Page 92 of She Didn't See It Coming
“Bryden wasn’t having an affair with Derek Gardner or anybody else. I made that up.”
“For God’s sake,” Salter exclaims. “Why?”
“To distract you from me and Sam. I just thought of it on the spur of the moment, when you were interviewing me, pushing me about whether one of them was having an affair, and I thought of him because I remembered that when Bryden told me about the accident, she mentioned that he was quite handsome.” She adds, her voice mournful, “Bryden would never cheat.”
The detective stares at her. Then Paige is arrested and taken to the cells.
•••
Back in her office,Jayne turns to Kilgour and says, “It amazes me how men can find women to do things like this for them. Let’s arrest Sam and bring him in.” She shakes her head. “Just think,” she says, “of all the time we’ve wasted on Derek Gardner.”
“Bad luck for him,” Kilgour says. “Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Jayne thinks about that. Paige’s fib was unlucky for Derek Gardner, particularly because he and Alice seem to have something to hide. How furious he must have been—he and his cold wife—when he hadn’t done anything to Bryden Frost at all. He’d never even slept with her, let alone killed her.
Maybe now he’ll be able to convince his wife, Jayne thinks.
•••
Sam hears the brisk knockat the door and feels a rush of panic. No one had buzzed him to be let into the building. He doesn’t want to answer. The knock comes again, and he gets up on unsteady legs.
It’s the detectives, as he feared. They start telling him he’s under arrest for the murder of his wife. They read him his rights, but he can’t quite take any of it in. The handcuffs go on with a click and he feels like he’s living someone else’s life. This isn’t his life. “I want tocall my attorney,” he manages to say, as he sways on his feet. His unsympathetic female attorney. Maybe he should get someone else.
“You can call her from the station,” Detective Salter says. And then they take him away. Down the elevator, through the lobby, and out of the building, where he is subjected to the excited jostling and catcalls of the press, who watch him being taken away in handcuffs, and capture it all in images, for posterity.
Someone throws a balled-up piece of garbage at him and it hits him on the side of his face.
62
Only an hour ago, Donna had received a phone call from Detective Salter, telling her that her son-in-law has been arrested for the murder of her daughter, and that Paige Mason has also been arrested.
After she’d gotten off the phone, and blurted the news to Lizzie, Donna had run to the bathroom and thrown up. She sat on the floor tiles, heaving. Her beloved daughter had been betrayed, not only by her husband, but by her best friend. Then Jim had arrived home from the corner store. When they told him the news he’d collapsed onto the sofa and had remained there, almost catatonic.
Now Donna is driving Lizzie’s car on her way to the condo to gather some things of Clara’s before they pick her up from day care. Lizzie is beside her, in the passenger seat, rigid. Lizzie has keys to the condo and is on the list of people allowed to collect Clara from the day care. “I can’t believe it,” Lizzie says again, her voice hollow. “Not Sam.”
Of course, Sam, Donna wants to say, but she holds her tongue. Inspite of everything, she’s relieved, because after she and Jim had read everything in that repulsive Facebook group, Lizzie’s awful posts, she’d been filled with a terrible uncertainty. She had thought it was possible that Lizzie was mentally ill. And God help her, she’d thought—however briefly—that it was possible that Lizzie had murdered her own sister. She’d run to the bathroom and thrown up then too.
But now they have arrested Sam and Paige. Donna is glad to finally have an answer, toknow.But Lizzie is having a hard time accepting the truth about Sam. Donna glances at her daughter and says, “Honey, Sam’s not who you think he is.”
Donna parks outside the building, as there is no one in the apartment to buzz them into the underground garage. They make their way inside. There are no reporters anymore. Presumably, Donna thinks, they saw Sam being taken away in handcuffs earlier and followed him to the police station.
As they gather up the things that Clara will need for the next few days, Donna begins to think of the daunting task ahead of her. She must keep living, although her beloved Bryden is dead. She must get through the pain and spectacle of a trial. She must officially adopt her granddaughter and bring her up, must somehow help her deal with the trauma that life has dealt her when Donna can hardly deal with it herself. And someday, she will have to tell Clara the ugly truth.
Donna must also come to terms with what Lizzie has done and find a way to support her somehow. She supposes that she and Jim will have to move back to Albany. It’s not the retirement she’d imagined. She doesn’t know if she can do it.
Suddenly Donna sags onto the sofa in Bryden’s living room. She gazes around in horror, imagining what must have happened here, with Bryden, and Sam and Paige. She doesn’t think she can go on.
“Mom?” Lizzie is kneeling down beside her, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Are you okay?”
Donna sees that there are tears in her daughter’s eyes.
“You have to stay strong, Mom. Clara needs you. I need you.” She adds, “And I will help.”
Donna looks at Lizzie with the faintest stirring of hope, and nods.
“Let’s go,” Lizzie says. “I’ll drive.”
As they’re leaving the apartment, the elevator pings, the doors slide open, and a woman steps out, holding a little girl by the hand as she starts down the corridor. She stops abruptly when she sees them.
