Page 48 of Thicker Than Water
“One: that’s nowhere close to the same thing. And two: that kid provoked him!”
“Maybe Jason was provoked. We have no idea what happened. And I’m not saying—” She massages her forehead with one hand, wipes her tears with the other. “It’s not that I’m sure he killed him. I still don’t knowwhyhe would.” She lowers her hands to her lap, looks me right in the eyes. “But I’m not sure he’s innocent, either.”
Pain blasts across her face, as if she only feels the impact of her doubt now that she’s spoken it aloud. She pitches forward, her back heaving with sobs, her face becoming so twisted and strange it’s like I’m looking at her through glass spiderwebbed with cracks. And suddenly I get it, even if I don’t agree. The second she learned Jason was capable of cheating on her, capable of hurting so thoroughly someone he loved, it became much easier to think him capable of the impossible, too.
Which means, right now, I have to believe in Jason for the both of us.
I look toward the door, on the other side of which stands a detective, a guard. They’ve been gone for minutes now, but their presence lingers like a cloying cologne. It clogs my throat, reminding me of the thick, dread-heavy air of my parents’ wake. That day, Jason let me sit behind him in a chair, numb and immobile, while he shook an endless line of hands, dealing with the business of sympathy so I didn’t have to. And now that Jason’s the immobile one, I will swallowhot, jagged coals before I let him wake up to find he’s under arrest.
But Dr. Brighton has made it clear: I’m running out of time to point the police to someone else.
“Jason is innocent,” I say to Julia. Her hands lie in her lap, palms facing the ceiling. “And I promise you I will prove it.”
Chapter ThirteenJULIA
I’m not sure he’s innocent.
It’s been two hours since I said those words. Their echo should be long gone.
I’m not sure he’s innocent.
Slumped on our family room couch, I’m studying my empty hands—which look wrong somehow. Asymmetrical. Like they belong to someone else. Even my wedding ring seems discolored: bronze instead of gold, a metal less precious than the one I intended to wear.
I try to twist the ring, but it’s resistant. All these years, my finger grew inside it, and now it’s part of me, like a circle of bone. Maybe that alone should have kept me clutching my trust in Jason. But something changed in that hospital today. An arrest warrant. A guard outside Jason’s door. A dead man’s blood on a knife my husband is never without. By the time Sienna read the fear on my face, my doubt had sprouted too big to keep swallowing down.
Now, I’m haunted by a phantom weight beside me on the couch, as if Sienna’s on another cushion. But every time I turn my head, I find myself alone. This is the first time since last weekend that I’ve spent an afternoon without her, and I know it was my words, my declaration, that keeps her from being here now. She didn’t scream at me like I might have expected. Her body didn’t tighten, fists didn’t clench. But the moment I said it—I’m not sure he’s innocent—I felt something break between us.
My gaze flits to the family room wall, and there’s a twinge in my side: all those roosters, red and grotesque, an undeniable pattern of blood that Sienna and Jason never saw.
Shivering, I force my focus to the giant photographs, scrutinizing the one from our wedding where I stand between Jason and Sienna on the courthouse steps. I used to play a game with that picture—close an eye and imagine one of us removed from it: with Sienna gone, it was a portrait of a husband and wife; with me erased, it was siblings on a sunny day; with Jason smudged out, it was best friends who, even then, were linking hands. I loved that the photo held three relationships at once, but now, with one eye shut, I see something different when I remove my husband: Sienna and I off-balance with each other, a picture that’s incomplete. My eye jolts open as I’m struck by a terrifying thought—that if I lose Jason, to prison or infidelity or simply my own doubt, I might lose Sienna, too.
The idea is so gut-wrenching that I put my hand to my chest, struggling to breathe. Losing Sienna would feel like losing a vital organ. My heart. A lung. Maybe both of them at once. There’d be parts of me left gaping. Pitch-black places that light could never reach. I push the thought away—too excruciating to bear.
It’s only been a couple of hours, but I miss Sienna already. I miss slipping beneath the undertow of her conviction, her unwavering belief in Jason—though I’m bothered by it, too. It’s one thing to lovesomeone, to trust them, but I’m beginning to think love shouldn’t be blind, shouldn’t limit us to seeing only the pretty parts. All this week, Sienna and I have learned some ugly things about Jason, and it rankles me that her response is now to close her eyes, to turn away, to leave me to witness it all on my own.
Not for the first time today, I picture Jason at Maeve’s last Friday—nervous, maybe, as he shuffled his feet on the doormat, already sensing a buzz of something between them. I see his fingers brushing Maeve’s as he huddles with her over the designs for her store. I see Maeve and Jason on the couch, their mouths, their hands, their breathy separation at the end of it all. The rushed retrieval of clothes, the vow to never speak of it, then Jason hurrying out the door.
That’s where the images stop, where my mind goes staticky like an old TV.
What happened after Jason left Maeve’s? Did he drive to that address in his pocket, confront Gavin about—something? At the hospital, I theorized that Jason might have turned violent at Gavin’s provocation, which only made Sienna scoff. But the truth is: I don’t know what Jason’s capable of when pushed. I’ve never pushed him myself, never so much as spoken up about my own discomfort: our son’s party he skipped to stay beside a stranger; our anniversary dinner we missed so he could play the highway hero. I have no idea what happens when Jason is met with resistance, when something hot gets under his skin. I’ve seen it in Sienna, that fire in her eyes that could burn down the world, but maybe Jason has that too. Maybe he’s stifled it for all the years I’ve known him and last Friday night it finally erupted, turning him into something dangerous. Something wild.
But there’s the question I keep coming back to:Why?Even if I manage to imagine the murder, I can’t muster up a motive. There are loose ends, sure: the shoeboxes of cash in the warehouse; Jason’s customers among those involved in Gavin’s potential fraud; thepromotion Jason never told me he lost. But it’s still nearly as laughable as the last time it occurred to me; Jason wouldn’t kill someone over money.
Then again—that’s the crux of the problem, the reason I’m here, acutely alone, on this couch at all: I don’t know what Jason would or wouldn’t do. Not anymore.
The doorbell rings, scattering my thoughts. I consider leaving it unanswered, but then I think of the last time that bell rang—Beck, a search warrant—and I don’t want to risk Aiden clomping down from his room to find a cop at the door. I haven’t told him, yet, of Jason’s impending arrest. I’ve barely spoken to him since pizza last night, haven’t even seen him since I got home; I only beelined from the garage to the couch, texting him I was back.
When I haul myself up and lumber down the hall, I glimpse a familiar flash of red in the front window. Panic squeezes my neck, my footsteps stutter, but after a moment, I push forward. Because I must be mistaken; it wouldn’t be—
“Maeve,” I say when I open the door. She’s got a nervous stance—arms crossed, shifting on her feet—but she’s dressed impeccably: jeans that look tailored specifically to her legs, a cashmere sweater, a turquoise scarf embellished with red petals. Just the sight of her, so put together when I’m falling apart, makes me lean against the doorframe for support. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m sorry, I went to the hospital, but no one was there. I figured I’d try you here.”
Icy fingers clamp around my heart. “You visited Jason?”
“No,” she’s quick to amend. “I was looking for you. Can I come in? I wanted to talk to you. About that night.”
That night. Bodies on a couch. A tangle of lips and tongues and hands.
