SEVENTY-FIVE

Enzo is currently at the police station in a holding cell. He has been booked and fingerprinted and had mug shots taken, according to Cecelia. There will be a bail hearing tomorrow, but there’s no way we can afford any amount of bail.

I’m desperate to know how he’s doing, but all I can get are updates from Cecelia. I keep the kids home from school—I have taken so many personal days now that my coworkers must be furious with me—and I spend a lot of time talking to them about everything that happened. I knew something was going on with Nico, but somehow this went under my radar. I thought there was something wrong with his brain and that it was all because of my faulty genes, but in reality, it was all Jonathan Lowell’s fault.

“Will Dad come home soon?” Nico asks me hopefully as we eat dinner together. I’ve made macaroni with butter on it. I didn’t even have the bandwidth to add cheese.

“I hope so” is my honest answer.

“But he didn’t do anything wrong,” Ada says in a tiny voice. “Why does he have to be in jail?”

“Because you can’t just tell the police you didn’t do it and they let you go,” I explain to them. “But don’t worry, because he has an amazing lawyer. He’ll be home soon.”

If I tell myself that enough times, maybe it will come true.

After dinner, I pop some popcorn in the microwave. Miraculously, I manage not to burn it like last time, and I get the kids set up on the sofa watching cartoons and eating microwaved popcorn. Right after I turn on a movie, my phone rings.

The number comes from the local police station.

I jump off the couch and jam my thumb into the green button to take the call. I make it into the kitchen when that familiar Italian accent comes on the other line: “Millie?”

I almost burst into tears. “Enzo! Oh my God… I can’t believe they let you call…”

“I have five minutes. That is all.”

Five minutes isn’t nearly long enough to say everything I have to say, but it’s a start. “You idiot. Why did you confess?”

“For Ada,” he says in a quiet voice, like he’s worried they might be listening. “I would do anything for her and Nico. Wouldn’t you?”

“Yes,” I admit. “I would.”

“For you too, Millie.”

That’s all it takes. My eyes are welling up. “We need you back here though. Please. She’s not going to get in trouble for this. She’s only eleven.”

“Millie, she slit his throat with a pocketknife. This is trouble for her.”

That’s the part of it that tugs at me. Jonathan Lowell had two stab wounds. Ada stabbed him in the belly to get him out of the way, but there’s no way she is tall enough to effectively cut a grown man’s throat while he was standing in front of her. She didn’t tell me every detail—only that she stabbed him to get him out of the way—and I didn’t want to push her because she was already so upset.

So I can only imagine what must have really happened. I found Jonathan in the living room rather than in the hidden room, so the knife in his belly must not have immediately taken him down. He must have tried to follow her, then collapsed soon after. And then she turned around and sliced his throat while he was lying on the floor. Just to make absolutely sure he was dead.

That’s cold. Even for me. Yet if she truly believed he hurt Nico, and he was coming after her, she did what she had to do.

It’s still hard to argue something like that could be self-defense.

“It doesn’t matter,” I say. “Enzo, we need you home. We’re lost without you. Please, tell the truth, and let Cecelia handle it.”

“I will not turn my daughter in. No. Never.”

I hate how stubborn he is. But given the opportunity, I would do the same.

“Did you confess to the police?” I ask him.

“Not yet,” he says. “Cecelia would not allow me. But tomorrow…”

“Please don’t do this,” I beg him. “I know you think you’re helping Ada, but she’s not going to be better off with her father in prison. That will wreck her life. Don’t you realize that? You need to come home, and then we will figure out a way to deal with this.”

A voice is shouting at him in the background. He has used up his five minutes.

“Millie,” he says urgently. “Please tell the kids that I love them. No matter what happens.”

“We love you too,” I start to say, but I’m pretty sure I get cut off after the first word. The line is dead.

Tonight, Enzo will spend the night in a cold, uncomfortable holding cell. Actually, it’s the summer, so it will be a hot, uncomfortable holding cell. Maybe after a night of that, he’ll realize he does not want to do this for the rest of his life.

At least that’s what I have to hope for.

SEVENTY-SIX

I barely sleep that night.

Enzo might be the one spending the night in a cell, but I’m the one tossing and turning. I keep thinking back to when I was in prison. I was surrounded by people, but I felt so lonely all the time. I always felt like I didn’t belong there. I don’t think anybody feels they belong there.

I wish Enzo understood how awful it is. He might not be so quick to give up his life.

I decide to send the kids off to school the next morning, just to maintain some semblance of normalcy. I walk them to the bus stop, and I’m not surprised to see Janice there with Spencer on his usual leash.

Janice sniffs. “I’m surprised to see you here.”

“I live right over there,” I point out. “Why wouldn’t I be here?”

Janice doesn’t find me even the tiniest bit amusing. “I mean, after the terrible thing your husband did. Aren’t you ashamed to show your face?”

I can’t believe she said that right in front of my children. I have been taking a lot of her crap since I moved here, just to keep the peace, but I am done with that. After all, I’m fairly sure that no matter what, we’re not going to be living here much longer.

“My husband didn’t do anything, Janice,” I say. “You got it all wrong.”

She snorts. “I don’t think so. A man who looks like that is always going to be trouble.”

She thinks my husband is a murderer because he’s too handsome? “Enzo is a good man,” I say firmly. “And I don’t need some busybody neighbor to tell me otherwise. So why don’t you mind your own damn business from now on, Janice?”

Janice’s mouth falls open, like she’s not quite used to being spoken to that way. I look over at the kids, and for the first time since their father was arrested, I detect the tiniest hint of smiles on their faces.

Once my kids are safely on the bus, I return to my house. I reach the front lawn just as that familiar black Dodge Charger pulls up to the curb. The driver-side window rolls down, and Detective Benito Ramirez sticks his head out.

“Millie,” he says. “Get in the car.”

I trust Ramirez more than I trust any other cop in the world, but I am still not excited to get in a cop car without any explanation. “I have to get to Enzo’s bail hearing in less than two hours.”