If their English teacher hadn’t killed Tina, then who had?
It had been a struggle to get through dinner and Bennett’s bedtime routine, knowing this reckoning was finally coming. She’d tried to act normally, but more than once she’d caught Matthew studying her with a puzzled expression.
Now Marissa stands looking through the double glass doors leading from their family room to the backyard, to where Matthew stands by the fire in the stone hearth. It’s a cool, starlit evening, and Matthew has brought out a blanket and bottle of good wine. Bennett is sound asleep in his race-car bed, his thumb covered with a fresh bandage and his dinosaur diorama nearly finished.
The scene is set for a quiet, romantic night. Until Marissa throws a grenade into it.
She slides open the door and steps onto the patio.
Her husband is tending the flames, using a poker to arrange the logs. The firelight playing across his face conjures an image of another, long-ago evening by a bonfire.
Not that she needs the reminder.
“There you are.” Matthew puts aside the iron poker and sits down, patting the cushion next to him on the settee.
Marissa walks toward him as he reaches for the white Burgundy and twists the corkscrew before pulling it out with his strong fingers.
He pours them each a glass. “Cheers.”
“Cheers.” She takes a tiny sip. She notices that on the eve of their anniversary, he has selected their wedding crystal.
She’s so cold again, despite her fleece leggings and top and the heat of the fire. She feels as if she hasn’t been able to get warm since this all began.
Matthew reaches for the blanket, tucking it over her legs. “You okay?”
Marissa makes a noncommittal noise. “Can I ask you something?”
Matthew looks calm; he has no idea what’s coming. “Of course.”
She takes a deep breath and speaks the question that has the potential to unravel everything: “Why did you lie for Skip all those years ago?”
Matthew sets down his glass and turns to face her, as if he recognizes the importance of this moment.
“Because it looked bad for him, and I knew he didn’t kill Tina,” Matthew finally answers. “You and I know Skip sometimes went to work on his boat at night, when he was taking clients fishing early the next morning. But if the police knew he was out there alone, near the spot where Tina was killed? They might not have believed him. He was about to go to college on a scholarship. Even if he was cleared later, that cloud of suspicion could have cost him everything.”
Marissa nods, remembering the scratch Tina had inflicted on Skip’s arm. “You were such a good friend to him,” she whispers.
The false alibi had seemed harmless when Marissa first heard about it from Matthew shortly after they started dating: Skip was scared. The police were questioning everyone. He came to my house to ask my dad for advice, but my dad was in the city. I knew he hadn’t done it, so I told him to just say he’d been with me at home watching a movie that night. My mom covered for him, too; she trusted me when I told her Skip wouldn’t hurt anyone.
The lie stopped seeming harmless when Marissa learned about that open window in Matthew’s office, and about the English teacher recanting his confession.
The fire makes a loud popping sound and Marissa flinches, but Matthew doesn’t even glance at it. He’s staring intently at her.
“Why are you bringing this up now?”
Marissa’s mouth is so dry she needs another sip of wine. “I googled the case this afternoon. Did you know our English teacher claimed the police leaned on him so hard he gave a false confession?”
Matthew reaches for her hand and begins to massage it. “Sweetheart, ask any man in prison if he’s innocent. They’re all going to say yes.”
“How well do we really know Skip anymore? We’ve only seen him a few dozen times over the past twenty years. He lived across the country until last summer.”
Matthew’s fingers stop moving. “What are you saying?”
Marissa begins to shiver. This reminds her of her first confession in Avery’s office, when she sat shaking from a combination of chill and fear.
Then, Matthew hadn’t responded to her discomfort.
Now, he wraps an arm around her. She leans into his warm, hard body and inhales his woodsy scent, trying not to think about how it could be for the last time. Then she pulls back to face him.
I have to tell Matthew the truth, she reminds herself, and not only because we can’t have a real marriage without honesty. Her simple lie has spread and morphed, like an invisible virus that sickens everyone it touches. And like a virus, the lie could turn lethal.
It would be one thing if Skip’s behavior had affected only Marissa. She could have thrown away the roses and note and soup and lived with the pressure and guilt as a kind of penance.
But if Skip is the one behind the vicious attack on Matthew and the apparent break-in this morning—she hates to think like this, but who else could it be?—then his escalation is downright terrifying.
She recalls a line she once read: You can never truly know what is inside another person’s heart or head. Perhaps Avery has been guiding me toward this moment all along, Marissa thinks. This could be the ultimate test. If Marissa tells Matthew the truth and he forgives her, they really could start to heal.
And if he doesn’t … well, it is far more important to protect Matthew and Bennett than to protect her marriage.
“Skip has been acting so strangely lately,” she begins.
“Yeah, it was kind of weird that he stopped by uninvited last night and then dropped off all that soup.” Matthew shrugs.
“It’s more than that. This is so hard for me to say. But I think Skip could be behind the other things that have been happening lately.”
Can Matthew feel her leg trembling against his? She swears she can perceive the shift in his energy; he must sense the grenade is in her hand.
“Why would you think that, Marissa?” Matthew’s tone is even and measured, the way it sounds when he’s conducting a difficult talk with a concerned client.
“Those roses … I called the florist the next day. The Venmo account was @Pier1234. There’s that long pier near where Skip and I grew up. He used to love fishing off it. And the note you and Polly found? Ray, the homeless man who hangs out by Coco, told me someone paid him to deliver it. The same man also gave Ray a pair of gloves. Gloves I know belonged to Skip.”
Matthew stands up and reaches for the poker. He jabs at the fire. A thick wave of smoke drifts toward Marissa, making her feel briefly dizzy as she inhales it.
“Matthew.” She takes another sip of wine for courage. “I lied to you. I didn’t sleep with a guy from the gym.… It was Skip.”
Matthew is perfectly still for an endless moment. Then he slowly turns to face her, the poker still gripped in his hand.
Half of his face is in the darkness, the other half illuminated by the flickering firelight, making him appear both familiar and like a stranger. Just like Skip looked on the night she first kissed him.
Matthew doesn’t speak. He stares at her, as if he is peering deep into her soul.
The first time I kissed you, it was like glimpsing the ocean for the first time. All these years later I still feel the same way.
Her husband will never feel that way about her again.