The Last Thing She Ever Did(98)

He sat beside her. “You’re in shock,” he said, patting her knee. “We both are.”

She didn’t respond. She just sat there, replaying everything in her mind and still unable to make sense of any of it.

“Dr. Miller saw us,” she said at last. “He saw what we did, Owen.”

Owen slid next to Liz and put his arm around her. She could feel the weight and warmth of his body, but it transmitted nothing to her. No comfort, no assurance. Nothing at all.

“And he’s dead, Liz.”

“Charlie’s alive.”

Owen persisted. “And he’s a very little boy. What does he know? Really, what could he know? He was out cold when we put him in the field.”

Alive, she thought. He was alive.

“He doesn’t remember anything,” he said.

Liz studied her husband’s eyes. Who is this man? “That’s now,” she finally said. “He might remember later.”

“He’s only three.” He was in salesman mode. “He won’t be able to make sense of any of it. He’s been traumatized. He’s too little to put it together . . . and even if he could, no one could make sense of it. We’re free.”

Liz lowered her eyes and gazed at her lap. She pressed her hand against her stomach. She felt sick inside.

“Dr. Miller is dead,” she said.

Owen relaxed his arm. “And thank God he is,” he said. “He was a whacked-out weirdo. He was the only one who could put the pieces together. I’m not sorry he’s dead.”

Her feeling of nausea passed. “He thought he was doing right, Owen. He thought that he could somehow fix the past by taking care of Charlie.”

“You can’t fix the past. You can only go forward. We’re going to do that.”

“David is going to prison. That’s on us.”

“No. No, it isn’t. It was a choice he made.”

Liz turned to face him. “Because you told him about Brad Collins. Don’t lie to me. I know you were doing what you do best, Owen. A button pusher. That’s you.”

“You’re not thinking clearly,” he said.

There was truth to that. Her mind had been firing nonstop since the fight in the basement. She knew it was all real, but she didn’t feel like herself at all.

“Maybe,” she said. “But I know for certain that what I did ruined David and Carole’s lives. It was me, Owen. I was the one who started all of this.”

“Right. I’ll give you that. You also ended it.”

Salesman again.

“Did I?” she asked. “Because it doesn’t feel like I ended anything. Not for anyone. I can still see Charlie wrapped in that tarp. How could we have done that when he was alive? How could we have done that at all?”

“You need to stop thinking about this,” he said. “It’s over.”

Liz knew better. She knew that it would never really be over. It would be like Diamond Lake, haunting her for the rest of her life. The lie would grow into a disease. Cancer, probably. It would come for her when she least expected it.

Although she would always know it was on its way.

Owen undressed for the shower. “We’ll need to go back to the hospital,” he said. “Carole will expect us to be there. They are keeping Charlie overnight.”

“I can’t face her again,” Liz said.

“You have to,” he said. “You are the hero. The press will be there. So will the detectives. You’ll have to pull yourself together, Liz. This is done. You’ve been handed a gift. We both have. This is a happy ending.”

Owen stepped out of sight into the bathroom and turned on the water. The old pipes creaked, and he stepped inside the shower.

It didn’t feel happy. Not at all.

Liz picked up Owen’s expensive jeans, which he had left in a heap on the floor. They were his favorite, dark dyed and not too skinny. She removed the leather belt and coiled it to place it in the top drawer. She’d grown to hate him since the accident. Shifting the contents of the drawer, she noticed some paperwork underneath his growing collection of cashmere and cotton socks. Her husband was becoming a clotheshorse. He dressed better than she did. He told her that he had to look the part.

“Dress for what you want to be,” he’d said.

She’d wanted to be a lawyer. She would never be that.

A quarter-folded sheet of light blue paper caught her eye. She recognized it immediately as the stationery that Owen had bought for her birthday the year before. “Almost a dollar a sheet,” he had said, in that grandiose way he had about certain things. It was teasing but true at the same time. “Don’t waste it on shopping lists.”

What was it doing there?

She looked over her shoulder at the bathroom door as the water in the shower poured over her husband.

It was a typewritten note.

I’m sorry for all the pain that I’ve caused. I am a failure as a wife and friend. I no longer want to be a burden to anyone.

Her signature concluded the short missive.

Liz heard Owen pull the curtain back and step out onto the mat. She could feel her heart race.

Although she had imagined killing herself and even planned to do so, she’d never actually written a suicide note. She’d never taken that concrete step toward truly attempting what she thought was her only way out.