The Last Thing She Ever Did(42)

Owen stopped her. “They won’t,” he said. “Why would they? We aren’t suspects. We loved Charlie. We are the Franklins’ closest friends.”

“I don’t like lying to Carole,” Liz said. “It makes me sick inside. I can barely look at her and she wants me to tell her everything will be all right. I know it won’t ever be all right again.”

“We can’t change what’s done, Liz. We can’t change the people we are and the relationships we have with others. It won’t look right. It isn’t who we are.”

Liz could scarcely believe her ears: Who we are? She was a murderer and he was an accomplice after the fact. She could put all of the blame on herself when it came to Charlie’s death, but that still didn’t mean that Owen had clean hands. They were bloody too.

“They are going to find out,” she said.

Owen pushed back. “They haven’t even found his body.”

“But they will,” Liz said. “I know it. And when they do, there will be something there that will point to me. To you. DNA. Carpet fibers from the car. Something.”

“There isn’t anything. You don’t need to worry.”

“Owen, this isn’t worrying. This is facing up to it.”

“You need to go home. You need to shower. You need to pull yourself together and be Carole’s best friend.”

“I’m a monster.”

“You made a mistake. Don’t make another. Don’t drag us down to a place that we can never get out of.”

“We’re already there, Owen.”

Owen ushered her out of his office and down the hall to the reception area. He could feel the eyes of Lumatyx employees as they traced his movements. Owen used to show Liz off. She was so beautiful. Smart. She could talk to anyone who worked there about whatever it was they did in a way that made everyone feel that she understood what they were talking about. One coder thought Liz was cool. The accounting lead asked Owen one time if Liz had been a model. She was part of what his future was going to be. Not arm candy. She was smarter than that. True, some of that pride had ebbed when she failed the bar. He’d lied and said she’d had the stomach flu that day. He didn’t want his team to think his wife was a failure. That would make him look foolish, as though he’d chosen poorly.

And now Liz had made a spectacle of herself. He was embarrassed beyond words. Angry too. She was a screwup.

He had chosen poorly.

“Is Liz all right?” the front desk girl asked as Owen turned to go back to his office.

“Our cat got hit by a car,” he said.

“Oh, no,” she said, making a sad face. “That’s terrible. Is it going to be okay?”

“No,” he said. “I’m afraid not. She didn’t make it. Liz is crushed. Me too.”

Her sad face went into overdrive. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “That’s super-rough.”

He thanked her and went back to his office. Later that day a card addressed to Owen and Liz appeared on his desk. Everyone at Lumatyx had signed it:

Sorry about your cat . . .



Linda Kaiser had just about given up on her latest Blue Apron meal. Tuscan-style pear and arugula pizza? Seriously? There was no need to make pizza from scratch when anyone in Beaverton with a phone could get one delivered and ready to serve in half an hour. The pictures made it look easy, but it was nothing short of a major hassle. She put the caramelized pears on the pie and slid it into the oven and poured herself a glass of wine.

She followed the sound of the TV news and joined her husband in the family room to watch. The lead story featured reporter Katrina Espinoza-Jones discussing the case of a missing boy from Bend.

She sipped from her glass as a woman’s face filled the flat-screen mounted over a fireplace mantel crowded with framed family photographs and Scottie dog knickknacks.

“I know that woman,” Linda said, pointing. “I saw her at the bar exam.”

Her husband, Dale, reached for the remote. He preferred ESPN.

“Wait,” Linda said, tapping his hand. “Stop it! That woman’s lying. Why is she lying?”

“Lying about what, Linda?” Dale asked, although he didn’t care about anything she had to say. She always saw trouble where there wasn’t any.

Linda snatched the remote. “She wasn’t at the exam all day at all. She left after only a few minutes. Came late, too. Something’s very wrong about that girl.”

“Hey,” he said, “why don’t you report it?”

His tone was only on the edge of being sarcastic. Too much and she’d smack him. Linda never liked her “rightness,” as she called it, challenged. Dale had learned to live with it by allowing himself to be less right.

Even when he wasn’t.

Linda was always tweeting a complaint. Calling customer service. Telling a server how to present a dish. Asking to see the manager at a store. Linda always needed her voice heard. One time she called the police about a suspicious package left at her door.

It was from UPS, addressed to her husband.

She took her wine to her laptop and looked up the number for the Bend Police Department. When it came to giving her two cents about anything, Linda refused to be denied.

“It’s my civic duty,” she told her husband as she punched in the numbers.