“My collection,” I said, popping open the lid, pulling away a layer of neatly folded sweaters to reveal a little over a million dollars in tightly wrapped stacks of bills. “I meant it when I said you wouldn’t know what to do with them.”
“How did you…?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“This looks like a lot more than we told Haagen.”
“You think I went around advertising their real value? Remember, that’s half for you, half for Serena. I’m not paying you off. This is so the two of you can start over, like we agreed. You’re the ones who…who did the heavy lifting. I’m so sorry. I just couldn’t—”
“He was your husband. Of course you couldn’t.”
“You were right about Sean. He was so convinced the killer had to be male, he never stopped to think that two women might have done the job. I guess we fooled the forensics team, too.”
“The blades were identical. Sean was so in love with that knife, he had to have the black and the silver handle.”
“Lucky for us.”
“Doesn’t get any luckier.”
I looked over at her. She wasn’t convulsing or gnashing her teeth or even blinking. She was standing dead still while tears rolled down her cheeks, one on top of the other.
“Hey,” I said. “Hey, what’s wrong?”
As if I had to ask, but a stock phrase was the best I could come up with—the crisis equivalent to clearing your throat.
“I loved him once, you know?” she said. “It wasn’t supposed to be this way. This wasn’t in our vows. Now I’m getting rich off of…”
She couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence. I shut the suitcase, stood, and put an arm around her.
“First of all,” I said, “half a mil doesn’t make you rich these days. And second, what do you think would have happened to you—to me—if we’d just sat back and left our fate to those men? You said it yourself: Sean would have killed you sooner or later. And even if he hadn’t, you’d have spent the rest of your life scared out of your mind, never knowing when the next trip to the ER was coming.”
She nodded, wiped away tears with the heel of one palm.
“And me?” I went on. “You know firsthand what kind of animal Anthony was. I used to think I loved him. Really, I was seduced by everything that came with him. The house and the cars and the jewels, but also the celebrity. Being able to walk into any restaurant and get a table on the spot. Having people wait on me, even at home. I grew up outside of Jackson. Not poor, but nowhere near rich. Just average. Everything about me was average. I never had any talent, never saw myself as anything more than a secretary or a shop clerk.”
Sarah’s tear ducts had stalled out. She was listening now—taking a break from her story to hear mine.
“But then I met Anthony. At a minor-league baseball game, if you can believe it. It turned out his uncle owned the team. Anthony saw me sitting up in the bleachers with my girlfriends. I wasn’t the prettiest of the group, but it was me he invited to join him in the family suite.
“After the game, he introduced me to the players, then took me for a drive along the coast in his Jaguar. I was hooked. It felt like the big time—as big as it gets in Central Florida. I didn’t see what was coming any more than you did. But it came. For both of us. We grew up in our marriages, and then we saw our mistakes. Our husbands were bad men, and they had all the power on their side. We did the only thing we could do. Don’t call it murder. Call it survival. Because that’s what it was: them or us.”
Sarah patted my arm. She looked thoughtful, as if she was about to share some life-altering insight. Instead, she asked for a Kleenex. I laughed out loud.
“A Kleenex and champagne,” I said. “Not because we’re celebrating, but because it’s there and we might as well drink it.”
I took two half bottles from the minibar. They cost more than two full bottles, but this wasn’t the time to be frugal.
“Plastic cups, or straight from the bottle?” I asked.
“Straight from the bottle.”
“That’s my girl.”
We sat across from each other on the twin beds, drank without toasting, seemed for a long beat to have run out of things to say. Then I had an idea.
“Let me see those sham glasses of yours,” I said.
She looked confused but dug them out of her pocketbook without asking any questions.
“And that snapshot in your wallet of you and Sean at Niagara—let me have that, too.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re going to burn it.”
“Burn it?”
“And these awful reading glasses, too.”
The frames were bright yellow with patches of brown—the most pitiful pair Sarah could find. I put them on, pushed them up the bridge of my nose.
“Weakest prescription money can buy,” I said. “Luckily you don’t need them anymore, since Sean won’t be coming at you anymore. Time to let go of the past.”
I took the metal wastepaper basket from under the desk, filled it with pages from the Tribune, then dropped in the glasses and the photo. As a show of solidarity, I pulled out of my pocket a leather key chain with AC & AC branded on one side and tossed it in. A present from Anthony on the occasion of our third anniversary. By then, the romance was already dead.
“Come on, now,” I said.
She followed me onto the balcony. Below us, the street was starting to come to life. Fast-talking front men were out fighting for business, luring tourists to their restaurants, bars, clubs. A street musician with an accordion was butchering the theme to The Godfather. Everywhere people were singing, holding hands, climbing lampposts. A few flames on a balcony would only add to the festivities.
Sarah sat on a wrought iron chair and watched me strike the match.
“I don’t know,” she said.
