A tiny voice floated down the hallway. “Daddy!”
It was Polly, their lightest sleeper. She always called for her father. Cecilia would not do. Only her father could make the monsters go away and slay the dragon. Only her father. Her father, who had killed a seventeen-year-old girl. Her father, who was a murderer. Her father, who had kept this terrible secret for all these years. It was like she hadn’t properly understood any of it.
The shock winded her. She collapsed into the black leather chair.
“Daddy!”
“Coming, Polly!” John-Paul got slowly to his feet using the wall to support himself. He gave Cecilia a desperate look and headed down the hallway toward Polly’s room.
Cecilia focused on her breathing. In through the nostrils. She saw Janie Crowley’s eleven-year-old face. “It’s only stupid marching.” Out through the mouth. She saw the grainy black-and-white picture of Janie that had appeared on the front cover of the newspapers, a long blond ponytail falling down one shoulder. All murder victims looked exactly like murder victims: beautiful, innocent and doomed, as if it were preordained. In through the nostrils. She saw Rachel Crowley gently banging her forehead against the car window. Out through the mouth. What to do, Cecilia? What to do? How could she fix it? How could she make it right? She fixed things. She made things right. She put things in order. All you had to do was pick up the phone, get on the Internet, fill in the right forms, talk to the right people, arrange the refund, the replacement, the better model.
Except that nothing would ever bring Janie back. Her mind kept returning to that one cold, immovable, awful fact, like an enormous wall that couldn’t be crossed.
She began ripping the letter into tiny pieces.
Confess. John-Paul would have to confess. That was obvious. He would have to come clean. Make it all clean and shiny. Scrub it away. Follow the rules. The law. He’d have to go to prison. He’d have to be sentenced. A sentence. Put behind bars. But he couldn’t be locked up. He’d lose his mind. So, then, medication, therapy. She’d talk to people. Do the research. He wouldn’t be the first prisoner with claustrophobia. Weren’t those cells actually quite spacious? They had exercise yards, didn’t they?
Claustrophobia didn’t actually kill you. It just made you feel like you couldn’t breathe.
Whereas two hands placed around the neck could kill you.
He’d strangled Janie Crowley. He’d actually put his hands around her thin girlish neck and squeezed. Didn’t that make him evil? Yes. The answer had to be yes. John-Paul was evil.
She kept tearing at the letter, shredding the pieces into tinier and tinier fragments until she could roll them between her fingertips.
Her husband was evil. Therefore he must go to jail. Cecilia would be the wife of a prisoner. She wondered if there was a social club for the wives. She’d set one up if there wasn’t. She giggled hysterically, like a crazy woman. Of course she would! She was Cecilia. She’d be president of the Prisoners’ Wives Association and organize fund-raising for air-conditioning units to be put in their poor husbands’ cells. Did prisons have air-conditioning? Was it just primary schools that missed out? She imagined chatting with the other wives while they waited to go through the metal detectors. “What’s your husband in for? Oh, bank robbery? Really? Mine’s in for murder. Yep, strangled a girl. Off to the gym after this, are you?”
Would there be that subtle one-upmanship like there was between mothers? “It’s so stressful having a gifted child.” What would be the equivalent for a prison wife? “It’s such a strain when your husband is a model prisoner! The others are constantly beating him up!”
She giggled some more. Dear Jesus. Dear God. Dear Saint Somebody-or-other. Who was the patron saint for wives of murderers?