The Other Mrs.(61)

I tell him, “I don’t know what you mean.”

But I feel my body tense up regardless. My boldness start to wane.

“I wanted to be sure that the schedule hadn’t been changed. So I asked Emma about it. It was a long shot, of course, expecting her to remember anything that happened a week or two ago. Except that she did, because that day was unique. Emma’s daughter had gotten sick at school and needed to be picked up. Stomach flu,” he says. “She’d thrown up at recess. Emma is a single mother, you know; she needed to go. Except that what Emma remembers from that day is it was bedlam here at the clinic. A backlog of patients waiting to be seen. She couldn’t leave.”

I rise to my feet. “This essentially describes every day here, Officer. We see nearly everyone who lives here on the island. Not to mention that cold and flu season is in full swing. I don’t know why this would be unique.”

“Because that day, Dr. Foust,” he says, “even though your name was on the schedule, you weren’t here the whole day. There’s this gap in the middle where neither Joyce nor Emma can account for your whereabouts. What Emma remembers is you stepping out for lunch just after noon, and arriving back somewhere in the vicinity of three p.m.”

It comes as a swift punch to my gut. “That’s a lie,” I say, words curt. Because that didn’t happen. I swell with anger. Certainly Emma has mixed up her dates. Perhaps it was Thursday, November thirtieth, that her daughter was sick, a day that Dr. Sanders was scheduled to work and not me.

But before I can suggest this to the officer, he says, “Three patients were rescheduled. Four chose to wait. And Emma’s daughter? She sat on a chair in the nurse’s office until the end of the school day. Because Emma was here, making excuses for your absence.”

“That’s not what happened,” I tell him.

“You have proof to the contrary?” Officer Berg asks, which of course I don’t. Nothing concrete.

“You could call the school,” I manage to think up just then. “Check with the school nurse to see which day Emma’s daughter was sick. Because I’d bet my life on it, Officer. It wasn’t December first.”

The look he gives me is leery. He says nothing.

“I’m a good doctor” is all I can think in that moment to say. “I’ve saved many lives, Officer. More than you know,” and I think of all those people who would no longer be alive if it wasn’t for me. Those with gunshot wounds to vital organs, in diabetic comas and respiratory distress. I say it again. “I’m a good doctor.”

“Your work ethic isn’t what concerns me, Doctor,” he says. “What I’m trying to get at is that on the afternoon of the first, between the hours of twelve and three, your whereabouts are unaccounted for. You have no alibi. Now, I’m not saying you had anything to do with Morgan’s murder or that you are somehow an unfit physician. What I’m saying is that there seems to be some ill will between you and Mrs. Baines, some sort of hostility that needs explaining, as do your lies. It’s the cover-up, Dr. Foust, that’s often worse than the crime. So why don’t you just tell me. Just go on and tell me what happened that afternoon between you and Mrs. Baines,” he says.

I cross my arms against my chest. There’s nothing to say.

“Let me let you in on a little secret,” he says in response to my silence. “This is a small island and stories spread quick. Lots of loose lips.”

“I don’t know what that has to do with anything.”

He says, “Let’s just say that yours wouldn’t be the first husband who ever had eyes for Mrs. Baines.”

And then he offers a flinty stare, waiting for some response, for me to become indignant.

I won’t give in.

I swallow hard. I force my hands behind me; they’ve begun to shake.

“Will and I are happily married. Madly in love,” I say, forcing my eyes on his. Will and I were madly in love, once. It’s a half-truth, not a lie.

The lie comes next. “Will has never had eyes for any woman but me.”

Officer Berg smiles. But it’s a tight-lipped smile. A smile that says he knows better than to believe this. “Well,” he says, careful with his words. “Mr. Foust is a very lucky man. You’re both lucky. Happy marriages these days are a rare bird.” He raises his left hand to show me the bare ring finger. “Married twice,” he confesses, “divorced twice. No more weddings for me. Anyhow,” he says, “maybe I misinterpreted what they said.”

My willpower isn’t strong. I know I shouldn’t and yet I do. I take the bait.

“What who said?” I ask.

He tells me, “The mothers at the school pickup line. They stand in clusters outside the gate, waiting for their kids to be released. They like to talk, to gossip, as I’m sure you know. For most, it’s the only adult conversation they have all day until their husbands come home from work.”

It strikes me as a very misogynistic thing to say. That women gossip, that husbands work. I wonder what Officer Berg thinks of Will’s and my arrangement. I don’t ask. He goes on to say, “It’s just that, when I questioned them, they alluded to the fact that your husband and Mrs. Baines were quite—What’s the word they used?” he thinks aloud, deciding, “Chummy. Yes, that’s it. Chummy. He said that they were quite chummy.”