“You don’t understand. Michael had changed over the last few weeks and I think this is the reason why. It has to be pretty awful if he couldn’t talk to me about it.”
“That’s exactly the reason you need to go to the police.”
“Maybe you could just call that lawyer—Gallagher? Find out what all this is about.”
“Anna—” I looked at the papers again. “I’m sorry, Anna. I don’t think I can . . .” I tried to hand the documents back to her. “I’m sorry.”
“You have to. Not for me.” Anna composed herself and gazed at me with a sly, calm look. “Weren’t you in his office the morning he was killed?”
“Wha— What are you talking about?”
“We both know what I’m talking about. I know you two had one of your early morning meetings.” She bent over, lifted a few papers from the floor, and gently placed them on the desk. “I know all about your early morning meetings in the office, the legal conferences, Michael’s Saturday morning golf outings, too . . . to your condo.”
I shot a look at Anna. All my worst fears knotted up in the pit of my stomach. She knew. She had known all along.
“Anna . . .”
“I made peace with it a long time ago. I had no choice. From the first day you stepped foot inside Dillon & Beck, you were all he talked about. Do you know how hard it is to compete with the woman who has captured your husband because she’s so smart, so hardworking, so . . . so perfect? Then it dawned on me. Michael’s feelings about you had nothing to do with your looks, your education, any of that. It didn’t even have anything to do with me. You made him feel something that I couldn’t replicate. My husband was in love with you. And how do you tell a man to stop loving who he loves?”
I remembered Vera’s saying, A woman just knows. I glanced at Anna then averted my eyes. A deep and painful sadness swept over me. “I have to go.”
“Do the police know you were in his office that morning?”
I nearly dropped the papers. “What are you talking about?”
This time, Anna casually picked up a book from the floor as if she were doing her Saturday morning chores. She glanced at it before she placed it on the bookshelf. She walked closer to me, leaned against the side of the desk, and gave me a sympathetic look.
“I stayed in my marriage because I didn’t want my kids to become a casualty of divorce. Why did you stay in my marriage all those years?”
Her question sliced like a steel blade, forcing me, yet again, to contend with the stupid decision I made to get involved with Michael.
“And what do you have to show for those years? A few weekends and some dinners at a remote restaurant on the outskirts of town?” She raised an eyebrow. “What are you? Forty-one? Forty-two?”
She was off by a few years in my favor, but I didn’t respond.
“Have you ever been married?” Anna asked.
“No.”
“Then you might not realize every marriage is perfectly imperfect. It’s just the way things are. Every couple has some pact. Some tacit agreement neither of them discusses but both fully understand the terms. I suspect if Michael had made his way to a marital bed with you, you would have struck your own pact with him too. Men don’t change.”
She inhaled deeply before she spoke again. “I know you didn’t kill Michael. Maybe you thought you were in love with him. But the police might think otherwise if they knew what was really going on, don’t you think? Listen, I just need you to help me find out if he was in some kind of trouble. You and I both know my husband was no Boy Scout. But I’m his wife, we have kids. And I don’t want his legacy tarnished in some sort of scandal after he’s dead and can’t defend himself. Just help me.”
I wasn’t prepared for this type of appeal. I wished she had set off on a screaming match. I wished she had yelled and called me a home-wrecking bitch, slapped me. Anything but this. I couldn’t look at her anymore. I just stared at the papers in my hands. Her request, the silence between us, the secrets— All of it dragged like lead weights around the collar of my conscience.
“Ellice, if you loved Michael, please help me find out if he was in any kind of trouble. I’d rather hear it from you. Maybe there’s a way to help him, even now after his death, if he was in some sort of trouble. I know Michael wasn’t the perfect man. But he was a good man. Please, help me.”
If I loved Michael. Did I love him? If I did, who loved him more? His feckless mistress who left him dead in his office or the wife he cheated on who was still trying to protect his reputation as an upstanding pillar in the legal community? This woman stood in front of me, asking for my help for her cheating husband.