“So your husband. Richard, is it?”
“Richard?” I felt a guilty pang when I remembered where Zach was getting that name. “No, not Richard. His name is Sam.”
“I’m guessing he’s not a lawyer …”
“A writer.”
Zach searched my eyes for a second.
“A writer sounds … very, um, creative.” Zach smiled. “I’m glad you’re happy. I’ve thought about you over the years, wondered how you were. It’s good to see it all worked out.”
It didn’t. None of it worked out.
I looked down at the table in silence. We needed to get back to the point.
“Where is your son?”
“He’s at sleepaway camp in California with his best friend.” Zach smiled weakly. “Amanda didn’t want him to go, but we moved here in the middle of the school year, and he missed his friends. Amanda was good that way. She always made the choices that were best for Case, even when they were hard on her. I can’t tell Case on the phone about what’s happened—that would just be so … But he needs to know about Amanda.”
“What about your mom?”
He looked confused for a moment. “Oh, she passed away.”
“I’m sorry. Maybe the parents of Case’s friend should tell him, then?” I suggested. “Do you think they’d go get him from the camp?”
“Yeah, maybe,” Zach said quietly. “To be honest, I don’t really know them. The friend’s name is Billy, I think.”
“I could call and ask the camp,” I offered. “I’m sure they’d know how to reach Billy’s family.”
“That would be great, thanks,” Zach said. “But I don’t even know the camp’s name. Amanda handled all that.” He paused. “That probably makes me sound like an asshole, doesn’t it? I bet you aren’t rushing home to put a hot meal on the table every night for Richard.”
I laughed a little too loud.
“No, but every marriage is different,” I said, and my judgments aside—because I was judging it—it didn’t make Zach a bad person if he had a traditional marriage, provided that’s what his wife also wanted. “Is the information on the camp at your house somewhere?”
“I’m sure it is. There’s a small desk in the living room where Amanda kept her papers. All the forms and information for the camp should be in there.”
“Does somebody in the neighborhood have a key to the house?” I asked. “That would be much faster than me trying to track down yours in inventory here.”
“There should be one under the planter out front,” he said. “Amanda kept it there for Case, for emergencies.”
“You have a key to your house under a plant in front of your door?” I asked. “In New York City?”
“It does sound stupid now,” Zach said. “Honestly, I never thought about it before. Park Slope feels so safe.”
“We should make sure the police know about the extra key. It opens up potential suspects,” I said. “Is there anybody else I can call for you? Extended family, friends? Somebody from work?”
Somebody, for instance, who Zach had actually seen in the past eleven years? At a minimum, he must have had whole teams of employees who would be clamoring to step up to the plate.
Zach looked down again, shook his head. “The people in my life now, they don’t really know me.” He motioned to his injured face. “I can’t have them seeing me like this.”
I nodded. “I understand.”
But did I? Was there really no one he was close enough to? And what was that little flutter in my chest? Was I flattered that I was apparently an exception?
“You and I,” he went on, answering the question I hadn’t asked, “I always thought we were kind of kindred spirits, you know? I never felt like you judged me.”
“I didn’t,” I said. “I wouldn’t.”
Zach looked up at me, his one eye glassy. He hadn’t just gotten better looking, he’d softened, too.
“Anyway, I know the front door was locked when we left for the party because I locked it. But the alarm was malfunctioning. Amanda had an appointment to get it fixed—one of the last things I did was complain that she hadn’t done it yet. Nice, right?” He closed his eyes for a moment as if in pain. “Anyway, Amanda would have locked the door behind her once she got home, too. She was like that: nervous.”
“Nervous how?” If there was a reason, maybe it pointed to something, or someone, other than Zach.
He shrugged. “She was from a really small town, and her family was poor, like going-hungry poor. She didn’t like to talk about it, but sometimes I think she got overwhelmed by these neighborhoods we lived in, the people. Even the wives who don’t work are impressive: fancy educations, community involvement. Amanda was smart, but she didn’t even go to college. I think she worried about being found out. It made her jumpy. Maybe I pushed her too hard to be something she wasn’t.” He looked up at me. He seemed genuinely regretful. “But she was more capable than she realized. I just wanted her to be her best self, you know?”
The way he said “best self” set my teeth on edge. But then Zach had always been big on self-improvement, even for himself. And it was hard to argue with his results.
“Sure, yeah,” I said, because Zach seemed to be waiting for me to agree. “That makes sense.”
His face darkened then. “I went to do the CPR, you know, but Amanda was ice cold. And the blood, when I stepped in it, was so thick, like glue. And I—” Zach pressed a hand to his mouth. Hadn’t he said on the phone that he had done CPR? I could have sworn that he had, but maybe he’d misspoken. Or maybe he was ashamed to admit the truth. “The police made something of that when they came, like ‘Why didn’t I have more blood on me?’ ‘Had I changed my clothes after I killed her?’ ‘Did I not even bother to do CPR because I didn’t love my wife?’ ‘Which was it?’ It had to be one or the other, according to them. But she was so cold, that was the explanation, and I—people think they know how they’ll act. But you don’t know until something like that happens to you. It’s much worse than you think.”
It was. I knew that firsthand. Only last week, I’d woken to find Sam passed out on our living-room floor with a gash to his head. There had been so much blood. On Sam’s hands and shirt, smeared under his head on the hardwood floor. I’d rushed over, sure he was dead. But he moaned when I touched him, the alcohol radiating off his body. I could not imagine what it would have felt like if he’d been cold to the touch.
“You’re right,” I said. “No one does know what they’d do.”
Nonetheless, Zach’s clean clothes were a problematic fact that the police had already demonstrated could be used to their advantage in multiple ways. Though presumably they hadn’t yet located another, bloody set of Zach’s clothes—otherwise he’d surely be under arrest for murder.
“I don’t know what happened to Amanda, Lizzie. I wasn’t home when she died,” Zach went on. “But she might be alive if I was a better husband.”