“And one more thing,” Tripp said.
Adam looked up at him.
“If you ever go near my family or threaten them,” he said, “well, I’ve already shown you what I will do.”
“Yes, you have.”
And then Adam lifted the gun, aimed it at the center of Tripp’s chest, and squeezed the trigger three times.
Chapter 56
SIX MONTHS LATER
The lacrosse game took place in the optimistically dubbed SuperDome, an air-inflated sports facility made from some sort of pliable material. Thomas was playing in an indoor league for the winter season. Ryan had come along too. He half watched his brother, half played catch in the corner with a couple of other kids. Ryan also kept looking over at his father. He did that a lot now, looked for his father, as though Adam might suddenly vanish into thin air. Adam got it, of course. He tried to reassure him, but what could he really say?
He didn’t want to lie to the boys. But he wanted them to feel happy and safe.
Every parent has to deal with that balance. That hadn’t changed with Corinne’s death, but maybe you learn that happiness based on untruths is, at best, fleeting.
Adam watched as Johanna Griffin pushed through the glass door. She came across the back of the goal and stood alongside him facing the field.
“Thomas is number eleven, right?”
“Right,” Adam said.
“How’s he been playing?”
“Great. The coach of Bowdoin wants him to commit.”
“Wow. Good school. He going to do it?”
Adam shrugged. “It’s a six-hour drive. Before all this, yeah. But now . . .”
“He wants to stay closer to home.”
“Right. Of course, we can move too. There’s nothing left for us in this town.”
“Why are you staying?”
“I don’t know. The boys lost enough already. They grew up here. They have their school, their friends.” On the field, Thomas scooped up a loose ball and started down the field. “Their mom is here too. In that house. In this town.”
Johanna nodded.
Adam turned to her. “It’s so great to see you.”
“Same.”
“When did you get in?”
“A few hours ago,” Johanna said. “They’re sentencing Kuntz tomorrow.”
“You already know he’s getting life.”
“Yeah,” she said. “But I want to see it happen. And I also wanted to make sure that you were officially exonerated.”
“I was. I got word last week.”
“I know. But I still wanted to see it for myself.”
Adam nodded. Johanna looked over toward where Bob Baime and other parents sat.
“You always stand alone on the sidelines?”
“I do now,” Adam said. “But I don’t take it personally. You know how I told you that whole thing about living the dream?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m living proof that the dream is flimsy stuff. They all know it’s flimsy, of course, but no one wants to hang around a constant reminder.”
They watched the game some more.
“They have nothing new on Chris Taylor,” she said. “He’s still on the run. But in the end, he’s not exactly Public Enemy Number One. All he did was blackmail some people who don’t want to press charges because their secrets will be revealed. I doubt he’d get more than probation, even if he was caught. Would you be okay with that?”
Adam shrugged. “I go round and round with it.”
“How so?”
“If he’d let Corinne keep her secret, this may have never happened. So I ask myself: Did the stranger kill my wife? Or did her own decision about faking the pregnancy? Or did I, by not realizing how insecure I’d made her? You can drive yourself crazy with that kind of thinking. You can go back and look at the ripples forever. But in the end, there is only one person to blame. And that person is dead. I killed him.”
Thomas passed the ball and ran to the area behind the goal known in lacrosse jargon as X. According to the medical examiner’s report, the first bullet had been enough. It had pierced Tripp Evans’s heart, killing him instantly. Adam could still feel the gun in his hand. He could still feel the retort when he pulled the trigger. He could still see Tripp Evans’s body collapse and hear the long echoes of the gunshots in the quiet forest.
For a few seconds after the shooting, Adam had done nothing. He had sat there, numb. He hadn’t thought about the repercussions. He had just wanted to stay with his wife. He had lowered his head back to his Corinne. He had kissed her cheek and closed his eyes and let himself cry.
Then a moment later, he heard Johanna say, “Adam, we need to move fast.”