A Good Marriage(46)

“I don’t know,” Amanda said, but for some reason, none of it bothered her in the least. It seemed ordinary almost. “Maybe it was the way Maude described it. And it was her decision, not her husband’s. She’s so comfortable with who she is and what she wants. I don’t know. It made it sound like … freedom.”

“Well, well, well, Amanda. After all these years, you finally have surprised me.” Carolyn was grinning now. “And I have to meet this Maude person. Anybody who can make you loosen up like that is definitely somebody I want to know.” Carolyn set her coffee mug back down on the marble counter. She checked the time on the stove. “Oh, shit. Now I’m going to be late. I’ve got a meeting. Work on a Sunday. Like your husband. I’ve got to go.”

“Go, go,” Amanda said, even though what she really wanted to say was Please stay forever. But how needy was she going to be? Carolyn already did so much for her.

Carolyn got off her stool and walked over to Amanda. She put a hand on each of her arms. “Go to the police. Today. Enough of this shit.”

“Okay,” Amanda said, but too quickly.

Carolyn eyed her doubtfully. “I mean it, Amanda. I’m not trying to freak you out, but I have a bad feeling this time.”

“I’ll go talk to them,” Amanda said. “I will.”

“Today?”

Amanda nodded. “Today.”

After the two hugged goodbye, Amanda watched Carolyn disappear from the kitchen, then turned to dump Carolyn’s coffee in the sink. As she watched the coffee swirl down the drain, she felt her conviction sliding away with it. If Carolyn could be there at her side all the time, that would be one thing. Though it was hardly strength if you had to rely on someone else for it. Carolyn was right; she needed to do something. Besides, it was one thing to ignore the calls and even the following while Case was away, but what about when he got back? Amanda wouldn’t allow this to continue. For the sake of her son, she could not.

Upstairs, Amanda passed by the front bedroom windows on her way to take a shower. She spotted something on the sidewalk down below, in front of their gate. Something purple and low to the ground.

Amanda squinted, but was unable to make it out. She headed back downstairs, chest growing tight. These days, there were no good surprises. She checked out the window before she opened the upstairs door to be sure there wasn’t somebody out there waiting for her. With no one in sight, she stepped out on the stoop. It was chilly, especially for June, and Amanda shivered as she made her way down the front steps to the gate, barefoot. There on the ground was a huge bouquet of lilacs, wrapped in violet tissue and tied elegantly with natural twine.

Lilacs were Amanda’s favorite flower. She’d planted them in large pots at every house she and Zach had ever lived in, including in the small backyard of the brownstone, where they had promptly died.

Without touching the flowers, Amanda stood up and looked around again. Maybe someone had left them there for safekeeping while they ran back to retrieve something? But they were not lilacs by coincidence. And the sidewalk was empty in either direction.

Oh, God, why had she let Carolyn leave?

There was a card. Amanda held her breath as she bent down, hands trembling, to pick it up, hoping it would be made out to someone other than her. She squinted as she tugged the card out of the envelope.

Amanda, thinking of you. xoxo





Lizzie





JULY 8, WEDNESDAY


The office of the Hope First Initiative was in a gritty converted factory. It was hard to imagine elegant Amanda there, and so I pictured her wearing white gloves, her hands hovering over the handrail as she glided up the cracked stairs. Amanda probably glided everywhere. I believed this even though Zach had already told me that Amanda came from a poor background, and I’d already read myself about her addicted father and her being raped by some boy who’d then made her go watch Marley & Me with him. It was amazing how I could conveniently disregard all these tragic details so I could return to my initial impression of rich, beautiful Amanda: that she was a woman to be envied, even when she was dead.

What an awful person I was.

At least self-loathing was a feeling, though. I’d been disturbingly numb since I’d found the earring. There were many ugly explanations for my husband having some other woman’s earring in his bag: an affair, a prostitute, a stripper. Out of these, an affair seemed the only real possibility. Sam had a genuine aversion to anything that even hinted at exploitation.

At least, as far as I knew.

There were innocent explanations, too. Sam could have found the earring on the street or in a café; he was holding it so that he could launch a search for the rightful owner … But Sam had always been a big believer in the “Leave it, they’ll come back for it” school of thought. I couldn’t see him picking up a stranger’s earring. Was I too quickly jumping to the worst-case scenario this time? Maybe. After all, I’d had a lot of experience being blindsided.

Ironically, I might have had some actual answers, had I not deliberately avoided confronting Sam. After spending the rest of the night upright and awake on the couch, I’d left while he was still sound asleep. I’d parked myself at Café du Jour near Hope First to check in on my other cases. Everything had taken a back seat to Zach these last few days, and I needed to catch up. It turned out the DOJ was filing charges against three members of the battery manufacturer’s board. Paul wanted me to have a joint motion to dismiss ready to go. I’d never been so grateful for such tedious work.