“What’s that?” asked John-Paul. He was sitting on the wooden bench opposite her, wearing jeans and a long-sleeved striped jersey the girls had bought him last Father’s Day. He leaned forward, his hands hanging limply between his knees. There was something odd about his tone of voice. It was like the gentle, fiercely strained way he would have replied to one of the girls when he was in the early stages of a migraine and still hoping that it wasn’t going to take hold.
“Have you got a migraine coming on?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I’m fine.”
“Good. Listen, today when I was at the Easter Hat Parade, I saw—”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she said impatiently.
“You don’t look fine. You look terrible. It’s like I’ve made you sick.” His voice trembled. “The only thing that ever mattered to me was making you and the girls happy, and now I’ve put you in this intolerable position.”
“Yes,” said Cecilia. She curled her fingers around the slats of the bench seat and watched her daughters as their faces simultaneously dissolved into laughter over something they’d seen on the television. “‘Intolerable’ is a pretty good word for it.”
“All day at work, I was thinking, how can I fix this? How can I make it better for you?” He came over and sat next to her. She felt the welcoming warmth of his body next to hers. “Obviously I can’t make it better. Not really. But I wanted to say this to you: If you want me to turn myself in, I will. I’m not going to ask you to carry this too, if you can’t carry it.”
He took her hand and squeezed it. “I’ll do whatever you want me to do, Cecilia. If you want me to go straight to the police or to Rachel Crowley, then that’s what I’ll do. If you want me to leave, if you can’t bear to live in the same house as me, then I’ll leave. I’ll tell the girls we’re separating because . . . I don’t know what I’ll tell the girls, but I’d take the blame, obviously.”
Cecilia could feel John-Paul’s whole body shaking. His palm was sweaty over hers.
“So you’re prepared to go to jail. What about your claustrophobia?” she asked.
“I’d just have to deal with it,” he said. His palm got sweatier. “It’s all in my head anyway. It’s not real.”
She flicked his hand away with a sudden feeling of revulsion and stood.
“So why didn’t you put up with it before? Why didn’t you turn yourself in before I even knew you?”
He lifted his palms and looked up at her with a contorted, pleading face. “I can’t really answer that, Cecilia. I’ve tried to explain. I’m sorry—”
“And now you’re saying I get to make the decision. It’s nothing to do with you anymore. Now it’s my responsibility whether Rachel gets closure or not!” She thought of the blue crumb on Rachel’s mouth and shuddered.
“Not if you don’t want it to be!” John-Paul was almost in tears now. “I was trying to make things easier for you.”
“Can’t you see that you’re making it my problem?” cried Cecilia, but the rage was already fading, to be replaced by a great wave of despair. John-Paul’s offer to confess made no difference. Not really. She was already accountable. The moment she opened that letter, she became accountable.
She sank back down on the bench on the opposite side of the cabana.
“I saw Rachel Crowley today,” she said. “I dropped off her Tupperware. She said she had new evidence that implicates Janie’s murderer.”