The Last Thing She Ever Did(87)

“They will put you in prison,” he said. “They’ll put both of us in prison.”

“But I won’t tell about you,” Liz said. Her eyes welled up with tears, but none fell. “Not a word. I’ll say it was all me, because it is all me, Owen.”

“They will find out, Liz.”

She buried herself in his chest.

“No,” she said. “Not if I don’t tell.”

Owen could feel the tension in his wife’s body, the wetness of her eyes staining his English Laundry cotton dress shirt. He gently pushed her away and looked into her eyes.

“If you tell the police—tell anyone—so help me, Liz, it will be the last thing you ever do.”

The words hung in the still air. Liz wasn’t sure if it was a prediction or a threat. Something in her husband’s tone confused her. It was so matter-of-fact. So cold. She didn’t exactly know how to respond.

Owen could see Liz struggling to process his remark. He’d gone too far, threatening her so overtly—though God knew, he wasn’t bluffing. He could so happily strangle her right now. He’d walk it back a little, though. Set them on another track. “There’s too much at stake here.”

Still Liz was unsure.

“But it’s the right thing to do,” she finally said.

Owen put his hands back on Liz and held her.

“Babe, you need a sedative,” he said.

Liz could feel herself falling into a black hole. Medication had been her husband’s answer for everything since the accident. She had no idea where he got the meds. She’d taken so many pills, she wondered if she was on her way to becoming addicted to them. Before the accident she had judged others who relied on pills to get through the day. They were weak. They weren’t able to cope with the challenges that come with life. Weak people. Sad.

Now she was one of them.

“I need to tell the truth,” she said. “Owen, I need to end this.”

“You can’t,” he said. “You’ll waste away in prison. You’ll never be a mom. All of our dreams will be over.”

“Carole and David’s dream is over.”

“People like that get up, dust themselves off, and then forge a new life. They’ve done that with David’s career. Google probably fired Carole. She started over. You and I are just beginning.”

“Losing your child is not the same,” she said. “I killed their little boy. Goddamn it, Owen. Can’t you see the difference?”

Owen kept his arms around her, holding her tightly, imagining how much force it would take to end the conversation.

“You know that you don’t want your mistake to bring me down, babe. You love me. You’ll ruin me. Promise that you won’t. That you’ll keep everything to yourself. No spilling your guts. Okay?”

Liz pulled away. Her mascara had left a smudge on his shirt.

He unbuttoned his shirt and went for a new one in the closet. “That’s my girl. We’ll make it. Promise.”

Liz was unsure if he was promising she’d survive or if he wanted her to promise not to tell.

Her phone pinged several times as Owen texted her later in the day: How you holding up?

Doing the right thing sometimes means doing nothing at all.

I’ll love you no matter what.

We are going to be fine.

Call me if you need me. Call me if you need me to talk you off the ledge.

For each one of her husband’s texts she answered with a sad smiley-face emoji.

Liz had run out of words.





CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

MISSING: TWENTY-SEVEN DAYS

Liz stayed still in her RAV4 and stared straight ahead at the sign for the Bend Police Department. Her hands had started to quaver, so she tried to calm herself by gripping the steering wheel. Hard. Her knuckles went from pink to white. Every muscle in her neck contracted as she sucked in air.

She could do this.

On the drive there, she’d practiced what she’d tell the detectives. She would not implicate Owen. She would take the blame for everything. She imagined their responses and how none of what she would tell them would make sense. There would be no use in trying to win them over to see that she had made a terrible accident a million times worse, but the initial act had not been entirely her fault.

She’d leave out the Adderall and the part about how she kept the boy in the garage all day while she went to take the exam in Beaverton. She’d say she’d had a breakdown. It would be true. Or mostly true.

Liz considered how she’d hold her hands out so she could be cuffed. She’d ask to call her husband to confess to him what she’d done. In front of everyone, she’d beg him to forgive her. She’d let Owen out of everything, saying that he’d been so distracted by work that he didn’t even notice her obvious reliance on sedatives.

Liz sat there and planned it all. She’d take whatever punishment the prosecutor gave her. She’d find a job in the kitchen of the women’s prison, or maybe she’d be able to help the other inmates with legal questions. Maybe there would be some kind of purpose to all of this. Maybe her husband would want to stay with her, but she’d tell him to get on with his life. She knew that marriages don’t often survive the truly horrific or the deepest of loss. Carole didn’t trust David. She hadn’t for a long time. As her friend confided troubles in her marriage, Liz could see that there had been a widening chasm in her own for a long time. Owen was wrapped up with Lumatyx. Late nights. Meetings out of town. Runs along the river that stretched into entire Saturday afternoons. But whatever was going on, he’d had her back. Everything he’d done after she killed Charlie had been done to protect her.