After Anna(88)
That night, Noah had driven home to his carriage house, which he’d rented on the fly. It was a tenant cottage behind the main house, where his landlord lived, and Noah thought it would be nicer for Caleb to visit him or move in, if it went that far. Noah had gotten home and pulled into the driveway, surprised to see Anna’s Range Rover.
Noah had gotten out of his car, mentally preparing to see Anna. He’d wanted to confront her for her lies about him. He’d wanted to know why she’d been so hell-bent on ruining him, breaking up his family, destroying his life. He had to know why. Noah had walked the path to the porch, but it was too dark to see anything. His eyes hadn’t adjusted to the darkness until he was almost standing on top of Anna, who was lying faceup on his porch floor, her arms flung wide.
Noah hadn’t understood, his brain refusing to accept the obvious. He’d thought she had fallen asleep. He hadn’t known why she was even here. He hadn’t known how she’d even gotten the address, maybe from Maggie. None of it had made sense.
Anna, what are you doing?
He’d knelt over her, reaching reflexively in his back pocket for his phone. He’d slid it out, switched on the flashlight, and shined it in her face. Her eyes had been bulging, the sclera red with blood. Petechiae had dotted her eyelids and underneath her eyes, vivid against the pallor of her skin, blanched in death. Horrified, he’d pressed two fingers under her chin, which was still warm. There had been no pulse.
Noah had gone into action, administering chest compressions and fumbling to dial 911 at the same time. A female dispatcher had picked up, and Noah had thought of the 911 tapes they played on the TV news, which Maggie always hated. That had been the moment he’d realized that the police were going to think he had killed Anna.
Noah had to admit, he’d been thinking of himself. That’s why he felt so guilty now. Even though he hadn’t committed the murder, he hardly felt innocent. Anna had been his first thought, but his second thought had been they are going to arrest me for this murder. He never would’ve thought that before the PFA hearing. Before then, he’d thought that law led to justice and good guys never got convicted. But he’d learned quite the opposite that day, because the judge was going to issue that PFA against him if they hadn’t settled it. And he would have been found to have sexually abused Anna, which he hadn’t done, either.
Noah had kept up the compressions, all the time looking around, paranoid, on alert, wondering who could’ve killed Anna, why, or if they were still around. Where they could’ve come from, and how. The lights had been on in his landlord’s house and in the house to the back, but it was another five hundred yards to the back neighbor’s privacy fence. Noah hadn’t seen anyone else, and there had been no other cars in the driveway, so somebody must’ve come on foot or gotten dropped off in a car.
Noah had kept the compressions going and tried to talk to the dispatcher, but all he could think of was they are going to arrest me for this murder. He had rushed the 911 operator off the phone and called Thomas, telling him everything that happened. Noah hadn’t been sure that even Thomas had believed him. They both had known the police were on the way and that Noah would be taken in for questioning. Thomas had told him what to do, but Noah started thinking about Maggie. Anna was dead, and it would kill Maggie. All she’d ever wanted was Anna, and now Anna had been murdered. Strangled. On his front porch. What would Maggie think? Would Maggie believe he hadn’t done it?
The police had arrived, Officers Simon and Pettigrew, and Noah had told them what Thomas had advised him to say, I came home, I found her here, and that’s all I know. And then after that, I’m not going to answer any further questions on the advice of counsel.
But all along, Noah had wished he could say the only thing that mattered to him. But he couldn’t.
I didn’t do it.
Chapter Sixty
Maggie, Before
Maggie hadn’t known it was possible to feel numb for hours, but it was. She felt numb all day Sunday, refusing to acknowledge to herself that she’d signed Anna’s PFA form, that Noah had molested Anna, or that she was going to be in court for a PFA hearing, caught in the middle between her husband and her daughter. Maggie went through the motions of her day, doing laundry, serving dinner, spraying countertops, and helping Caleb with his homework, then saying good night to Anna, who told her that she hadn’t heard about the hearing yet.
Maggie couldn’t bring herself to say, ‘Fingers crossed!’
By the next morning, Anna had gotten a lawyer, who called the law clerk of the emergency judge and got them a hearing, which found Maggie in a courtroom, unable to look at Noah sitting at counsel table, his face front. She continued to feel numb throughout Anna’s testimony, as awful as it was hearing what had happened. She listened as Noah testified, but even afterwards, she wasn’t sure who was telling the truth.
Afterwards, Anna’s lawyer had said that he believed the judge was going to issue a PFA Order against Noah, and Maggie had come to life. She couldn’t let it happen to Noah, but more importantly, she couldn’t let it happen to Caleb. The guilt, and the bullying, would have killed the boy. Maggie had persuaded Anna and her lawyer to let her broker a settlement, which Noah and his lawyer had accepted, then they’d all gone home. Separately.
Maggie didn’t go to work on Monday and she told them she was taking another week off, assuming that Noah would keep his mouth shut about the PFA hearing. She felt so lost, knocking around the empty house, taking Caleb to his speech pathologist, and trying to figure out how to tell him that Noah wasn’t at a medical conference, but was never coming home. She’d have to call a family lawyer and see if she had any rights to Caleb, whom she’d always intended to adopt, but hadn’t just yet. On Tuesday morning, Maggie walked with Kathy, but their Talk & Talk didn’t help the way it usually did. Kathy nagged her to call a therapist, but Maggie couldn’t make herself do it yet.