, and the flowers were the blue hyacinths Sam had brought me on our second. Neither Sam nor I had family there, but we’d been surrounded by friends. A guitar played by Sam’s college roommate serenaded me down the aisle, Heather from law school baked the cake, and Mary Jo performed the ceremony. We wrote our own vows. Sam’s, of course, were much more beautiful than mine.

“I promise to be your light home” was his last vow. And in so many ways, meeting Sam had been like a flare shot off, startling me awake and blazing a trail through my darkness. And yet, we’d ended up so hopelessly lost. I was still choosing him, wasn’t I? Every single day.

My phone rang, startling my eyes off the photos. I dug in my bag for it.

Sam, apparently back from Enid’s. And, just like that, our wedding memory dissolved and I was angry at him all over again.

“What?” I answered.

“Well, hello to you, too,” Sam replied jovially. Drunkenly? It was possible, but if so, not very. His speech always became rapidly, notably slurred, and it wasn’t. “I saw you called. I was just calling you back. But you sound … busy.”

“I am busy,” I said, determined not to interrogate him about Enid’s or Greenpoint. It was only the rehab that mattered now, and I couldn’t exactly get into that in Zach’s house. Or that seemed as good an excuse as any not to say a word. “Because I’m working.”

“Okay then.” Sam sounded wounded. “I can let you—”

“What have you been up to?” I challenged.

“Oh, I’ve just been writing,” Sam said. “Wasn’t a bad day on the book. Five pages. Then again, my butt never left my chair, so maybe five pages isn’t actually that impressive.”

“Never left your chair, huh?” A completely voluntary, gratuitous lie.

“Well, I did go to the post office,” Sam said, carving himself an out. “For stamps. What’s with the third degree?”

It hasn’t even been a week, Sam.

“I’m tired, that’s all,” I said. “It’s been a long day.”

I could feel Sam’s guilt rise in the silence. And I was glad. A little guilt was better than nothing.

“Okay,” he said finally, but tightly. Like he wished he’d said something completely different.