“Do you think so?” Her tone flat.
“Someone comes and threatens you with a gun right after she’s been driven off the road?”
“But he wasn’t asking about her. He was asking about you.”
“Yeah, but. You don’t think I had anything to do with it?” She didn’t answer, and he sighed. “Look, I understand. I wondered myself. In fact, I was even starting to believe it. But I know now. I know it’s not true.”
“Then what did you mean—” She tossed the dish towel on the counter, shook her head.
“What?”
“Never mind.”
“Sophie.”
She sighed. “You called me. Very drunk. You kept saying you were sorry. When I asked what for, you wouldn’t tell me. You just kept saying you were sorry, and . . .”
“What?”
“That it was your fault.”
“My fault?” He braced a hand on the counter. “I can’t . . . I didn’t.”
“What were you talking about, Daniel? What were you sorry for?”
“I don’t know.” He closed his eyes. Tried to remember. Let the words float in front of him, and when that didn’t work, tried to force it. Nothing came. “I don’t know. But I know I didn’t kill her. Damn it, Soph, I spent all last night looking at video of the two of us. There are pictures from two weeks ago that would break your heart, we look so happy. Why would I kill her?”
“I don’t know.”
“No.” He shook his head. “I’m not going down this road again. Whatever I said that night, I know I didn’t kill Laney. We were happy, goddamnit. Everything was perfect. You know that. You remember that. Right?”
“Perfect?” She raised an eyebrow.
“Well, okay, but the point is, we were in love, and there’s no way—”
“Christ, Daniel, it was a marriage, not a fairy tale. It wasn’t perfect. And don’t get it in your head that it was just because she’s gone. Relationships don’t work like that.”
He took a breath, made himself pause. “We fought?”
“Of course you fought.”
“Over what?”
“The things people fight over. Money, sex, children, who did the dishes last.”
“But like you said, people do that.” He saw her expression. “What? We were bad?”
“Laney was an actress, hon. They’re all crazy. And you,” a snort, “you’ve got a temper. When the two of you went at each other, you went for blood. You’d scream yourselves hoarse. The last time, she spent the weekend in a hotel, and you spent it at the bottom of a bottle.”
He had a sick feeling, a primal, caught-jerking-off shame. The same way he’d felt in Robert Cameron’s trailer the morning prior, listening to the actor describe the way he’d seen Danieclass="underline" A mediocre writer in a town thick with them. Not particularly talented, not particularly smart, not particularly brave. The top of the middle of the bell curve. It killed him. Why couldn’t the past be perfect? If he couldn’t have it anyway, couldn’t he at least have that certainty? “Did it happen a lot?”
“What’s a lot? My marriage didn’t work out, so who am I to judge?” Sophie sighed. “You fought, and your fights blew the roof off. But you always made up. And when you did, you shook the walls down. That’s just the way the two of you were. It was a tempestuous relationship. When you were happy you were giddy. When you fought, you fought hard. My point is just that you’re not doing yourself any favors believing it was perfect.”
Daniel nodded, the queasiness not any better. He grabbed his mug from the table, poured a cup of coffee he didn’t want. His mind a whirl, too many things to keep track of, too many pieces that didn’t fit. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“What question?”
“Do you think I had something to do with this?”
It was her turn to stare. Her fingers knotted one over the other. He realized that he was hanging on her answer. This woman, this friend, knew him in a way he didn’t know himself anymore. If she thought he had done it . . .
“I don’t know what happened. I don’t know what you meant with that phone call. I don’t know who this guy is, or why he’s after you, or what the necklace he was asking about has to do with anything,” she said.
“I don’t—”
“Hold on. The police believe you did it. And there’s more. Someone was killed in your office.”
“What?”
“A security guard. The cops think you did that too.”
“When was this?”
“Night before last.”
“It wasn’t me. That much I can remember.”
“Okay, good. But the other questions, I don’t know the answer to them. Do you?”
“No. But that’s not what I’m asking.”
“You’re asking if I think you killed Laney. Or wanted her dead.”
“Do you?”
“Not in a million years.”
Daniel chest swelled, and his eyes were wet. He put a hand to his mouth, breathed into it. It was as though a giant hand had been pushing him down. At her words, it vanished. He inhaled deep, exhaled slow. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. You’re still screwed.”
Despite himself, he laughed. “Like a Texas cheerleader.”
“Do you trust me?”
“You’re the only person I know,” he said. “If I don’t trust you, I may as well throw myself back in the ocean.”
“Good. Because here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to turn yourself in.”
“What?”
“Your turn to shut up, kiddo.” She pointed at him, mock stern. “You’re going to get a lawyer. A criminal lawyer. I’ll call my friend Jen Forbus. She makes Johnnie Cochran look like Mr. Bean.”
“Soph, I know you’re trying to help, but—”
“Shut up. Jen will call the sheriff, and she’ll broker the deal. You’ll turn yourself in on our terms. No media circus, no questioning without her. Plus we’ll explain your condition, and make sure that access to medical care is part of the deal.”
“I don’t need a doctor, I had an MRI—”
“Shut up. We don’t know what caused your memory loss. Maybe you were drugged. Maybe you have a rare disease. We need to know.”
“What do you—”
“Shut up. A specialist—a team of them, probably—will be crucial to your defense. Right now, the only evidence they have linking you to either murder is circumstantial. Hell, I could get it knocked down. But you resisted arrest in Maine, and again back here. They’ll use that. The medical diagnosis is going to help us there.”