Page 90 of Thicker Than Water
“Why would you do that?” Julia asks. “I get that you didn’t think Gavin assaulted you, but still—he did that disgusting thing in the warehouse.”
Maeve doesn’t answer. She only dips down to swish her brush in water before setting it back on the tray.
“And you weren’tpositive,” Julia pushes, “that nothing happened after the holiday party.”
Maeve snaps upright. “That’s exactly the reason. Because I wasn’t positive. Because Jason had shoved the idea down my throat, even when I told him to stop.”
“Wait,” I say. “Shoved it down your throat?”
Maeve crouches again to pick up her brush, and as she whips it toward the wall, she spatters the carpet with bright red drops. “For weeks after the party, he harassed me. ‘What happened, Maeve? Have you remembered anything? What about cuts and bruises—did you have any of those?’ I told him to stop. I told him nothing happened. But every few days, he’d bring it up again at work, this sad, droopy look on his face: ‘Hey, Maeve, uh, did you, uh, remember anything yet?’ He just wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
Something dark and sticky stirs inside me—a hot, swirling tar.Harassed me, wouldn’t take no for an answer, as if Jason’s questions were their own kind of assault.
“I told you, Julia.” Maeve slashes the wall again, a third swatch of red. “It freaked me out. It kept me up at night. I’d have nightmares where Gavin was…” As she trails off, she shakes her head, adding another streak, a thick tally mark. “So at the conference dinner, when I saw Gavin getting wasted, brushing his hand against the waitress’s ass, telling her and me and basically every other womanhe saw that they should come to his lake house after—which no one had any desire to do—I saw an opportunity. Because I couldn’t exactly confront my boss at the Marriott. But Icouldact like I wanted to go home with him. And when I got there, I could get him even drunker, get his defenses down, ask him about the night he tookmehome. Silence Jason’s question for good.”
“Okay,” Julia says. “That sounds like… kind of a risky plan, though.”
Maeve whirls back to her, and when the paintbrush catches my eye, my mind lurches toward Jason again. The knife dripping with Gavin’s blood.
“I had it under control,” Maeve says. “Iwas in the driver’s seat—literally. And when we got to his house, I made sure we never went inside. I wasn’t going to let him corner me, have a repeat of the warehouse. I told him I wanted to sit outside and enjoy the view of the lake. So we went to the patio, and I set my phone to record the whole thing, in case he admitted it. In case he gave me something I needed to take to the police as proof. And I crept toward the question: ‘The night of the holiday party, it’s a little fuzzy to me, but we had fun, didn’t we?’ He just kind of laughed in response, but I knew I was close.”
“But something went wrong,” I say, my voice thick. “Jason said he heard you tell Gavin to stop, and that’s why he came to help you.”
“Helpme?” Maeve’s eyes flash. “I didn’t need his help. Gavin kept putting his hand on my thigh, but he was wasted, his eyes were practically crossing—he wouldn’t have had the coordination to overpower me. But then Jason grabbed Gavin’s phone and took out his fucking knife. Which Gavin thought was hilarious. And when Gavin launched at him to try to get his phone back, he— I don’t know. It was so fast. They struggled a little, and then there was just”—she looks at her paintbrush, face appalled, as if finally recognizing the color—“all this blood.”
She drops the brush onto the tray, where it lands with a clack, leaving a red spritz on the plastic. I close my eyes, seeing Jason’s blazer.
“And then he told you to leave,” I force out. Even after hearing the story from Jason himself, it doesn’t feel real. Maeve’s version confirms that the cut on Gavin’s stomach was an accident, but: “He told you he’d take care of it.” Which led to suffocation, stitching—acts that could only be on purpose.
Disgust warps Maeve’s face, her mouth pulling back into a sneer. For a few moments, she holds it there, as if stuck in the memory. Then, unfreezing, she nods. Slowly. Carefully.
Then she closes her lips, creating a tight seam.
I almost jolt at the gesture. It’s one I know so well, one I’ve seen Julia do thousands of times. But right now, Julia’s lips are parted, her eyes slitted with suspicion as she watches Maeve keep something back.
“Why didn’t you tell us this on Friday?” Julia asks. “Why make me think my husband cheated?”
“Right,” I say, backing her up. “Why didn’t you just tell us what really happened?”
As I ask it, though, I know I wouldn’t have believed her, even if she had. Words, a story, would have never been enough for me, not when I was already ignoring evidence and facts.
Maeve crosses her arms, drumming her fingers against her bicep. “You assumed there was an affair because of the emails. So I went with it. Because what would have been worse? Breaking your heart with infidelity, or by telling you your husband was guilty? It’s a decision I made in the moment, and I did feel awful for hurting you. But the alternative would have hurt more.”
“Those emails, though,” Julia says. “You told Jason he needed to stay away from you.”
“Well, yeah. Why would I want him anywhere near me after he killed someone?”
Julia and I look at each other, and I see it in her eyes: we’re making the same calculations. As I turn back to Maeve, the acid in my stomach heats up.
“But Jason told you to leave, right?” I try to keep my voice even. Cool. “After he cut Gavin. He said he’d take care of it, and you left. So how did you know when you wrote the email on Saturday that Jason had killed Gavin… if his murder wasn’t reported until Sunday?”
One of Maeve’s arms drops, the other still crossed in front of her like a safety bar. “I mean, I guess I just assumed that’s what he’d…” She lifts one shoulder, a casual shrug.
“You assumed ‘take care of it’ meant killing him?” I ask. “Instead of, like, tending to the wound?”
Maeve’s mouth closes. She pushes her gaze toward the wall. “I don’t know, I—”
“And another thing,” Julia says. “Jason said he toldyouto leave. But in your email, you said,I told you when you left the house. So… who left first? Him or you?”
