Page 97 of Wrong Mail

“Yeah. One time. There was a problem with the other account, and I needed the money that day.”

Well, that explains that.

The floor of my marriage keeps dropping and I keep finding another floor under it.

"That night," I say. "Tell me about the night at the hospital. The night the man from our break-in died in that bed and you were in that building. You told me you were out getting party things, but you went to speak to someone from Portland."

David closes his eyes.

"That was Lena. She called me at seven," he says. "She was threatening me."

"Why, if you were paying her?"

"Because I'd stopped paying her."

I take a step back.

"A week before, I told her she wasn't getting another cent until she gave me a DNA test. Until she proved the child was even mine."

"You never questioned that before?" I ask.

"Of course I did. From the start." His eyebrows go up. "But she told me that if I pushed for proof, she'd make sure my name was ruined no matter what the test said. So I paid, and I told myself it was easier." He exhales hard. "And then I kept thinking about you. About us. I wanted a clean slate. That was the whole point of moving here. To get away from all of it. Oregon. The crash. The memories. What I'd done."

He lets that sit.

"So what happened that night?" I ask.

"She told me to meet her at the hospital with the money, or she'd walk into Helen's office in the morning and end my career. She knew I wouldn't make a scene there. Not in my own workplace." He pinches the bridge of his nose. "So I went. I badged in and found somewhere quiet. I let her scream at me for the better part of an hour. Then I gave her the money to make her leave. Then I sat in my car in the structure a long time, because I couldn't make myself come home and lie to your face again. That's your three hours, Mallory. It was never a patient. It was her. I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner."

And there it is. The whole hospital night turns over between us and lands another way. It had nothing to do with that patient. Every careful, guilty word he gave me was true. It all pointed at a betrayal I could survive, not the murder I'd spent a week building toward.

But that's the thing about his story. It puts him in the building the night a man died. It ties him to a woman who's been dead since Tuesday. It hands me a husband with every reason in the world and no clean hour I can point to and say, there, he couldn't have done it.

"And those men who broke into our house?" I ask.

"I think Lena sent them." He says it fast, desperate to give me something. "When I stopped paying, when I finally told her to take me to court and called her bluff, I think she got frightened and sent someone to lean on me. I don't know that. I've thought it through a hundred times. I don't know anything anymore except what I did, and what I did was lie to you, and I am so sorry."

"And the others?"

"What others?"

"Somebody hurt them, David. The Ericksons. Lena. Somebody took Julia."

"Not me."

"Where were you on Tuesday?" The question is out before I've decided to ask it. "The day Julia vanished. The day Lena died. Where were you?"

"I was home." He doesn't hesitate, and it almost lands like an answer. Then I watch him understand what I already know. "I was home all day."

“Your phone was home,” I say.

He looks at me, and he doesn’t answer fast enough.

And I understand. After the hospital, he learned. He learned what I could see, what I could prove, what I could ask. So if he needed to disappear after that, he knew what to leave on the counter.

It doesn’t mean he was in Portland. That’s the part I can’t get past. It doesn’t mean he was, but it doesn’t mean he wasn’t. He’s made himself into a man I can’t check.

"That wasn't me." He's on his feet now, and there are tears on his face he doesn't wipe. His voice cracks all the way open at last. "Mallory. Look at me. I lied about Lena. I've lied about her for two years. I'm the worst liar you'll ever stand in a kitchen with, but I'm telling you the truth now with nothing left to protect. I lied about the money, the hospital, all of it. But I didn't kill anyone." He puts his hand on his chest like he's holding something in. "You have to believe me."