Where We Went Wrong

by Andi Holloway

  “As in, on the night of the attack,” she says. “When did you first realize your house had been broken into?” Her jumping-off point reinforces that I have made a solid choice in hiring her. The first wrong wasn’t mine. Matthew did break in. Rather, he let himself in through a ground floor window I discovered had been left unlocked only after the fact.

  “In the middle of the night, I was asleep in the guest room.”

  “Is it usual for you to sleep in the guest room?” Karen asks flatly.

  I could take this opportunity to tell her what a sham our marriage is and what an awful husband you are, but I don’t, because I don’t want Matthew’s death to be perceived as having been the result of spite. “Usual? No. Bert, my husband, was away, and I had painted our bedroom earlier that day.” A change in décor that might well have saved my life. Matthew had expected one or both of us to be in the master suite, which granted me the element of surprise. “I slept in the spare room because of the fumes.” Or at a hotel, if you believe my statement to the police, which will, undoubtedly, prove either premeditation or a cover-up in court. “I heard footsteps coming up the stairs, and was sure we had been broken into by an intruder.”

  “You tried to identify this person?” Karen asks.

  Of course, I have to say I did, though I can’t remember doing so for sure. “Absolutely, I called out for Bert, figuring maybe his signing had been cancelled and he came home. It’s happened before, when book orders are lost or something’s not on the calendar.”

  “Your husband is an author?”

  I stop short of saying that I am, too, because that ship has sailed. “He is.” Petty as it might be, I’m almost pleased that Karen doesn’t recognize you as a bestseller. She must not be much of a reader, or maybe she reads another genre. I can’t blame a woman who defends criminals for a living for not wanting to read crime. “When no one answered, I went to check out the sound.”

  Common sense dictates that anyone in my position would have immediately called nine-one-one, but common sense doesn’t live twenty minutes out from the nearest police station, off any patrol route where I have never, in all the years we’ve lived there, seen a patrolling officer.

  Common sense also didn’t have an affair with a cop.

  “And that’s when you saw someone?”

  “A man,” I say. “Not his face, but the shadow of someone wearing far too many clothes for so hot a night and the silhouette of a gun. And I knew he wasn’t Bert.”

  “You had no idea he was Matthew?”

  After all the years I spent raising him, it seems odd that I either didn’t recognize him, or maybe I did and refuse to acknowledge doing so. I don’t discount anything at this point because I am just not sure. “He never identified himself,” I say. “Never.” I reinforce the point because having an unknown attacker removes motive and bolsters the claim of self-defense. “All I knew is whoever he was, he was armed.”

  The gun since found in my glove compartment is the only piece of corroborating evidence to prove Matthew’s death might have stemmed from self-defense.

  “At what point did you realize he was Matthew?”

  “Not until after.” When it was too late. “I turned on the light, and—” I’m mentally transported to a scene from a slasher film, only this wasn’t corn syrup and red dye. A smudge of red paints the white switch plate. A pool of warm blood seeps into the carpet, the padding, and subfloor. My hands are covered in it. Castoff from the blade spatters the walls and ceiling in every direction, and I think, how am I going to clean this mess?

  If my passion for forensics has taught me anything, it is the inability of this much blood to be erased entirely from anything. Short of a to-the-studs renovation, proof survives. Guilt prevails, and not that any of this has been easy, but continuing this conversation feels near impossible.

  “He was gone,” I say. “I checked his pulse.” Pulse strength weakens, often to the point of being undetectable, I know. I knew this then, too, when a thread of life might have existed, but the blood flowed from multiple stab wounds so quickly that had I called for help, Matthew would have died by the time paramedics arrived.

  “Why didn’t you call nine-one-one?”

  I knew that sooner or later someone would ask. There’s no right thing to say, so I settle on the closest to the truth I can manage. “I was afraid to.” Afraid of questioning, of you and your inevitable reaction, and of being found guilty of things I had been thinking for so long and was unable to admit.

  I wasn’t able to separate my fear of home intrusion from my fear of Matthew and yes, my resentment of him, which is a latent but powerful motive. People have been legally railroaded for less.

