Mark Gimenez
Accused
PROLOGUE
When she opened her eyes, she did not know that her life would never be the same.
All she knew was that her body was shivering violently. She wrapped her arms but felt even colder, almost wet from the sea breeze. The French doors leading to the deck outside stood propped open, and the breeze billowed the sheer curtains. In the vague light, they looked like whitecaps of waves rolling ashore. She glanced at the clock on the nightstand: 3:45 A.M.
She got out of bed-the tile floor felt damp beneath her feet, as if it had rained in-and went over to shut the doors, but the scent of the sea lured her outside. She parted the curtains and stepped out onto the deck. The house stood on tall stilts like an eight-legged white flamingo perched among the sand dunes; the second-story deck overlooked the secluded stretch of Galveston beach and the Gulf of Mexico beyond. She walked to the far railing where she could see the last ripples of high tide dying out just feet from the house. She inhaled the sea and tasted the salt in the air. She often woke and came out here in these quiet hours when the moon offered the only light, when all color was washed out by the night, when her world was painted only in shades of gray.
She lived her life in shades of gray.
She gazed out at the twinkling lights of the offshore drilling platforms dotting the distant horizon; she liked to think they were the lights of Cancun. She had often imagined taking the yacht straight across the Gulf the seven hundred fifty miles to Cancun-and never returning. Maybe one day she would.
Maybe. One day.
The breeze blew her short nightgown tight against her lean body; the silk seemed to stick to her skin. She clutched herself again. It was early June, and the night temperature had not dipped below eighty, but she had still caught a chill. A big wave splashed ashore, and the sea spray hit her. She licked the wet from her lips then reached up and wiped her face; she could not see the dark streaks down her cheeks that her hands had left in their wake, but her face now felt even wetter. She touched her cheeks again then looked down at her hands. Her palms were shiny with a wetness that was dark in the moonlight, dark and wet like…
She turned and ran back inside. She fought her way through the curtains then slapped her hands against the wall until she found the light switch-the stark white bedroom was suddenly ablaze with incandescent light. The shades of gray were gone. Her world was now painted bright red: red on the white bed sheets… red footprints on the white tile floor leading from the bed out to the deck where she had stepped… red handprints on the white wall where she had searched for the light switch… red on the white curtains where she had fought through them… red on her white nightgown… and red on her. Bright red. Blood red. His blood. She stood drenched in his blood. And he lay on the bed with a knife in his chest.
Rebecca Fenney screamed.
ONE
Three hours later and three hundred miles to the north, Scott Fenney stood drenched in sweat. The sun had just risen that Friday morning, only the fifth day of June, but the temperature was already pushing ninety. It was going to be a hot summer.
The traffic light changed, and he jogged across Mockingbird Lane. He was running the streets of Highland Park. He ran five miles every morning, before the town came alive, when the roads were still free of foreign automobiles and the air still free of exhaust fumes, when the only sounds were birds chirping in the tall oak trees that shaded the broad avenues and the only sights were other white men waging war against middle age in running shoes. Scott was only thirty-eight, so he could still avoid such a daily confrontation with his future. But he could not avoid a daily confrontation with his past.
He ran past the lot where the small rent house he had grown up in had once stood, home to mother and son, the poor kid on the block. He ran past the Highland Park football stadium where he had been a high school hero under the bright Friday night lights and the SMU stadium where he had become a college legend on a glorious Saturday afternoon in the fall of his twenty-first year. He ran past the law school where he had graduated first in his class then had struck out for downtown Dallas to find his fortune in the law. He ran past the country club where lush green fairways bathed in a soft shower from low sprinklers, an exclusive golf course that would soon welcome the wealthiest white men in Dallas just as it had once welcomed him. He ran past the mansion he had once called home.
He was now the poor lawyer on the block.
It had been two years since that life had become his past. He had not mourned the loss of his partnership at the Ford Stevens law firm or the money that had come with being a successful lawyer or the things that money had bought-the home, the club, the car… okay, he did miss the car; it was a red Ferrari 360 Modena that could do zero to sixty in 4.5 seconds. But he had what money could not buy and what no one could foreclose, repossess, or otherwise take from him by legal process. He had his daughters. So while his morning run reminded him of the past, he did not long for the past. He had gotten over his past.
Except Rebecca.
She had not screamed or cursed or said goodbye. She had just left. She wanted nothing from him and took nothing-not her community property or her clothes or her child. After eleven years of marriage, she had just wanted out. So twenty-two months and eight days ago, she had walked out of their house and marriage and left town with the twenty-six-year-old assistant golf pro at the club. Scott blamed himself. If only he had been more attentive to her needs, more thoughtful toward her, more caring toward her, more… something. Whatever it was that a woman needed from a man. What she had needed from him. He had not given her what she had needed, so she had found it with another man. In another man's bed.
He now slept alone. When he slept. The other hours he lay awake and alone, thinking of her and wondering if he would ever again feel the love of a woman lying next to him, holding him, touching him, wanting him. He wanted to love again, to feel the heat of passion again, to experience that special connection-physical and mental-between a man and a woman, when he and she were one. Those moments were the best moments of a man's life. Those were the moments with Rebecca he recalled now.
He longed to share his life with another woman. But he couldn't, not until he understood why his wife had left him. Until he knew what she had needed and how he had failed her. So if he got a second chance at love, he wouldn't fail again. But for now Scott Fenney had no reason to stay in bed each morning.
So he ran.
TWO
Scott entered the small cottage through the back door that led into the kitchen and was greeted by the smell of eggs, chorizo, and coffee. Consuela had already arrived and was cooking breakfast.
'Morning, Consuela.'
' Buenos dias, Senor Fenney.'
Consuela was thirty, round, and Catholic. She wore three crucifixes and kept prayer candles lit on the windowsill. Her husband, Esteban Garcia, dropped her and the baby off each morning on the way to his construction job in Dallas. Little Maria sat in a high chair and smeared mushy food on her face. Scott leaned down to her.
'And how are you this morning, Senorita Maria de la Rosa-Garcia?'
