Will felt himself smiling back. It was, he thought, the nicest thing she had done for him in a really long while.
She started to leave, then stopped. "I'm glad you solved your case, Will. No one else would've gotten that girl back alive."
"I'm not so sure about that," he admitted. "You know a lot of this stuff is just chance."
"Be sure to tell that to your asshole teacher."
Evan Bernard. Was the reading teacher's impending prosecution the product of chance, or was that all down to Will's insight? Eventually, whoever was leading the investigation would have checked all of the CDs in Warren's office. Evan Bernard might have been in the wind by then, but they would have found the evidence.
She said, "Maybe if you're good, we can buff the coffee table again."
"Maybe the chair. My knees are hurting."
"I'm not going to marry an old man."
He didn't say the obvious, which was that she wasn't going to marry anybody. Angie hadn't put her house on the market, she wore her engagement ring only when it suited her and as long as Will had known her, the only commitment she had ever stuck to was one to never stick to commitments. The only promise she had ever kept was that she kept popping back up in his life no matter how many times she told him she was not going to.
She had bought him mayonnaise, though. There was some kind of love in the gesture.
Angie leaned over the bed and gave him an uncharacteristic kiss on the forehead. "I'll let you know when your sandwich is ready."
Will fell onto his back and stared up at the ceiling. He tried to remember what it felt like to be alone. As far back as he could remember, there had never been that sense of complete isolation you got when there was no one else out there in the world who even knew your name. Angie had always been a phone call away. Even when she was seeing other men, she would drop everything to come to Will's side. Not that he had ever asked her to, but he knew that she would, just as he knew that he would do the same for her.
Did having Angie in his life mean that Will would never be as alone as Warren Grier? He thought about the scene he had described to the younger man during the interrogation, the picture Will had painted of domestic bliss: Warren would come home to find Emma cooking dinner for him. They would share a bottle of wine and talk about their day. Emma would wash the dishes. Warren would dry. Describing the scenario had been so easy for Will because he knew in his heart that Warren's dreams would closely parallel his own.
Until recently, Will's house had looked like Warren's tiny room on Ashby Street-everything neat, everything in its place. Now Angie's stuff was strewn about, the imprint of her daily existence firmly melding into Will's. Was that a bad thing? Was the inconvenience, the disruption, the price that human beings paid for companionship? Will had told Warren that guys like them didn't know how to be in normal relationships. Maybe Will had landed himself right in the middle of one without having the capacity to recognize the signs.
Clicking announced Betty's entrance in the bedroom as her toenails struck the wood floor. It was as if the dog had been waiting for Angie to leave. She jumped onto the bed and looked at him expectantly. Will covered himself with the sheet, thinking it was mildly inappropriate to be undressed in front of the dog. Betty seemed to have her own issues. He saw what looked like potting soil on her snout.
Will closed his eyes, listening to the creaks and groans of the old house, the compressor kicking in as the air-conditioner whirred to life. Betty crawled onto his chest and took three turns before settling down. She had a little wheeze when she breathed. Maybe her hay fever was back. Will would have to take her to the doctor for some antihistamine tomorrow.
He heard Angie cursing in the kitchen. There was the sound of a knife hitting the floor, probably covered in mayonnaise. He could picture her wiping it up with her foot, tracking it across the tile. Betty would probably find the spots and lick the greasy residue. Will wondered if dogs could get food poisoning and decided the risk was too great.
Carefully, he scooped Betty off his chest, then put on his pants and went to help Angie in the kitchen.
EPILOGUE
THE ANSLEY PARK house sat vacant. The furniture had been auctioned. The walls and floors had been stripped. Special cleaning crews had erased the blood, the scenes of crime. Yet everything was still exactly the same in Abigail Campano's head. Sometimes she would be in the kitchen of their new house or walking up the staircase and remember Adam Humphrey's face, the dark red of his eyes as she squeezed the life out of him.
Despite-or maybe because of-the objection of their lawyers, Abby had written his parents a letter. She had told them what Emma had said about their boy, how he was kind and good and gentle. She had apologized. She had freely admitted her guilt. She offered them everything she had and was fully prepared to give it. Abigail had herself been a lawyer and she knew full well what she was doing. Two weeks later, a note had arrived in the mailbox among the various detritus strangers send strangers in times of catastrophe. There was no return address, but the postmark showed a rural town in Oregon. Two short sentences were on the card inside: Thank you for your letter. We pray that we all find the strength to carry on.
It seemed like such a trite statement, the sort of thing Jay Gatsby would say, or the parting line at the end of an old black and white war movie: Carry on, old sport! Carry on to freedom!
Two months later, life continued around them, but there was still the underlying threat of menace, as if they all expected it to be taken away from them. And how much they had to lose! The new house in Druid Hills was spectacular, even larger than the Ansley one. There were eight bedrooms and nine bathrooms. There was an office, a gym, a sauna, a wine cellar, a screening room, a keeping room, a mudroom. The carriage house offered two full baths and two more bedrooms. Walking around the apartment over the garage, Abigail had wryly commented that should tragedy ever befall their family again, at least she and Paul would have more space to get away from each other.
He did not laugh at her observation.
She bought furniture, ordered bed linens, spent so much money online that the credit card companies called to make sure her identity had not been stolen. Everyone else seemed to be getting back to normal, or what Abigail thought of as the "new normal." Beatrice was back in Italy. Hoyt had returned to his mistress. His wife was safely ensconced in the Puerto Rico house. Abigail was certain there was another mistress in there somewhere. Her father had been talking an awful lot about London lately.
Even the press had finally moved on. People magazine and the television producers had dropped out early on when it was made clear that the Campano family had no desire to share their story with the world. There were the requisite self-proclaimed friends who came out of the woodwork to talk about Emma, and the ex-friends who talked about Abigail and Paul. Worse were the tabloids. They stood on the other side of the gate at the end of the driveway, screaming at anyone who left the house. "Hey, killer!" they would say, spotting Abigail. "Killer, how does it feel to know you murdered someone?"
Abigail would keep her face neutral, her back to the vultures as much as she could, then go into the house and collapse in tears. They called her cold one day, then praised her as a savage mother bear protecting her cubs the next. They asked her what she thought of Evan Bernard, the man who had brought all of this misery to their door.
Every time Bernard opened his mouth, a news team was there, reporting live from the jail where he was being kept. If coverage started to die down, he made statements, gave surprise jailhouse interviews and presented exclusive documents from his troubled past. Then the analysts would have their field day, expert after expert dissecting every nuance of Bernard's life: where he had gone wrong, how many kids he had helped during his career. Women came forward, so many young women. They all insisted that despite the tape, despite the video evidence, he was innocent. The Evan Bernard they knew was a kind man, a gentle man. Abigail itched to be alone with the bastard, to wrap her hands around his kind and gentle neck and watch the pathetic life drain from his beady black eyes.