Right Where We Belong (Silver Springs #4)(35)

“She recognized you?”

“She did. By then, everyone in town knew who I was. She said I had to have known what Gordon was doing.”

“But you didn’t.”

“Of course not.” She leaned over to set an abandoned plate one of the kids had left on the counter in the sink. “Do you think I should’ve checked up on him? Is that what most wives do?”

“Your other friends would probably be better equipped to answer that question. What do they say? Do they check up on their husbands?”

“I haven’t had anyone to ask.”

“You don’t have any married friends?”

“I don’t have a lot of friends, period. I was so focused on other things that I drifted away from the kids I was closest to in high school. I spent most of my time with Gordon that first year of college, didn’t meet many other people. Then we dropped out. And once we were married, we moved to a town where we didn’t know anyone. I thought we were fitting in and making friends, but after he was arrested, I realized that the people I’d met in Nephi were nothing more than polite acquaintances.” She savored a sip of her wine. “Maybe if we’d attended the Mormon church, like his grandmother used to and like most everyone else in town, the members would’ve rallied around me. As things stood, I felt completely isolated.”

“You told me you worked. You didn’t meet any friends through that? Or the kids’ school?”

“I worked for a single agent in an old house that had been converted into a commercial property on the main drag. He was much older, also married, with grandkids, and it was only the two of us there each day—well, when he was in. At the end, I was pretty much running the office myself. He’d spend only a few afternoons a week at his desk. Even when he came to the office, we didn’t talk about anything besides work and the weather.”

“And the kids’ school?”

“I met various staff and some of the parents when I volunteered in the classroom, and as the mom of a boy who played in a soccer league. But those are the people who turned out to be far less committed to me than I expected.” She stared into her glass, remembering how quickly they’d begun to eye her with suspicion and doubt. “You have to understand, it’s different when you’re married. My family was my whole life. Working and taking care of Branson and Alia, especially since Gordon was gone so much, didn’t leave me a lot of time for hanging out with friends. Besides, Gordon had me convinced that he was working so hard. I felt guilty if I ever went anywhere without him, especially because getting a babysitter cost money.”

Gavin poured himself a splash more. “Would he have minded if you’d spent the money, gone out and had a good time now and then?”

“Without him? Oh, definitely. That would cause a fight, so I did what he expected of me.” She set her empty glass to one side. “That was why, after he was first accused, I stood by him, tried to defend him. It’s not like I turned on him immediately. That didn’t happen until the police told me about the items they discovered in our shed, and even then it took time for it all to sink in and destroy my loyalty.”

“You’re talking about the rape kit.”

The last thing she wanted was for one of the kids to wake up and hear this conversation, so she spoke quietly. “Yes. They found a mask, a knife, zip ties and a flashlight in an old duffel bag in our shed, shoved down behind where we kept the Christmas tree.”

Gavin slid off the counter to pour her some more wine. “What I don’t understand is why Gordon would keep that on the property,” he said as he returned to his place. “Wasn’t he afraid you might stumble across it?”

She started on her second glass. “No. I never went out to the shed. It was full of camping gear, which we hardly ever used, holiday stuff—and spiders. I hate spiders.” She eyed, with more than a little trepidation, all the cobwebs she had yet to clear away here in her new house. “If I needed anything, I asked Gordon to get it. And he kept a lock on the shed. Said he didn’t want any of the neighborhood kids getting into our storage and making a mess.”

“He probably took that duffel bag with him when he was gone, anyway.”

“Some of the time, I’m sure.”

“I can only imagine how you must’ve felt when the police found that.”

She closed her eyes as she recalled Detective Sullivan marching into the kitchen, brandishing the duffel bag he’d retrieved and opening it so that she could have a look. That was the moment she’d had to accept that she’d never really known her own husband. “It was horrible,” she admitted.

Gavin didn’t speak again until she looked up at him. “What did Gordon have to say when they found that?”

“He told me the detective had to have planted the evidence in order to get a conviction.”

“Is that when they took him into custody?”

“No. They waited a few days, until they had proof that he’d had contact with one of the victims.”

She’d never forget lying beside Gordon during those long nights, trying to convince herself that she wasn’t sleeping next to a rapist. He’d been so angry with Sullivan, so full of accusations of police misconduct. She’d wanted to believe he was telling her the truth, that it was Sullivan who was being dishonest. But it was in the wee hours of those sleepless nights that she’d begun to think about all the little things she’d discounted through the years—how difficult it was for Gordon to climax during regular sex, how standoffish and moody he could get, that he hadn’t been home on any of the three nights those women were attacked.