Here She Lies

Had anyone heard her scream? Or was her death silent, her final sound muted by the violent severance of her vocal cords?
    I was startled by a shuffle emanating from the monitor, which soon began to issue the cranky sobs of Lexy waking. Creak of a hallway door opening, thud of footsteps, clank of the crib’s side lowering.
    “Shh, honey.” Bobby’s disembodied voice floated from the monitor. “Daddy’s here.”
    I folded the fax into eighths, slipped it into my pants pocket and went through glass-paned French doors that led directly into the big living room, which I had come to think of as Sundance East. Through a front window I saw Detective Lazare drive away in a silver car. The maroon car sat parked to the left of the house under a leafy tree with an enormous bark-striated trunk that seemed to twist out of the earth. There was a man in the driver’s seat, but I couldn’t see his face or any detail. He was very still.
    Halfway up the living room staircase on my way to find Bobby, I met him on his way down, holding Lexy. He was wearing jeans and a burnt-orange T-shirt; he must have packed himself a bag before leaving homeyesterday. His hair was wet — he had showered — but he was unshaven. When Lexy saw me she dove in my direction and I had to reposition myself on the stairs to simultaneously catch her and keep my balance. She immediately rooted for my chest. Bobby followed us down the stairs and stood in front of the couch while I settled in to nurse our baby.
    “Detective Lazare’s a real piece of work,” I said, once Lexy was latched on. I was still smarting from our conversation, the therapist bit. If I ever wanted to talk. I always wanted to talk — but to him?
    “Yup.” Bobby nodded. “That he is.”
    “But I don’t think he really suspects you of anything, Bobby. I think he’s maybe, well, a little misguided.”
    “There never did seem to be a question of arresting me.” Bobby’s hand nestled in a pants pocket, fiddling with something. “He’s trying to figure things out, I guess. There was just a lot of talking. Though he did take a sample of my saliva.”
    “Saliva?” But even as I said it, I knew why: that was one way the police now chronicled DNA.
    “I don’t think it meant that much. It seemed pretty routine, actually, like they do it all the time. It would be stranger if he didn’t take all this seriously.”
    “That’s true,” I agreed. But a DNA sample ? “By the way, he’s got a cop sitting outside in his car, keeping watch, and I admit it’s a relief.”
    Bobby crossed the room to look out the window, then came over to sit with me on the couch.
    “I heard you got pretty upset last night when youfound Zara out front,” I said. “It must have been awful.”
    “I rushed to get here. I needed to talk to you, Annie. I should have known you’d make a few stops and probably get—”
    “Lost.” He knew me. “Plus I took a dinner break.”
    “But I’m glad you didn’t get here first,” he said, “because if you’d seen what I saw when I pulled up and found her lying there...” He shook his head. Ocean eyes dulled by a very bad night.
    “What did you need to talk to me about?” Say it: Lovyluv. Or better yet, give her a real name.
    “I was hoping something would come to me, some way to convince you to come home. I jumped on the first plane out.”
    “And?” Meaning: Tell. Me. The. Truth. Now. And. I. Will. Come. Home. With. You. How plain could I make it? I had already practically drawn him a road map. The old frustration welled up inside me and I turned away from him and looked down at our baby. She must have sensed my attention because she snapped her mouth off my nipple and blazed me with her best smile. I smiled back.
    “When I saw you dead, Annie, I freaked. I mean freaked.”
    Hearing him say that sent a chill up my spine. “But it wasn’t me.”
    “The time it took me to realize that was the longest minute of my life.”
    The longest minute of my life: a cliché. I wanted more from my husband. I wanted him to peel back the surface of what was happening between us, to dig.
    “But why would someone kill me?”
    “That’s what I spent half the night explaining to the detective,” Bobby said. “No one would, especially not me. I wasn’t angry at you when you left. I was upset. I was frustrated — but not angry.”
    He spoke with such intensity that I was drawn into his emotions, wave by wave. He seemed helpless, marooned on an island of