Her One Mistake(86)

“Well, whatever happened on that boat we might never know the truth—” Lowry says.

“Angela?” Captain Hayes speaks her name. Charlotte leans forward, chancing another glance at the four detectives. Angela is looking the other way. “Is there something else?” Hayes says.

“Angela?” he asks her again when she doesn’t respond.

“No,” she says firmly and looks back at the others. “Nothing else.” But Charlotte’s sure there was something else Angela wanted to say.

? ? ?

“DO I NEED a lawyer?” I ask when Lowry comes back. He has been gone for more than ten minutes and it’s felt like a lifetime, wondering what he’ll decide to do next, whether he’s going to charge me or not. My chest is burning and I scratch at the thin cotton of my T-shirt until I feel my skin sting. “Am I under arrest?”

“No,” he says, though I don’t believe he’s happy about that.

“Then I can go?”

He nods slowly and watches me warily as he says, “Yes. Though we’ll need to speak to you again. And we’ll need to talk to your daughter in the morning.”

I can’t believe it. I’m free to go? Does that mean they believe me, or at least have no evidence? Does that mean Charlotte lied for me?

“There’s someone here for you.” Lowry’s voice is low and I look up to see Angela in the doorway. I stand up and fall into her arms as she hugs me, then slowly walks me out of the room.

“I’m really free to leave?” I say to her, my words no more than a whisper.

“Yes you are.” She smiles as she maneuvers me down the hallway toward the reception area. “I’m taking you to a safe house for the night. Alice is already there,” she says as she opens the front door. “She was fast asleep when I left her.”

Outside, the chill of the night air hits me. Angela stops at the bottom of the steps and, when we’re alone in the parking lot, turns to me and says, “Your bag was found at the beach. I read your diary, Harriet. Why didn’t you tell me what Brian was doing?”

I stare past her. I’d wanted everyone to see what Brian was doing, no one more than Angela. “I wasn’t sure you’d believe me. I needed you to see him doing it with your own eyes.”

I feel Angela tense and I can’t be sure if it’s because she’d fallen for Brian’s lies too, or because she’s still not certain if she can trust me.

“He’s very clever,” I say. “I’d hoped with a bit more time you’d have seen what he was doing. I’ve no doubt you would have, it’s just that things went wrong before then.”

“Did you plug your phone in?” she asks. “The day it fell into the bath? You were adamant it wasn’t you, but Brian was so—” She brushes a hand through the air.

“Convincing?” I finish for her. “No I didn’t. That was him.”

We pick up our steps again as Angela leads me to the taxi waiting at the far side of the lot. “He killed my father,” I say. “He attacked him, completely unprovoked.” After everything that has happened, I still feel numb. Grief has rooted itself inside me, a part of me now, and it terrifies me that somehow I just need to accept it.

“I’m sorry, Harriet,” she says. “I’m very sorry about your dad.”

“I know what everyone will think of him, but what he did was out of love for me and Alice.” It breaks my heart to be uttering these words. I have a feeling I will be saying them a lot in the future, but I suspect they’ll fall on deaf ears.

“You know you’ll be questioned again, don’t you?” Angela says. “Detective Lowry wants to ask you more about what happened on the boat.”

I nod.

“It’s just—just make sure your story’s clear, Harriet.”

I glance at her quizzically. “I don’t understand.”

“He’ll want to dissect what happened at sea between you and Brian.” She pauses as we reach the taxi. “I know you said you couldn’t swim,” she says, “but I know that’s not true.”

“What do you mean?”

“I saw your swimming suit at the bottom of the laundry basket once,” she says, shaking her head. “Don’t answer; I don’t need to know any more.” Angela’s eyes drift to my stomach and my hand that’s rubbing it in circles. “I missed that, though, didn’t I?” she adds.

My breath catches as my hand immediately stills. I look down at my feet.

“How many weeks?” she asks gently.

“Seven,” I mumble. “There was one night.” I feel the need to explain the time to her, to make her understand why I slept with my husband when the act itself had become such a blessed rarity. I didn’t want Brian upset about anything so close to the fair, and feared saying no would have triggered doubts that everything was normal. “How did you guess?” I ask. “There haven’t really been many signs yet.” So far this pregnancy has been so different than Alice’s that often I forget I’m pregnant, or wonder if I still am.

“A bit of guessing, but there was something in your last diary entry. You wrote, ‘Surely I’m doing the right thing for all of us.’ It’s a small detail, but it stuck out because you usually wrote both of you. And you haven’t stopped rubbing your tummy tonight,” she adds. “I was looking for it though.”