Page 93 of She Didn't See It Coming
“Angela,” Lizzie says.
So this is Angela, Donna thinks, and Savanah. She’d never met them. The other woman stares back at the two of them, clearly distressed.
“Have you heard?” Lizzie asks.
Angela nods.
“Heard what, Mommy?” the little girl asks, looking up at her mother with her head tipped back.
“Nothing, Savanah.” Angela opens her door and ushers her daughter inside, closing it firmly behind them, as if attempting to shut out the rest of the world.
•••
Sam faces the detectiveswith alarm. His attorney is beside him, her face creased in concern. The stakes have changed; he has now been arrested for murder. And there must be a reason.
Detective Salter begins, “Paige has told us everything.”
Sam swallows. He glances at his lawyer, takes a deep breath, closes his eyes and opens them again. “Okay, yes, I was sleeping with Paige. We agreed that we wouldn’t tell you because it wouldn’t look good. For me. But she means nothing to me, really.”
There’s a pause before the detective responds. “I don’t think youunderstand,” Detective Salter says. “Paige told useverything.She told us how you killed your wife.”
He almost stops breathing. “What? No. No, that’s not true. I didn’t kill Bryden! Why would she say that?”
“She said you then called her to the scene. She said that when she arrived at the apartment, Bryden was already dead. That you told her you’d had an argument and that you’d smothered her with a plastic bag.”
The detective’s face swims before him; there’s that tightness in his chest again, the feeling of being gripped in a vise.
The detective continues. “She said you asked her to carry the suitcase with Bryden’s body in it down to the basement. That she didn’t want to, but you persuaded her to do it because it was too risky for you—that you might be seen and recognized.”
Sam feels his body go cold all over.
“She’s lying! That never happened!” he cries. The two detectives look back at him stonily. “It’s not true. I didn’t kill her!” He turns in desperation to his lawyer, but she says nothing. Even his lawyer looks like she doubts him.
This can’t be happening.
“She says that you told her to get rid of Bryden’s clothes,” Salter says.
“No, that’s not true. None of this is true.”
“Why would Paige say it if it weren’t true?” Detective Salter asks. “She can’t live with it anymore. She’s going to testify against you.”
Sam shakes his head, over and over, the vise on his chest getting tighter and tighter.
“What did you do with your burner phone, Sam?”
“What burner phone? I’ve never had a burner phone!”
The interrogation continues, and he protests his innocence again and again, but they don’t believe him. He feels like he’s in a dreamstate, that none of this is real. He’d been an awful husband, he knows that. He’d been abusive to his wife, he’d cheated on her with her best friend. And now he’s going to be charged with her murder.
Oh, Christ. This is all too much. He has to stop lying to the detectives and tell them the truth. “I need a minute with my attorney,” Sam says tersely.
The detective suspends the interview.
•••
Lizzie looks downat her phone, pretending to scroll casually, while her mother clasps Clara in her arms on the sofa. They’ve returned to her place, but they can’t talk about what’s happened because Clara is there, sitting on her grandma’s lap. Her mother seems to have pulled herself together since earlier, at the condo. Her father, though, still seems unable to cope with the latest development.
They’d both liked Paige too.
