Someone to watch over me

Crash.“
    “You didn’t care?“
    “I cared horribly at first. It was such a betrayal of my trust. I’d really loved him when we married, and for a long time after. But I was smarter and harder-working than he was, and he didn’t like it. He wanted women he had no obligation to. Women who were prettier and more docile than I, which is almost anyone. Women who have lots of time on their hands to pamper a man, make fancy desserts, wear nightgowns I’d look silly in, as tall and angular as I am.”
    Howard looked down at her work-toughened hands for a moment, wondering how honest she could be if pressed harder. He said, “I admit I’ve heard gossip about your husband and other women. But do you have proof of it? Did you ever follow him to find out for sure?”
    Roxanne leaned back and gave him a half-amused look. “When a man can’t stand to stay home, has good old school friends in other towns he visits, and his wife is never invited along or even introduced to them, a wife knows. It’s not male friends or couples in spite of what he pretends when he comes home smelling of perfume. It’s a woman or a string of women he’s spending his time with.“
    “Did you ever confront him over this? Did you ask who he was really visiting?”
    She sat back up, very straight. “A couple of times. But he lied. Indignantly. He was a very bad liar. He gave himself away with his pretended outrage.”
    Howard looked her straight in the eye. “Why didn’t you divorce him?“
    “I’ve never talked about this to anyone. And if I weren’t a suspect I wouldn’t be telling you, of all people. I didn’t divorce him because nobody in my family has ever been divorced. I’d have lost some of my family and friends’ respect. Even my dead relatives would have haunted me,“ she added with a fleeting smile.
    She stood up slowly, preparing to finish this conversation and dismiss him.
    “But it was mainly because I had a memory of him when he was young and I believed he was honorable. I still think he was once a good man. He was a good father. He was once charming and funny. Maybe he still was with other people, for all I know. I kept hoping that, when things got better, he might turn back into the man I married.”
    She crossed her well-tanned arms in a defensive way.
    “I wasn’t really stupid enough to believe it, but I wanted to.”
    Howard stood as well. “I have only one more question for you today. If you’ve known all along how much he’d betrayed you, why did you react as you did when I told you he was dead?”
    She looked down for a moment and said softly, “Because once or twice I’d wished that he’d run out on us, as so many other men have. And I was afraid God had listened to me at the wrong time and taken it too far.”
    Fearing she might cry, Walker fumbled for a handkerchief, but she looked up at him, perfectly dry-eyed.
    “I’ve never opened my heart and told anyone this. And I hope you don’t need to tell anyone else my secret humiliations. But now you know, and I hope to heaven that you’ll leave us alone to get on with our lives in peace.“
    “I can’t promise that.”
    Her expression hardened. “All I can say is that I didn’t kill my husband. I swear this on my mother’s grave. And I don’t know who did. I’m not sure I ever want to know. But I’ve told you the truth. There are certainly lots of other people who might have wanted him dead. Probably the husbands of some of his women. Now, will you please leave?”
    Howard nodded, considered shaking her hand and rejected the idea, and went back to the car. Ralph was taking a nap and barely stirred when he started the engine.
    He believed she’d told the truth. Maybe not the whole truth, but an awful lot of her own pain had been laid in his hands. She really was a remarkably strong-minded, sensible woman. He could genuinely admire her, but he wasn’t sure every man in town would enjoy being married to someone like her. If a man didn’t have the ambition, common sense, and honesty of a woman like Mrs. Anderson, marriage with her might be absolute hell.

    Jack Summer had hooked himself up with a contingent of veterans who were headed for New York City. Those on foot were invited to ride in the automobiles and farm carts of the others. At least he still had his train ticket home, thank goodness. He would have had to walk or hitch rides clear to Voorburg if he hadn’t rescued his suitcase. He was dirty, exhausted, deeply upset, and