They also found a basket of papers in his trunk, printed emails and scribbled notes and lists, all of them painting the picture of a man obsessed, not with finding Sabine, but with locating me. All of a sudden, my pleas of self-defense were looking more and more credible, my reasons for possessing the fake ID and firearms perfectly reasonable. The Atlanta police let me go, but not without a hefty fine. One they offered to waive if I gave them the name of the person who supplied such a fine counterfeit Georgia driver’s license. I paid the hefty fine.
But the whole time I was sitting there, sweating buckets behind the locked metal door of an interrogation room downtown, I kept waiting for someone to charge me with theft. To bring up the money that went missing from Charlene’s desk drawer, to ask me if I took it. But no one ever did. These past four months, I’ve given a lot of thought as to why the Reverend didn’t turn me in. Maybe Martina didn’t show him the note I wrote her, or maybe he really did mean all those sermons he preached about forgiveness and helping others in need. I hope that one day I’ll work up the courage to ask.
The lady next to me nudges me with an elbow, then drops a basket on my lap, a square wicker container filled with crumpled bills and folded checks. I retrieve the envelope from my bag and drop it in. Inside is a cashier’s check for the two thousand dollars I liberated from Charlene’s drawer, plus 20 percent interest. I would have given more, but death is expensive, and I’m still waiting for Marcus’s benefits to kick in. Chief Eubanks gave me everything I’d be entitled to if Marcus had died in the line of duty—a generous gesture I probably don’t deserve. Any day now, I should be receiving a hefty lump sum, a full pension and restitution for the funeral expenses I paid from our savings.
But Chief Eubanks ended up giving me something even better. When I sat at his desk and told him the whole, sordid story, he held my hand between both of his and said the words my own husband couldn’t. He told me he was sorry, both for what Marcus did and what the department didn’t, and my heart broke right then and there. If I had gone to Chief all those months ago, maybe Marcus would still be alive. In jail, but alive. But the past seven years had taught me to trust no one, not even a cop. Especially not a cop. Of all the reasons I have to resent Marcus, that is the one I think of most. He robbed me of the ability to trust in others, made me forget so many of them come from a place of kindness.
I’m not really the praying kind, but this seems as good a place as any to say one. I pray for Ingrid, who can barely stop crying long enough to tell her sister’s story to anyone who will listen, including a true crime writer from Netflix for a six-figure sum. I pray for Trevor, who’s packed up and followed his family to Salt Lake City, the only way he could talk his wife into shared custody. I pray for Jeffrey, who’s trapped in a house he can’t sell, living off money he didn’t earn in a town that wants nothing to do with him. He’s a hermit, a recluse, the town pariah, a creep who slept with Mandy while his wife decomposed in a pond fifty miles away. The only time he ever goes outside is to chase vandals off his lawn.
But mostly, I pray for Sabine. That she knew she was loved, that Marcus didn’t make her suffer for long. That wherever she is, she’s found peace.
The Reverend starts to wrap up the sermon, and I scoot past my neighbors and out of the row. I’ve done what I came here to do, and now it’s time to go.
“Not every question has an answer,” he says as I’m climbing the stairs. “Not every problem has a solution. But if you’re open for it, there is grace in uncertainty.”
Grace in uncertainty.
The words stick my sneakers to the carpet, and I turn. The Reverend’s head is tipped back, his face raised to mine, and my skin prickles. I wonder if he recognizes me, if he can see my face this far away, all the way on the very top step. I study his expression in the LED screens, and I think I see recognition.
He smiles and lifts his arms on either side of his body like wings. “Uncertainty leaves us open to doubt, yes, but it also opens us up to splendor and joy and wondrous surprise. To the beauty of hope. Nothing is certain, nothing is known, but it is in those moments of our greatest uncertainty that miracles happen.”
These past four months, I’ve shed a shitload of tears. More than I’d like to think about. But I stand here, in the middle of the church aisle and bawl, and for the first time I don’t feel ashamed of my tears or wipe them away with a sleeve. I let them fall because these are the good kind of tears. The—well, if not happy kind, at least the everything’s-going-to-be-okay kind. I tell myself the Reverend is right. There is grace in uncertainty, and everything’s going to be okay.
Down in the pit, the band starts up a melody, and the notes chase me up the stairs and out the doors, into the bright October sunshine. Autumn makes Atlanta a much more pleasant place, the air dry and crisp and glorious under a bright blue sky. I tilt my face to the sun, letting the rays warm my skin. Maybe this is why people come to church, to feel lighter, to relinquish their fears and be calm, if only for an hour.
I check my watch. Three more hours until a plane carries me back to Pine Bluff, where I will pack up the house and leave for... Somewhere. I haven’t decided yet. But after what happened on that rooftop, I have some karma to set right, and I plan to start here.
I pull out my phone and thumb in the number I memorized on the banks of the Chattahoochee. She may be a thief, but who am I to judge? I know better than anyone that people will do all sorts of things in order to survive.
The line connects, and I recognize the husky hello, that twinge of Spanish inflection she tries so hard to hide.
“Hello, Martina? It’s me. Emma Durand.”
* * *
ISBN-13: 9781488045356
Dear Wife
Copyright © 2019 by Kimberle S. Belle Books, LLC
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Dear Wife Page 28