  Refusing to call for help was as much a conscious decision as a practical one. I couldn’t resurrect Matthew, but foolishly, and for only a fleeting moment, I believed I might be able to save myself.

  Women are wired to fix messes. Once I realized what I had done, I began formulating a plan to make it look as if, though it happened, it hadn’t happened in our home. I distanced myself from the act of murder, reducing Matthew to a problem in need of solving. I washed the walls and floors. I scrubbed anything and everything between the landing and the garage, enduring the diluted bleach smell on my hands for days afterward. I wrapped Matthew in a tarp and dragged him to the trunk. I ground the blade of the knife on the bench grinder you use to sharpen the mower blades, bleached it, and eventually discarded it. I wore gloves the entire time, which I burned, along with my clothing, in our outdoor fire pit.

  “You destroyed evidence,” Karen says.

  In legal terms, I guess I did, and if all I’m found guilty of is obstructing justice, I’ll be a lucky woman. I nod. “In a panic, yes, and then I moved Matthew to the park”—“Matthew,” not “the corpse” or “the body,” though I have thought of him as both—“because he loved it there, and I wanted him found. I didn’t mean to do what I did. What I had to do.” I hint at an emotional connection I can only say existed in hindsight. We were close once, Matthew and I. At least, that’s what I tell myself. I need to believe all the time and effort I put in, the sacrifices I made for him, weren’t for nothing.

  But if I’m honest, the park wasn’t my first choice. If the police have checked behind our house, they’ll have found a shovel and the disturbed dirt that represents my futile attempt at digging. The run of heat had dried the ground to the point that it was like cement. A more fit person, or one with proper equipment, might have fared better, but grave digging, particularly at this time of year, isn’t for amateurs.

  It would have been best if Matthew had simply gone missing. Hannah’s baby would have been motive for him to hide. Men run from fatherhood all the time, but I had no idea who she was, that she was pregnant, or what a liar you are. I couldn’t hide Matthew’s body, so I left it in plain sight because we seemed the least likely suspects. Because insurance wouldn’t have paid out otherwise, though I swear I forgot about that policy. Had I known the truth, I would have staged his body, planted evidence, and made sure you were found guilty.

  That I didn’t even try is my biggest regret. I detail for Karen, the best I can, the ensuing struggle that leaves me in need of counsel. Everything happened within seconds, in a sort of blur, and from which I can only recall highlights I won’t share with my attorney or anyone else unless forced to. We haven’t broached the subject of my testimony, but having read my share of trial transcripts, I don’t expect to take the stand. The guilty rarely do.

  “The next thing I know, I’m fighting for my life.” This is more or less true, though in my vague recollection, I might have drawn first blood. “I stabbed him. I don’t know how many times.” I lie because twelve sounds like too many. “As many as it took to get him to stop fighting back.”

  Karen remains cool even in the face of this confession. She doesn’t act shocked or pass judgment, because all she’s interested in are the facts she might use to eventually free me. “At what point did you manage to get to a
knife?” she asks, and of course I’ve left this detail out.

  I wish I could say I made a beeline to the kitchen, and that the knife used was a weapon of opportunity—a piece of misplaced flatware—but I tell the truth. The knife is a result of years of preparation and paranoia, of enduring conflict and mistrust. “I had it the whole time. I kept it in the nightstand.” And it’s gone, I’ll have to say if she asks where it is. Destroyed and discarded, as any murder weapon might be.

  Karen’s agenda is in line with mine and either sensing my guilt or fearful of it, she leaves this alone. She needs to believe I’m innocent, at least until after I formally plead. “It’s not uncommon for women to feel the need for protection when they’re home alone.” Karen draws on the fear that is a staple of our gender, and I’m relieved, confident in her ability. She knows what to say and when, and of course I felt unsafe. I needed protection, though not because I am a woman or defenseless without you, either of which I wish were true. I wasn’t sleeping with a knife because you were away. I was sleeping with the knife out of habit.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

  One Year Later

  PRISON IS NOTHING IF not a place to think.

