Page 112 of Things We Do in the Dark
“Got these about an hour ago. The DA’s office emailed them to me.” Sonny reaches over and taps a thick finger over the time and date stamp. “You crossed at 12:22 a.m., which means the soonest you could have gotten home is two thirty, just like you said.”
Paris is afraid to breathe.
“But wait,” Sonny says. “There’s more.”
“What are you going to do, sell her a Thigh Master now?” Elsie shakes her head, but she’s smiling.
Her lawyer pushes another folder toward her. “The medical examiner’s final report. As we thought, it confirms Jimmy’s time of death as between nine thirty and midnight.”
Paris is confused. “I thought you said that was too close for your liking.”
“Not anymore,” Sonny says. “Take a closer look at that report. What does it say right there?” He taps a box in the middle of the page.
Paris follows his finger. “It says cause of death is exsanguination due to a severed femoral artery.”
“Not that,” Sonny says. “Below it.”
Paris looks closer. Under the box forUnderlying Cause of Death, the box forHomicidehas been left unchecked. So too have the boxes forNatural CausesandSuicide. However, there is an X in the box besideUndetermined.
“Undetermined? What does that mean?” Paris looks up. “Are they saying they’re not actually sure how Jimmy died?”
“Bingo,” Sonny says. “The ME is saying that there’s no direct evidence confirming that Jimmy’s death was the result of a homicide. And you can’t be chargedwitha homicide if there wasn’t one.”
Paris holds her breath, unable to react until she hears him say it. One of them needs to say it.
“The DA has withdrawn the murder charge,” Elsie says. “It’s over.”
Paris waits three seconds. “Okay,” she says slowly. She refuses to relax until she understands it fully. “But they can still press charges in the future, right?”
“Against you? No.” Sonny cracks his knuckles. “The border crossing photos provide more than enough reasonable doubt. Against someone else? Maybe, if the cause of death changes, which it won’t, or if new evidence comes to light. But if they haven’t found it by now, I doubt they will.”
“All that’s left to do is return your ankle monitor. And I’m happy to take care of that for you.” Elsie reaches across the table and squeezes Paris’s hand. “It’s really over.”
Paris exhales so hard, she collapses in her chair. The tears follow a moment later, which turn into sobs that rack her whole body. She’s only vaguely aware of each lawyer’s hand touching her shoulder as they leave quietly.
Life has a way of balancing everything out. And the only reason this moment feels so good is that what happened to Jimmy was so bad. She knows the feeling won’t last. When Paris is finished crying, all she’ll be left with is the guilt that her husband was so unhappy and in such a dark place that he felt the only way out was to end his own life. And she’ll spend the rest of her life trying to understand how he got there, how she could have missed it, how she might have saved him.
When the sobs subside, she heads upstairs to her room to wash her face and change into something comfortable. She needs to call Henry, and then she needs to finish making plans for Jimmy’s funeral. Per his wishes, he’ll be cremated, and his urn will rest next to his mother’s in the family mausoleum.
A little way down the hall, she sees that the door to Jimmy’s bedroom is open. She can still smell the bleach coming out of it, reminding her that it’s been cleaned and that it’s safe to go inside. She takes a step toward it, then stops. The last time she was in Jimmy’s bedroom was the night he died.
She’s not ready.
Jimmy, I love you. And I’m sorry. I’m so, so, so sorry.
All that’s left to do now is grieve. And the way Paris grieves is: she cooks.
For the past couple of hours, she’s been listening to Jimmy’s cassettes on his old boombox in the kitchen. It’s nice. Every song on his “Hits of ’70s” compilation cassette has a memory of her husband attached to it. Right now, The Hollies are playing, and she can picture Jimmy sitting at the table with his reading glasses on, drinking his coffee as a light rain comes down on the window.Sometimes, all I need is the air that I breathe…
She lifts the lid off her Le Creuset and gives the lightly simmering pork adobo a stir. Every cook has their own recipe for the traditional Filipino stew. Some like it saucy. Some like it dry. But the basic ingredients in any Filipino adobo are soy sauce, vinegar, bay leaves, and patience. She’s also makinglumpia(spring rolls) and a huge batch ofpancit(noodles), and when she’s finished, she’ll have enough leftovers for a week. The only good thing that ever came out of her time in Maple Sound was that Lola Celia taught her to cook.
The doorbell rings. Paris checks the clock on the stove and frowns. She can’t imagine who could be at the front door at nine o’clock at night, other than a photographer hoping for a picture or a journalist hoping for a comment. But the crowd that was camped outside for the past week is finally gone now, and the neighborhood is back to normal, with its usual amount of city gazers taking photos at Kerry Park.
The doorbell rings again, and this time, it’s followed by a knock. Whoever it is, they know she’s home, because all the lights are on inside the house. She looks around for her phone to see if she’s missed a text. Maybe Henry was planning to stop by. But she left her phone upstairs on the charger.
A thought occurs to her. What if it’sRuby? She’s out on parole now, and although she’s forbidden to leave Canada, her mother has always been crafty. And she can be very motivated when someone else has something she wants. Like husbands. And money.
The knocking stops. Paris keeps her ears perked, waiting for the doorbell to ring again. It doesn’t. Padding down the hallway to the front door, she finally looks out the peephole to see if she can at least catch a glimpse of who it might have been. But there’s no one there.
