Through the Heart (33 page)

He had a good point. “Aren’t we not supposed to speak to each other?” I asked.

“They took everyone’s statements. They’re asking us to stay for another night or two if we can, but they lifted the no-talking ban. I can have some food brought up to you. Unless you want to come down . . .”

“No, I don’t want to. But I will.”

“Are you ready now?”

“Sure. Might as well get it over with.”

Neil led the way, and I followed. It was strange. As we went down the stairs, I felt like it had been days since I’d been downstairs. Weeks even. I felt like I’d been caught in a time warp and had been up in that room for eons.

The setup was the same as in the morning: food spread out on the dining room table and people gathered in the morning room on the couches and chairs. The minute I stepped into the room, I saw that my mother and father were there. If I had known, I probably would have opted to stay upstairs. But it was too late now.

My mother spotted me across the room, and she made a bee-line for me.

“Do you want me to stand by?” Neil asked.

“No, that’s okay,” I told him. “There are some things that are too much to ask.”

“You’re making jokes now,” Neil observed. “You must be feeling better.”

“That wasn’t a joke,” I told him.

I heard him laugh as he turned away and went over to the table for some food.

My mother walked over and stopped in front of me. She was, of course, perfectly dressed in a black skirt and black blazer and black heels. I realized I almost never stood next to my mother. She was always seated at the head of the table, where she seemed to take up so much space. But standing next to her, I realized how small she was. Nora had at least come up to my nose. My mother barely reached my chin. She had to tilt her head back a little to look up at me.

I braced myself for what I knew was coming.

Except that it didn’t come.

She asked, very calmly, “Are you all right, Timothy?”

“No. Not really.”

She nodded. “Your father and I, we’ll do whatever we can to help. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yes. Sure.”

“The police told us that you’ve got an interview scheduled for tomorrow morning. Your father and I arranged for a lawyer to be there. But if you’d rather arrange something else, or if you already have, just let us know and we can change it.”

I wasn’t excited about my mother picking my lawyer, but I hadn’t done anything about it myself, and I knew it would be stupid not to have one there.

“No, that sounds good,” I said.

“There will be other things to deal with, but one thing at a time,” she said. “Right now, you should probably try to eat something. We’re right over there if you need us.”

“Um, thanks.”

Then she turned to go. But she stopped and looked back at me. And she said, “Sometimes we do things, and we don’t want to, but we don’t seem to have control. I understand that.”

At first I didn’t know what she was talking about. Then I realized she thought I had done it—she thought I had killed Nora. I didn’t know whether to be angry that she assumed the worst or touched that she seemed to be trying to tell me that she didn’t care.

I didn’t have to think of an answer because she didn’t wait for one. She just went back over to where my father was sitting.

I saw that Tammy and Edward were sitting over on the couch near my parents. Edward had his arm around Tammy’s shoulders, and he seemed to be consoling her.

After hearing my mother, and now seeing Edward like that, I knew that the world had ended. It had turned into something unrecognizable. Things do go on, but they are not the same. The world turns upside down.

I went to get some food, and Edward came up while I was spooning mashed potatoes onto a paper plate.

“Tim, I just wanted to say . . . I’m really sorry,” Edward managed to get out. “If there’s anything I can do . . .”

I looked at him. “Yes, there is something. You can tell me, have you published books under a pseudonym?”

He blinked. He hadn’t been prepared for my question, but he answered me.

“Yes,” he said simply. “I have.”

I nodded. “Congratulations. If you wouldn’t mind, I think I’d like to read one sometime.”

“Sure. I’d like that.”

I looked around the room. “Do you know where Nora’s sister and mother are?” I asked him.

“No. They haven’t come down yet,” he said.

“And Andrew and Emily?”

“I think they’re heading back to the city. Andrew and his family, the police told them that since they weren’t even here at the B&B they didn’t need to stay in the area. They asked Emily and Alejandro to stay, but . . . well, you know Emily.”

“No, I don’t think I do know Emily,” I admitted. “But if she wanted to leave, it’s probably for the best. When are you headed back? ”

“I’ll stay as long as you need me here,” he said.

“Thanks. I’m sure that has nothing to do with the fact that Tammy is still here,” I said.

He smiled, and it was a smile I don’t think I’d ever seen on his face before. It was almost shy. And suddenly my heart hurt. I could see on Edward’s face the dawning of that feeling I’d had for the first time with Nora. I felt something rising in my throat. To my horror, I realized I was about to start crying. I put down my plate.

“I can’t . . .” I said.

That’s all I could manage. I turned and escaped from the room. And, thank goodness, no one came after me. I broke down while I was climbing the stairs, and I completely came apart when I shut the door of my room behind me.

That night—I don’t really want to talk too much about that night. It was supposed to have been my wedding night. It was supposed to have been the best night of my life—instead it was the worst, and I hope to God it will be the worst I ever have. I can’t say anything else about it. These things are beyond description. But after it was over, I got up the next day, knowing that I was not, and would never be, the same.

