Page 66 of Circle of Strangers
Will’s words are laced with emotion and his eyes turn wet. The number of times I’ve seen this man in this state over the course of our marriage, I could count on one hand. He’s always been composed, collected, confident.
“Neither of us is perfect.” Taking a seat, he reaches across the table toward me, but I don’t extend my hand to his. “But together,we’reperfect.”
I straighten my shoulders and keep my composure as I collect my thoughts. I thought he wanted to talk about the dead body in the garage. I wasn’t ready forthisconversation.
Clearing my throat, I tell him, “I wasn’t planning on leaving, nor was I planning to meet Oscar. If you took the time to—”
“—that’s not what Sozi said.” He interrupts me before I can explain that if he’d have looked at my actual profile, he’d have seen the AI avatar.
But his mention of Sozi hits me like a slap.
“When were you talking to Sozi?” I ask.
He sighs, resting the side of his face against his hand. “This afternoon. I had to run home and grab something from the house before my evening class, and she stopped over, said she was looking for you.”
Oh, God.
On the outside, I remain calm. Inside, I’m certain I know where this is going. “What else did she say?”
Will shakes his head, staring into our darkened yard. “She said she was concerned about you—said you’ve been acting erratically, paranoid. Obsessing over Mara ... worried I was cheating ...”
He glances back, his eyes lingering on mine. “She told me you drink all day. That the kids are left outside alone all the time.”
The ice in my vodka cracks against the glass. “What was she getting at?”
“She didn’t think you were a good mother. Or a good wife.” Will’s voice tightens. “She said you didn’t deserve me.”
The air between us is more charged than ever, and I watch him carefully, waiting for the next shoe to drop, holding my breath until I know where he’s going with all of this.
“But I told her none of that was true.” He takes another careful sip, finishing the rest of his liquor before placing his tumbler on the table and leaning back.
Was it Will?
DidWillkill Sozi?
My husband leans forward, his chin tucked. “Then I told her to leave.”
“And?” My voice is barely a whisper.
“And she didn’t like that very much.” His lips press flat. I stay silent, waiting for him to continue. Only now his eyes are hollow and unfamiliar, those of a total stranger. “But the thing is, Camille, it wasn’t the first time she’d come over to talk to me. Wasn’t even the second. But it was the first time she told me she was falling in love with me, that I deserved betterthan you, that the kids deserved better than you. She said if I didn’t give her a chance—if I didn’t want her—she’d make me regret it. She’d accuse me of something awful. She’d do everything she could to destroy us.”
A sick, heavy silence falls over us. My heart pounds painfully in my chest as I stare at the man sitting across from me.
“She hardly kn—knows—you.” I catch myself before I used the wrong tense. We’ve yet to establish I know Sozi’s dead.
Sozi might have been a lot of things, but declaring her love for someone she hardly knew? Even Lucinda didn’t do that. She’d have played a longer game, not come off blatantly psychotic.
“That bottle of wine and the thank you note from ‘M’?” Will says. “That was Sozi. I suspected it then, but I didn’t have proof. She also admitted to working hard to make you think Mara was obsessed with me. I kept wondering why you were so fixated on that, Camille ... it made no sense. Sure she flirted with me at a party, but other than a few conversations in the driveway and having them over a couple of times, she was only ever neighborly.”
Framing those interactions through a new lens, Will is right.
But it doesn’t necessarily mean he’s being honest.
If Mara and Will were in on this together, this would be the perfect way to make Sozi out to be the bad guy, to take the heat off them.
“Why do you think I was so concerned about the security cameras?” he asks. “I knew she was coming around here, doing God knows what.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? You knew we were friends. This makes no sense.”