  I reflect upon our failures, obsessing over old grudges as if any of them might be the real reason I’m being tried for voluntary manslaughter with a five-to-fifteen-year sentence, for which I expect to serve at least half.

  If our marriage has done nothing else, it has taught me to expect the worst.

  I could say I’m disappointed, that incarceration is the most terrible thing that could have happened to me, but this place offers much for a true-crime writer who is willing to listen. More than anything, it offers the kind of understanding I’ll never get on the outside. I’m not alone in here. Rather, I’m one among several who have allegedly solved their domestic problems through murder.

  Most of these women bear the kind of scars that play well in court. That prove, with their damaged faces, their burnt flesh, and the way their bones never healed quite right, that theirs was a hard-won battle. A fight for survival. My scars lie deeper, unquantifiable, in a place no x-ray or physical examination will find them.

  I’ve had exactly one non-lawyer visitor since turning myself in.

  After months of being on my approved visitor list—and after reading The Perfect Suspect—Deon decided there were things left unsaid between us, most importantly, goodbye.

  If it’s possible for me to be forgiven, Deon will be the one to do it. Whether or not he’ll ever be able to love me again is another story. For his sake, I hope that door is closed.

  After an exhaustive Internal Affairs investigation, and after finally closing Hannah’s long overdue case, Deon transferred to a precinct downstate in pursuit of his own clean slate, which is all any of us are after at this point.

  Hannah delivered a healthy baby boy she calls “Matthew.” She must not believe in omens because that would have been my last choice, though I’ll never get the chance to tell her as much or to warn her of the dangers of bad parenting.

  She and the baby vanished shortly after your latest book release—a flop, regardless of whose standards you measure by—during my trial, when she would have had to corroborate the alibi she has since recanted.

  I might speculate that this had to do with the money I gave her. Money I’ve told you, via your overpriced lawyer, has been spent, but Hannah favors anonymity. Her plan was to disappear all along. I only helped her to do that.

  As for me, the justice system works more slowly than I could have prepared for. I’ve written in here, but longhand doesn’t flow the same as keyboarding, and I find myself frustrated by the lack of a delete button.

  The pages are lined out, too many notes scribbled into the margin, and I wonder if I’ll ever make sense of them when I’m free, which Karen—the woman who doesn’t guarantee outcomes or make promises—has convinced me isn’t only possible but probable.

  She’s subpoenaed Matthew’s mental health records, and even I am shocked by the depth of his hatred for us both. I wasn’t the only resentful one, which factors into my yet-untitled work-in-progress about the second-wife-turned-victim of her husband’s past. A final reworking of The Perfect Suspect, to which your response had been long-overdue divorce papers. You always were jealous. That your faux memoir flopped in light of Hannah’s identity being exposed pre-release—thank you, Deon—only fuels my suspicion that had I focused on my career sooner, you would have been the one taking care of our home.

  I’ve contested the dissolution of our irreparable marriage not because I care to be married to you, but because I’ll be damned if I’m freely giving you another thing after what you’ve taken from me. You’ve ruined my life, Bert, and others’, too, and are to blame for what Matthew did, for what I’ve done, though I can’t admit that to anyone because I need to convince others I am capable of accepting fault.

  Karen stresses the importance of contrition, and I defer to her judgment, but remorse alone won’t save me. I’ve learned from other inmates that what the courts want to see is self-awareness, personal improvement, and acceptance of the things I cannot change. I hope to one day be a better person, but for now I have to think of the future, of how I’m going to support myself when this nightmare finally ends. For now, all I have is this story, and nothing has been more important in my life than how I tell it.

  FROM THE AUTHOR

  THANK YOU, READER, for taking a chance on this book, which represents countless hours of my life, an unimaginable amount of red ink, and more joy and frustration than I could convey here.

  I hope you enjoyed Where We Went Wrong and that you’ll consider taking a moment to write a brief online review. More than being excellent word-of-mouth advertising, reader feedback encourages me to keep writing, and to work that much harder on the next must-read story. Without readers, my words would be lost.

  I can be reached at: AuthorAndiHolloway@gmail.com.

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