John Lescroart - Nothing But The Truth

Suddenly her eyes really flashed. ‘Because there’s things I don’t have to tell anybody, that’s why. Even you, even Dismas. I’ve got a right to a little privacy, Abe, just like you do. How about that?’ She took a few steps away, then stopped abruptly and turned back. ‘And while we’re on questions, I’ve got one for you – what did you come down here for? It wasn’t to check on me and you said it was. Why did you lie to me?’

Glitsky held out his hands. She was right. She was Hardy’s wife, one of his closest friends in her own right, and being in jail didn’t make her a criminal, a suspect, or anyone he had to deal with professionally. She was still the woman who’d cared for his boys for a month after his wife had died. ‘I’m really sorry.’

She relented. A little. Arms still crossed, though. ‘Sorry’s good. Sorry’s a start.’ But she wasn’t giving up on her questions, either. ‘So why did you come down here?’

‘I couldn’t sleep. I thought maybe you could tell me something I didn’t know about Bree. It occurred to me that with everything else going on, nobody’s thought to ask you.’

‘But I don’t know anything about Bree.’

‘You don’t have any ideas about who killed her? Ron didn’t have any?’

‘I’m sure nothing he didn’t already tell the grand jury.’

Glitsky tried to smile. ‘I’m on your side, Frannie. Always. How about if I ask you some questions, to see if they point me toward anybody else?’

Her shoulders slumped, the fatigue showing everywhere. ‘How about if we sit down?’

They’d been at it maybe twenty minutes, Glitsky feeling that he’d barely begun when the guard knocked and the door opened, and Dismas Hardy appeared. ‘Party in Room A,’ he said. But he didn’t look like he was partying, Glitsky thought. More like he’d been through some kind of sleep torture.

Frannie got up and walked to him. Glitsky stood, realizing that his interview was over for tonight. He came around the table. ‘OK you lovebirds. I can take a hint.’

‘Abe, that’s OK, we’re just-’

But he was at the door. ‘I know what you’re doing. Diz, I’ll be in my office for awhile.’ He turned to go, then remembered something. ‘Oh, and Frannie?’

‘Yes?’

He pointed a finger at her. ‘Eat.’

Then they were alone, holding each other. Hardy had come straight from the Airport Hilton, wanting to fill her in. He gave her Ron’s note, which seemed to make almost no impression. And really, he reasoned, why should it? It would have no effect, if any, for days. More than that, though, Frannie was far more concerned with another issue. ‘Before anything else,’ she said, ‘this thing about me and Ron.’

‘OK.’ His breathing had stopped and that was all he could get out.

‘We liked each other, like each other.’ A pause. ‘Maybe a little more than that.’

Hardy tried to keep any hurt or recrimination out of his voice. ‘How much more?’

His wife sighed. ‘I think for a while I was infatuated with him. He seemed to feel the same way about me.’ She read something in his face and let go of his hands. ‘Now you’re going to hate me, aren’t you?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Nothing’s going to make me hate you. I love you.’

She stared at him for another beat. ‘We didn’t…’ She stopped. ‘But he was there , Dismas. He was a friend. He listened. I just want you to understand.’

‘I don’t listen?’

‘Yes. I mean no, you know you don’t. Not about some things. You glaze over – the kids, school life, all those what you call mindless suburban activities. And I don’t even blame you, not really. I know it’s not the most exciting stuff in the world, but it’s my life, and sometimes it’s just horribly lonely and mind-numbing, and then suddenly there was this nice man who didn’t think all of this was tedious to listen to.’

‘So he’d listen, did he, old Ron?’

She nodded, going on. ‘Ron and I, we were just having so many of the same issues with the kids…’

He couldn’t hold it any longer. ‘Wait a minute, Frannie. What about us? I seem to remember we’re doing some of the same things, too – live in the same house, do the kid thing, have friends over, like that. That stuff doesn’t count?’

‘I know, I know, you’re right.’ There was pain in her voice, too, perhaps some faint overtones of the desperation she must have been feeling. ‘But you know how things have changed with us. We’re different. I hope you’re still committed-’

‘Of course I’m still committed. You think I’d be sitting here listening to all this if I wasn’t pretty damn committed?’

‘OK, I know that. But the romance…’ She stopped. They both knew what she was getting at. The romance, and there used to be plenty, had been all but swallowed by the maw of the mundane.

And Hardy knew why. ‘We’re both working now. We work all the time.’

‘Well, whatever the reason, we both know we’re not the way we used to be. There’s whole areas of each other’s lives that we don’t have the time or energy for anymore.’

Hardy brought his hand up to his eyes, all the fatigue of the past hours suddenly weighing in. Everything Frannie was saying was true. Nobody’s lives were the way they used to be. But the accommodation he’d reached was to put it out of his mind. He had his job, making the money. She had hers, the house and the children’s day-to-day activities. They shared the children’s discipline and some organized playtime. They weren’t actually fighting; they were both competent, so there wasn’t much to fight about. This was adulthood and it was often not much fun. So what?

But she evidently had reached another conclusion – she needed something he wasn’t giving her and she’d gone out and found it. ‘What are you thinking?’ she asked. ‘Talk to me.’

‘I’m thinking everybody…’ He started over. ‘I mean, married people… I don’t know.’ He rubbed at his burning eyes. ‘I don’t know.’

‘We all get further apart?’

He shook his head. ‘Maybe. But I’ve been trying to support us all here for the last few years. It takes a little bit of my time. Hell, it takes all my time. You think I’m OK with no leisure in my life? You think I don’t miss it, too, the fun? But what’s the option? Live poor, let the kids starve…?’

‘Nobody’s going to starve, Dismas. It’s not that. You know that.’

‘Actually, I’m not sure that I do know that. It feels like if I stop working, somebody might. The world might end.’

‘But you never talked to me about that, did you? That fear?’ He shrugged and she pressed him. ‘Because you don’t talk about those kinds of things, not anymore.’

He shrugged that off. ‘I never did, Frannie. Nobody wants to hear about that, all those nebulous fears.’

‘Yes they do. And nebulous hopes, too, and little insignificant worries that just need to get aired out, and the occasional dream that’s just a dream, like we used to have all the time. What we were going to do when we got older, when the kids have moved out?’

‘Frannie, you’re talking a decade, minimum. We don’t even know if we’ll be alive in a decade. Why talk about it?’

She folded her arms. ‘That’s exactly what I mean. We don’t know something for sure and therefore it’s not on the Top Forty list of acceptable topics.’

‘But Ron does, is that it? You’ve got hopes and fears you can share with Ron, but not with me?’ He was hurt and mad and starting to swing pretty freely, maybe rock her with a roundhouse. ‘So what kind of dreams did you and Ron share and talk about?’

‘I didn’t have any dreams with Ron, Dismas. I only have dreams with you.’