“We’re doing fine,” I say defensively.

“So you didn’t recently bounce a check?”

Oh my God, this detective knows everything. I squirm in the plastic chair, wondering if he knows what color underwear I’m wearing right now. I wouldn’t be surprised.

“That was a miscalculation,” I say.

“Do you know,” he says, “that Jonathan Lowell had a substantial life insurance policy and Suzette Lowell is the sole beneficiary?”

Again, I am trying not to react. “No, I did not. But I’m not sure what that has to do with me or my husband.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Don’t you?”

I take a deep breath, remembering what Ramirez told me to say if the questions start going in the wrong direction. I might not be a suspect, but I’m pretty damn sure that my husband is. “Detective Willard,” I say, “I am not answering any more questions without a lawyer.”

FORTY-EIGHT

The detective decides he doesn’t have any more questions for me.

But the same is not true for Enzo. I wait in the station for him, and they keep him there for hours. I doubt they’re questioning him the whole time. They’re just trying to wear him down and sweat the truth out of him. I’m sure he has asked for a lawyer too, and that will have taken time.

He finally emerges three hours later, looking exhausted. There are circles under his slightly bloodshot eyes. His lips are turned down, and he looks like he wants to throw up.

“What happened?” I ask him.

“We go,” he says. “Now. Please.”

We took my car to the station, which turns out to be a good thing because he does not look like he’s up for driving (and I am slightly terrified of driving his truck with its stick shift). He climbs into the passenger seat beside me and stares out the window.

I wonder what they said to him in there.

He’s quiet for the first five minutes of the drive as he watches the streets zip by. Finally, he says, “Millie, you know I did not cheat on you with Suzette?”

I grimace. I don’t want to have this conversation right now, because between my prior suspicions and everything I heard from Detective Willard today, I can’t imagine how Enzo wasn’t cheating on me. And if he says otherwise, it’s all a bunch of lies.

“I would never.” He turns away from the window to face me. “I swear to you.”

I remember Ramirez’s words from this morning: One thing I know about Enzo Accardi is that he is a good guy. I don’t think he would kill anyone. But if he did, it would be for a damn good reason.

I want so badly to believe that. But he’s making it very hard for me.

“So why were you at a motel with her?” I ask.

“I was not!”

“The detective told me⁠—”

“Is not true,” he insists.

“Enzo,” I say. “I smelled her perfume on you.”

He’s quiet again, absorbing this piece of information. I glance over at him as I pull over to the side of the road, not wanting to crash the car while we have this conversation. He looks like he’s turning things over in his head. Is he going to confess everything?

Do I want him to confess everything?

“Okay,” he finally says. “I checked into a motel that night. Is true.”

I didn’t realize until that second just how badly I had wanted him to deny everything. “I see…”

“But not with Suzette. I swear to you. They only know it was a woman and they assumed.”

What? “So who are you cheating on me with then?” I snap at him.

“Not cheating,” he says firmly. “I was… It was Martha. Suzette gives her leftover perfume, I think. Or maybe… she might take it.”

“Martha, our cleaning woman?”

He nods slowly.

Okay…

Of all the people I would have thought my husband might cheat with, my sixty-year-old cleaning woman was at the bottom of the list. Of course, he is claiming he didn’t cheat. But if he didn’t, why was he at a motel with her?

“I went over to her house to give her last paycheck,” he begins.

I clench my teeth, remembering how I asked him not to do that, yet he did it anyway. “Okay…”

“And she had…” He touches his hand to his face. “Bruises everywhere. I had sensed it when I spoke with her before, but that day was when I knew. Her husband… He took her whole paycheck, and that’s why she was stealing things—to save up enough to leave. He would have killed her, Millie. Plus he was angry she got fired from another job. I needed to help her get away.”

Enzo would never lie about that. Never. If he says Martha was getting beat on by her husband, it’s the truth. Or at least it’s the truth as he believes it.

“Maybe she was manipulating you to get money,” I suggest.

“No,” he says. “Is real. In fact…”

He stops talking, as if unsure if he should tell me anything else. But this is not the time for holding things back. “What?”

“She wanted to talk to you,” he sighs. “She knew about you.”

“She… she did?”

I wonder how she knew. I wonder who told her.

The thing is, I have a bit of a… history with women like Martha. Women who are in terrible situations and have no way out. I became the way out for some of those women. So did Enzo. I have to say, I can’t help but look back on it all with pride. We have done some good things in our time.

Some bad things too, maybe, along the way.

“Yes. And she was trying to work up the courage because she wanted your help. But then you accuse her of breaking things and then you say she is stealing…”