The brain rebels against finding reasons for that much pain, but they are there. With Nora, all I wanted was to feel truly loved. And I had gotten a taste of it after Nora caught me with Celia and told me she loved me anyway. I thought that was it; I thought that was what I had been looking for all my life. But after that awful night—the first night in a lifetime without Nora—I realized I had been so concerned with
being
loved that I never asked myself if I knew how to love. I simply assumed I did. But that night, I discovered the truth—that a heart unbroken doesn’t know how to love.

It was only now that she was gone that I understood how to love her.

 

 

 

 

 

The next day, when I finally left my hotel room, the machine of procedure really started for me.

A policeman came to my room first thing in the morning to escort me down to the station for more questioning. They brought me into a room with my lawyer (the one arranged for me by my mother) and three detectives. Two I recognized from the day before—the woman and the man in suits who had questioned me—and another man from the district attorney’s office who was there to oversee.

I can’t speak to what other detectives are like, but mine were nothing like you see in the movies or on TV. There you always have at least one suspicious, hard-nosed cop who gets aggressive with the suspect: the “bad cop.” But I had three cops in the room, and not one of them took on the “bad cop” role. They all talked to me normally, even respectfully. First, the woman detective told me that they were going to tape our conversation if that was okay with me.

My lawyer jumped in and said, “Of course it’s not okay with us. But since we can’t stop you, we’ll just have to make sure that there’s nothing on that tape.”

My lawyer, unlike the detectives, was a completely stereotypical top-drawer (and top-dollar) defense lawyer: shrewd and shifty. I had disliked him on sight, and he was not doing anything to change my opinion of him.

The woman detective, who seemed to be taking the lead on the case, just said, “Of course.” Then she turned to me. “We can’t make you talk to us. Of course we know that. But we’re hoping you’ll answer some questions.”

I nodded.

She started asking questions, and I answered her. She started off with the same general questions both she and the other detective had asked the day before—the sequence of events starting from when I woke up and leading up to when the police arrived on the scene. I tried as best I could to answer all the questions. There were some spots that I simply couldn’t remember, and I told her that. She just nodded and marked it down.

Then she asked me to take her through the events of the night before.

I did. And I didn’t leave out the part with Celia and Marcus. It would have been silly. I could tell by just looking at the detective that she already knew anyway. I was sure she had talked to Marcus and Celia the day before. One of them must have told her.

I could also see that she was a bit surprised when I volunteered the story without her having to pull it out of me, and my lawyer just about had a heart attack trying to get me to shut up. But I didn’t listen to him. I told the events as simply as I could. I reported it like a stripped-down newspaper story: I had slept with Celia the night before my wedding. Marcus had come in. Nora had also known about it. We hadn’t fought about it.

The only problem was that I don’t think anyone in the room believed me.

Then all three detectives started a volley of questions. At that point my lawyer had completely given up trying to get me to be quiet, and though their voices were still calm, the questions from the detectives came at me rapid-fire.

No, I said I didn’t know if we were still going to get married.

No, I hadn’t killed her.

No, I hadn’t gone to her room.

I paused for a second when they asked me who I thought might have done this.

Celia, I told them. Celia had done it. It couldn’t be anyone else.

Then they started asking me the same questions all over again.

I gave them the same answers.

When they started for the third time, my lawyer finally broke in again. “I think that’s enough,” he said, and I found myself agreeing with him.

My lawyer gathered his papers, put them in his briefcase, and we both stood up. I found I’d been sitting there long enough for my legs to get stiff. But as I was leaving, the woman detective said, “If you honestly didn’t kill her, why don’t you want to find her murderer?”

I admit, I was annoyed by that. “Why do you think I’ve been sitting here answering all these questions?”

“Right now, you’re our suspect,” she said. “You haven’t given us anything that changes that.”

“But what about Celia? I told you, she did it.”

She hesitated. I could tell she was deciding whether to reveal something.

Then she told me.

“We don’t think Mrs. Franklin is a viable suspect,” she said. And then she blew apart my theory—and my world—in a few words. “Mr. Franklin and his wife both say they weren’t out of each other’s sight that night after they left you in your room. They both claim they left the bed-and-breakfast less than ten minutes after the . . . encounter. And we were able to get pictures of their car going through the tollbooth on the highway, and the time corroborates their story.”

I knew if Marcus said he hadn’t let Celia out of his sight, it was the truth. That meant Celia couldn’t have done it.

I was shaken, but I tried to hide it. “I don’t know what to tell you,” I said to the detectives. “I don’t know who it could have been.”

“Help us figure it out,” the woman detective urged.

“I would strongly advise you leave now,” my lawyer interrupted.

It was my turn to hesitate. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. As calm and as friendly as the detectives seemed, I knew they were probably just trying to keep me talking in the hope I would slip up and implicate myself. As she had said, I was the prime suspect. I wanted to help them find the murderer, but if they were just going to try to pin it on me, I didn’t want to help with that. Not because I cared about what was going to happen to me. At that point I felt like I would have happily died if it would help Nora. But if they pinned it on me, whoever did it would get off scot-free.