“Your wife was unaware of your donor status?”
“Yes. I…hadn’t found the right moment to share the details with her.”
Lucía seems intrigued. She sits back in her chair, takes a sip of the coffee. “Someone’s sending a message.”
“I agree,” Park says. “Someone wants Olivia to know about this. But she does now, so that was a pointless act. Listen. I did nothing wrong here. Olivia hasn’t either. I understand that we need to get out ahead of the craziness that’s coming with the biological kids and the criminal aspect of our connection. You’re right, the media’s going to have a field day, and I want Liv to be protected. She’s had a hard enough time with the infertility treatments and miscarriages. This is going to push all of that to a nasty head. But Chapel Hill—I won’t discuss it. The case is closed, I wasn’t involved, and there’s nothing there for the police to hang on me. It’s a cruel coincidence, that’s all.”
“Except they are exhuming the body because the girl was pregnant, and no one dealt with that back then,” Lindsey says. “Park says it’s not his, but until we know for sure…”
Lucía taps her pen on her notebook. “Have you stopped to think that perhaps the killer is trying to get your attention? That he’s mimicked your girlfriend’s murder to send you a message? It’s not out of the bounds of reason to think the break-ins are tied to him, as well. Either someone wants your attention, or someone’s trying to frame you.”
“I—” Park stops, aghast. He has been thinking this, he just hasn’t voiced it aloud. Someone is definitely trying to get their attention. Attack them. But to be framed for something he didn’t do… “That’s too twisted for words.”
Lucía smiles. “And yet, Mr. Bender, it appears that’s exactly what’s happened.”
Park can’t help it, finally acknowledging this sends chills down his spine. “You really think the killer—my son—is the one who broke in?”
“Highly likely. I’ll assign some security to you and Mrs. Bender. Just in case. They’ll serve two purposes—keep you safe and keep the media from pestering you.”
His initial impulse is to say no, no way. But if Lucía is right, and Olivia was in any kind of danger this morning, he’ll take the security muscle, and welcome it. The cops are already circling the neighborhood.
“We also need to have a conversation with Winterborn right away. I’d like to hear what they have to say about the excessive number of children conceived from your donations. I want to get as far ahead of things as we can before the media gets wind of this.”
“How can we possibly pull that off? The police already want to reveal my ties to the cases.”
She flashes him a knowing smile, and even Lindsey looks smug. “Because we’re going to tell them. You’re going to come to my office right now for a bit of media training with my people, and you’re going to do the interview with Erica Pearl. Tonight.”
26
THE WIFE
Park isn’t home when she gets there, and Olivia makes a cup of tea and goes to his office. She stands in the doorway, staring into the room she designed for him. It’s the place she feels closest to him. There’s more of Park here than anywhere else in the house. It’s his personal space. He trusts her not to snoop, and besides, Olivia has never been the suspicious wife type.
She and Park share a family email, their bank accounts are joint, and the combination to the safe in his office is taped to the underside of their kitchen junk drawer. She knows the security key to his password manager, and he has full access to her studio. They are equitable with one another’s privacy. Park hasn’t given her a reason to distrust him for a long time. She also hates the very thought of doubting him.
But standing in his empty office, wondering why he didn’t come clean with her when he had the chance, gets her thinking about the package of items from his safe that was left behind in the Jones build.
Why? Was the goal to make sure she knew about Winterborn? To cast doubt on his past in Chapel Hill? She hadn’t gone through the stack piece by piece. Has she missed something that she should be aware of? Was the cop right, a message was being sent? What else might he be hiding from her?
The idea that he hasn’t been entirely truthful, that he’s concealing parts of himself from her, sets her teeth on edge. Their marriage has been a happy one, for the most part. He has no reason to keep secrets.
But the grainy photo with his arm slung so casually across Melanie Rich’s bony shoulders has planted the seed. Why would he have kept that picture in his safe? Worse, are there others?
Her husband is a good man. A kind man. A provider. He loves her. He will make an excellent father.
She shouldn’t be suspicious of him. But now she is.
It’s the reaction she’d had when the police showed up that’s nagging at her.
Beverly Cooke, dead in a lake, and there she was, imagining Park guilty. She had him convicted and in jail without a moment’s hesitation.
Why?
Because he’s been acting strange lately.
The thought hits her like a bomb. She’s been so caught up in her own roller coaster of emotions that she’s written it off to his grieving process. The past several months have been elegiac in their pain. They’d lost the first two in vitro implantations in March and July, respectively. Neither pregnancy made it past the eight-week mark. It was truly a leap of faith for her to try another so soon, but she’d insisted. She had that clawing fear chasing her, the horrible sense that things wouldn’t go the way she wanted them to. That her time was running out.
She touches her stomach lightly. She really thought this was the one.
Park has been a rock for her through the fertility treatments. Such a rock that Lindsey joked they should name a kid Gibraltar in his honor. They’ve been trying for a baby for over five years now, and never once has he been anything but steady, calm, and supportive. Finding ways to make it easier on her, offering himself for the hard parts of the process, from googling all the best ways to make giving her the shots easier to stockpiling her favorite indulgences when she miscarries. He’s been a damn prince through it all. Solicitous to the point of annoyance.
What an uncharitable thought, Olivia. God forbid your husband give a shit.
Looking back, though, she realizes that yes, these past few months, he has been overly kind. Overly, and overtly.
She recalls a conversation with a client who recently divorced her husband for cheating on her. She said she suspected something was up because he was suddenly so attentive. There was no lipstick on his collar or late nights at the office, but he had been smothering her with his attentions.
Overcompensation, Dr. Benedict would say. Misdirection.
So, what is Park overcompensating for?
She takes a Post-it note and a pencil and retrieves the safe combination from the kitchen, noting in slight horror the date corresponds to her first miscarriage. Jesus, Park. She pulls out a tape measure from the drawer as well. If he comes back before she’s finished and catches her rifling through his things, she can say she’s gotten a call from one of her clients who wants the same live-edge desk installed and she’s double-checking the measurements.