Page 52 of Playing Along

“I know,” Becca hisses back. “That’s what I just said.”

“Yeah, that’s what you literally said, but it’s not what your tone of voice and body language conveyed,” Emily exclaims, still at whisper volume.

“Don’t talk to me about my body language,” Becca retorts. “Look at your body language, karate kid.”

She’s not wrong. Emily has adapted a pose I recognize as the ready stance: feet shoulder width apart, knees slightly bent, arms up at her sides. It’s as if she thinks one of us might attack.

She knows. They both know.

The reality of this crashes down on me like an anvil, squashing my former allusion that we’d somehow find a way for Nora to get away with murder.

I can’t speak, can’t even move from the fear gripping my very soul.

“Listen, Reynolds, don’t freak out,” Emily bypasses Becca’s karate kid comment to address me. “It’s not as if we’re going to tell anyone. Our lips are sealed.” She mimics locking her lips with two fingers.

“Right, yeah, of course,” Becca says. “We won’t tell. We are great secret keepers. Don’t tell Mel, though,” she adds as an afterthought. “She’s horrible at keeping secrets.”

“Yeah, she’s the one that told me,” Emily says, wrinkling her nose. “Well, sort of. I don’t think she’s actually figured out that you,” she lowers her voice, “murdered your boss, but she was the one who kept asking where your dress came from if you spent the night here and why Reynolds, who’s never lost his phone a day in his life, conveniently lost it when everyone was trying to get ahold of him. She knows you two are hiding something, she just hasn’t figured out what. Probably because she knows you too well, Nora. It’s harder to imagine your close friends being capable of murder, but I knew you did it the second you said that Ian guy made unwanted advances. I know that’s code for he tried to assault you. And believe you, me…I have been in a scenario where it was my life or the other guy’s and I had no problem picking myself over him. Of course, I didn’t end up murdering him, just kicking the gun out of his hand. But not all of us are trained in martial arts. Some of us just carry really sharp knitting needles.” She breaks off, breathing hard, then looks at Becca. “How did you know?”

Becca looks uncomfortable as she explains, “The Dawn wasn’t working on the stain, so I decided to go see if you had anything in the laundry room that might help. I saw the bucket with the red water, and well, it smelled like blood.” She shudders. “Like Emily, I sort of guessed that you meant he tried to assault you when you said he made unwanted advances.” Her expression hardens. “So in my opinion that makes whatever happened next self-defense.”

“Yes, absolutely,” Emily impassions, dropping out of defense mode to hurry over to Nora’s side. She puts an arm over Nora’s shoulders. Nora looks as if she’s on the verge of tears as Emily continues, “You acted in self-defense.”

“Which is notoriously hard to prove,” I repeat this truth from last night not to spoil the unified/together-we-can-face-this-injustice mood of the room but because it’s a truth that evidently needs to be repeated. It may seem as simple as an act of self-defense to these women, but I’ve been in a courtroom testifying in cases where the defense attorney argued for self-defense and things almost always get sticky. The character of the defendant gets dragged through the mud, oftentimes no one on the jury seems to buy the story, and without fail the defendant is forced to relive the whole horrible event that led them to being in the courtroom in the first place. Not to mention the prison time. Rarely do judges set bail for people accused of violent crimes. Meaning that Nora would spend time in prison regardless of her innocence.

These are the things that need to be remembered when it seems as if things in my kitchen are getting all cozy and people are acting like everything is going to be fine.

None of this is fine.

“Let’s not be a Debbie downer,” Emily chides with a disapproving frown.

“I’m not sure it’s possible to be anything other than a Debbie downer when it comes to my wife going to prison,” I reply dryly.

My point is completely missed due to the fact that Becca and Emily are currently sighing over my use of the words my wife. These women, I swear. When it comes to romance they’re like dogs at the mere hint of a squirrel—must focus all attention on it no matter what else is going on around them.

“I’m not going to let her go to prison,” I repeat over their crooning. “Which means you two can’t tell Montgomery or Seth about this.”

Immediately Becca pulls a face. “Um, that might be a bit of a problem for me. You see our pre-marital counselor has really been emphasizing the importance of trust and honesty in a marriage. I can’t lie to Seth. But don't worry, he’s not going to tell. Who would he even tell?” Not like he has four million YouTube subscribers anymore,” she adds with an awkward laugh. “He used to be a golf YouTuber,” she explains to Nora. “But don’t worry, he just owns and runs a golf course now. Sure he talks to lots of people on a daily basis, but usually it’s about golf clubs and how the greens are reading. Murder has never come up.”

“When you say don’t tell Reed,” Emily interjects, “I assume you meant don’t tell him via text or phone call to avoid leaving a digital trail, and not that you meant don’t tell him period.”

“I absolutely meant don’t tell him period,” I growl.

“Oh, yeah, no.” Emily shakes her head. “I can’t do that. I have to tell him. But like Becca said, he won’t tell.”

I close my eyes against the pressure and anxiety building inside me.

“What’s going on in here?” Lucy’s voice penetrates my attempts at finding some semblance of inner calm. “I thought we were leaving so that the newlyweds could have some alone time.” She steps further into the kitchen, her gaze bouncing around to each of us. “Why do you guys look so serious?”

“Serious? Us?” Emily forces a laugh and Becca hastily joins in, letting out a noise that I think is meant to be a laugh but in reality sounds more like a donkey breathing its last breath. “We’re not serious. Just shooting the breeze while we waited for you and Mel to get moving.”

“Hmm, I see.” Lucy crosses her arms over her chest. “And here I thought maybe you guys were discussing whether or not Nora stabbed that guy with her knitting needle before or after Reynolds took him out for trying to assault her.”

In a less dire situation the collective gasp that follows her words would be almost comical. As things stand it’s more like the sound of impending doom.

“Jack did not kill him,” Nora speaks for the first time since Becca came into the kitchen, her voice ringing out clear and steady as she proclaims my innocence. “It was all me, okay?” Some of her control waivers as she moves onto her own role in what happened, the tiniest of tremors punctuating her speech. “He lunged at me and I reacted instinctively, trying to defend myself. I didn’t think…I never meant to…I still can’t believe…I killed him.” She leaves the words hanging in the air as her carefully constructed facade shatters like glass, each tear that pours down her cheeks like a shard piercing my heart.

I’m at her side before I’ve even realized I’m moving, pulling her against me and whispering every promise I can think of to let her know I’ve got her back.

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