“Not anymore,” Sonny says. “Take a closer look at that report. What does it say right there?” He taps a box in the middle of the page.
Paris follows his finger. “It says cause of death is exsanguination due to a severed femoral artery.”
“Not that,” Sonny says. “Below it.”
Paris looks closer. Under the box for Underlying Cause of Death, the box for Homicide has been left unchecked. So too have the boxes for Natural Causes and Suicide. However, there is an X in the box beside Undetermined.
“Undetermined? What does that mean?” Paris looks up. “Are they saying they’re not actually sure how Jimmy died?”
“Bingo,” Sonny says. “The ME is saying that there’s no direct evidence confirming that Jimmy’s death was the result of a homicide. And you can’t be charged with a homicide if there wasn’t one.”
Paris holds her breath, unable to react until she hears him say it. One of them needs to say it.
“The DA has withdrawn the murder charge,” Elsie says. “It’s over.”
Paris waits three seconds. “Okay,” she says slowly. She refuses to relax until she understands it fully. “But they can still press charges in the future, right?”
“Against you? No.” Sonny cracks his knuckles. “The border crossing photos provide more than enough reasonable doubt. Against someone else? Maybe, if the cause of death changes, which it won’t, or if new evidence comes to light. But if they haven’t found it by now, I doubt they will.”
“All that’s left to do is return your ankle monitor. And I’m happy to take care of that for you.” Elsie reaches across the table and squeezes Paris’s hand. “It’s really over.”
Paris exhales so hard, she collapses in her chair. The tears follow a moment later, which turn into sobs that rack her whole body. She’s only vaguely aware of each lawyer’s hand touching her shoulder as they leave quietly.
Life has a way of balancing everything out. And the only reason this moment feels so good is that what happened to Jimmy was so bad. She knows the feeling won’t last. When Paris is finished crying, all she’ll be left with is the guilt that her husband was so unhappy and in such a dark place that he felt the only way out was to end his own life. And she’ll spend the rest of her life trying to understand how he got there, how she could have missed it, how she might have saved him.
When the sobs subside, she heads upstairs to her room to wash her face and change into something comfortable. She needs to call Henry, and then she needs to finish making plans for Jimmy’s funeral. Per his wishes, he’ll be cremated, and his urn will rest next to his mother’s in the family mausoleum.
A little way down the hall, she sees that the door to Jimmy’s bedroom is open. She can still smell the bleach coming out of it, reminding her that it’s been cleaned and that it’s safe to go inside. She takes a step toward it, then stops. The last time she was in Jimmy’s bedroom was the night he died.
She’s not ready.
Jimmy, I love you. And I’m sorry. I’m so, so, so sorry.
* * *
All that’s left to do now is grieve. And the way Paris grieves is: she cooks.
For the past couple of hours, she’s been listening to Jimmy’s cassettes on his old boombox in the kitchen. It’s nice. Every song on his “Hits of ’70s” compilation cassette has a memory of her husband attached to it. Right now, The Hollies are playing, and she can picture Jimmy sitting at the table with his reading glasses on, drinking his coffee as a light rain comes down on the window. Sometimes, all I need is the air that I breathe …
She lifts the lid off her Le Creuset and gives the lightly simmering pork adobo a stir. Every cook has their own recipe for the traditional Filipino stew. Some like it saucy. Some like it dry. But the basic ingredients in any Filipino adobo are soy sauce, vinegar, bay leaves, and patience. She’s also making lumpia （spring rolls） and a huge batch of pancit （noodles）， and when she’s finished, she’ll have enough leftovers for a week. The only good thing that ever came out of her time in Maple Sound was that Lola Celia taught her to cook.
The doorbell rings. Paris checks the clock on the stove and frowns. She can’t imagine who could be at the front door at nine o’clock at night, other than a photographer hoping for a picture or a journalist hoping for a comment. But the crowd that was camped outside for the past week is finally gone now, and the neighborhood is back to normal, with its usual amount of city gazers taking photos at Kerry Park.