Here She Lies

conversation with a woman dressed like a hooker — no, it was a man dressed like a woman dressed like a hooker. I kept walking, grateful for the constant shafts of artificial light against which darkness failed to assert itself. Almost inevitably as I walked, pulling my suitcase, I thought about Zara Moklas. How she had looked like me and Julie; how easy it would have been for anyone to mistake her for us in the dark. And then something really disturbing occurred to me: Could Bobby have gone that far in his delusion about Julie? Could he have tried to kill her, coming upon Zara instead? Had he thought that if Julie was gone everything would just stop and I would come home? That I would be heartbroken and run back to him?
    Could he possibly be guilty of Zara’s murder after all?
    I walked faster now. The red-and-white PARKING GARAGE sign was visible down the block. My suitcase’s wheels made a racket when I broke into a jog. The streets felt unsafe to me now and I wanted to be inside the garage’s office, in the warmth, paying (with Julie’s card) and making my way back to safety... to my sister... to my baby girl.
    When I turned into the garage the smell of gas fumes was familiar and even a little reassuring and Ifelt a warm rush of relief. But then my insides jumped. There was Julie’s car, engine running, and there, standing next to it, was Bobby.
    “Get in, Annie.”
    I looked around. I didn’t see an attendant anywhere.
    “Please get into the car.”
    “I can’t. You said so yourself: the bond says I can’t leave the state.”
    “I spoke with Liz about Lexy and how we can’t reach Julie, and she made a call. The judge agreed to modify your bond so you can travel to Massachusetts; he’ll have the modification filed first thing in the morning. You just have to check in with the Great Barrington police when we get there. Come on, get in. We’re wasting time.”
    His tone was clear: he wanted to get to Lexy (and so did I! So did I! ) because she was alone with my sister, whom he now openly distrusted. I knew he was overreacting; Lexy was safe and sound with Julie, who loved my little baby almost as much as I did. It was Bobby I was worried about now. I hadn’t realized his thinking about Julie had grown so extreme. The gas fumes inside the garage were strong and I felt a little queasy. My body wanted to get into the car, to hurry back to Lexy, but only because I missed her. I just wasn’t sure about going with him. I had to say what I was thinking, to find out.
    “Did you kill Zara?” I asked.
    “Are you serious?”
    “I’ve never actually asked you, so will you just tell me?”
    “No,” he said.
    “This is really it, Bobby. Everything’s getting said tonight, so just tell me.”
    “I said no.”
    And then I realized he had never refused to answer the question; he had answered it now twice.
    He reached into the car to pop the trunk, then took my suitcase and put it in. Without deciding anything, I got into the passenger side, pulled the door shut and buckled up. Bobby got in next to me and drove us out of the garage and through the city streets to the West Side Highway. He was a fast, able driver and soon we were in the outer fringe of suburbia where it mingled with the last brick high-rises of the Bronx. We settled into the dark, the green, the quiet and the hum of the car on the road.
    We didn’t speak. The things we had said to each other tonight still burned a hole between us, but it hardly seemed to matter; our accusations were minor compared with the other seismic currents that had stunned us today. We could apologize to each other later (if we wanted to), but in my exhaustion I couldn’t see how we would overcome the mystery of this woman’s murder in the new context of my identity theft, my arrest, his accusations about Julie. My body sank into the leather cushions, exhausted, and my mind ground away at all the fresh, grisly problems.
    As we drove north Julie’s GPS system electronically illustrated our progress; we were a little red dot that shivered forward on a jagged blue line. The image was strangely reassuring to me. Between the system’s interactive mapping and Bobby’s speed and precision as a driver, we would reach the house quickly. Bobbyhad once told me that when we were driving together and I was at the wheel, which was rare, he never felt he could close his eyes in case I veered off in the wrong direction or, worse, didn’t notice a potential accident, and so he