I Don't Forgive You

by Aggie Blum Thompson

  I scroll down to see if anyone has posted pictures from Daisy’s party that show me with Rob. But the only other recent post is from someone named Julie who wants everyone to be really, really careful because she just spotted a fox in her backyard.

  I shut the page. It feels like a tsunami of speculation and gossip threatening to overtake me. I make a note to myself to take a digital detox for a day or two until this whole thing subsides. I know intellectually that what happened to me at the party and Rob’s death are not related. But I’m pretty sure that police won’t see it that way. And I can imagine what the neighborhood gossip mill would make of it all. The accusations would be flying. I don’t want to put myself and my family through all that. I had wanted to pretend the whole thing at Daisy’s party never happened. And that was before Rob Avery was killed. The feeling is even stronger now. The last thing I want is to get sucked into a murder investigation.

  Still, I have an itch in the back of my brain that begs to be scratched—why did Rob Avery call me Sexy Lexi? I go to bed trying to make peace with the fact that I may never know.

  * * *

  Monday morning starts off well when I find parking close to work. The Mike Chau Studio occupies the second floor of a building on H Street that houses an artisanal falafel shop. Our neighbors are a café that specializes in cold-pour coffee and a medical marijuana dispensary. When I come in, Mike is sitting at his desk tapping at his computer at a speed that would have wowed my ninth-grade typing teacher. He looks up and grins.

  “Hey, Allie. Good weekend?” Mike is the same age, but unlike me, he’s almost aggressively hip. He has the black, shaggy hair of an indie rocker, and colorful full-sleeve tattoos, with more characters and story lines than Game of Thrones. But I realized early on that he’s not as laid-back as he pretends. He wouldn’t have been able to start his own successful photography studio before the age of thirty if he were.

  “Weekend was great. You?” I don’t want Mike thinking there is anything in my personal life that would interfere with my job. I’m still on probation for the first ninety days of employment. Besides, work has always been a refuge for me, and the last thing I want to do is dwell on the weekend’s drama.

  The studio takes up the whole second floor, with the back half divided into two enclosed rooms for shoots. The front room is a combination office and waiting area, replete with knockoff mid-century furniture and exposed pipes. What it lacks in privacy, Mike likes to joke, it makes up for in style.

  I spend the morning editing and pop out to pick up lunch—a dry falafel from Yael’s Kebab House. I am back at my desk and wiping the crumbs off my face when Valerie Simmons’s assistant calls.

  “Valerie loves your work—very natural and spontaneous. You really managed to capture Marcel’s warmth.” Congressman Parks had been an easy shoot. He had that politician’s gift of being able to light up from the inside on cue.

  We talk for a few minutes about her boss’s desire to showcase a softer side for her upcoming memoir, while still maintaining gravitas. I assure her I know how to do this.

  “This all sounds very promising,” she answers and says she’ll touch base with me later in the week to set up an appointment. After we hang up, I jump up and fist pump the air.

  “Good news?” Mike asks from across the room.

  “Looks like I may have the Valerie Simmons job. I’m talking details with her on Monday, but I think we’ve got it.”

  Mike leans back, putting his hands behind his head to reveal matching orange snakes that wrap around the undersides of his well-formed biceps and disappear under his white T-shirt. “Nice. Very nice.”

  A flicker of something crosses his face. Jealousy? Irritation? Technically, jobs funnel through Mike and he assigns them. I doubt that he is annoyed that I pursued Valerie Simmons on my own—it would be a feather in the studio’s cap to have someone of her caliber as a client. Maybe he suspects that I plan to build up a client base and leave.

  I decide I’ll worry about that another day and just enjoy the win.

  My high spirits last the rest of the day and all the way home despite miserable traffic. But they dissipate as I pull up to my house after work, when I find a dark sedan parked in front of our walkway.

  One of the unspoken laws of suburbia is you don’t park right in front of someone else’s house, much less block their walkway. I learned this the hard way the first week after we moved in, when I parked in front of Heather’s house. I received a little note card with sunflowers on it and a message about parking etiquette.

  As I pass by the car on my way to the front door, I peer inside. My stomach dips a little when I spot a radio.

  It’s an unmarked police car.

  13

  “There she is,” Susan says as I rush through the back door into the mudroom. “I was just telling the detectives that you would be home any minute.”

  “What detectives?” I turn to see a boyish-looking man in an ill-fitting suit behind me. How had I missed him when I first came in?

  “Hi,” I say. “Can I help you?”

  “Ma’am,” he says, handing me a business card. “Detective Brian Katz of the Montgomery County Police.” He doesn’t look old enough to drive, much less carry a gun and arrest people.

  “What’s going on?” I ask. But inside, I know exactly why these detectives are in my kitchen: they’ve come to question me about Rob Avery.

  Cole runs in and throws his arms around my legs, almost sending me toppling. “Yay, you’re home. Now we can do the family tree. I need photographs of Sharon and Aunt Caitlin and Aunt Krystle and everyone.”

  Just then, a stout woman with dark skin and salt-and-pepper hair emerges from the bathroom. She strides toward me, wiping her wet hands on her blue pants.

  “Detective Stephanie Lopez.” She takes my hand and squeezes it a bit too hard, telegraphing the message that she is not to be toyed with. She gives Detective Katz a stern nod. “Ready?”

  He nods back like a well-trained dog.

  “What is this about?” I ask.

  Detective Lopez glances at Cole, her nostrils flare, and I know at once that she is childless. She looks from me to Susan and then back to me. “Is there somewhere we can talk?” Detective Lopez asks. “Privately?”

  Cole squeezes my thighs harder. “Mommy, you promised. This is due soon.”

  “I can stay a bit longer,” Susan offers. Today, her earrings are dangling orange popsicles. “If that would help.”

  “Would you? You’re a godsend.” Susan has been picking up Cole from school and watching him until I get home from work since we moved here. I don’t know what I would do without her.

  “No!” Cole shouts. “I want you to make the family tree.”

  Susan bends down. “Cole, how would you like to walk to my house and feed Marnie? It’s her dinnertime. And I have some poster board you can use for the family tree. It’s neon green.”

  Cole narrows his eyes, looking for the trick. But he loves Marnie and will do almost anything to spend time with the little white dog. He looks up at me. “And then we’ll do the family tree, Mommy?”

  “Of course. Thank you, Susan.” I send a little thanks heavenward that I managed to find a babysitter who keeps neon poster board in stock.

  The detectives follow me into our living room. I can feel their eyes boring into the back of my head. As soon as we are in the living room, I regret coming in, too, and I’m sure it shows. The furnishings have been passed down to us from Mark’s mom, and they are not my taste at all. I sit in one of two wingbacks that overlook the street through a bay window and point to the couch. Detective Lopez takes a seat, but the younger Detective Katz wanders over to the bookshelf and starts examining family photographs, to my consternation.

  Lopez sits across from me, legs spread wide, and leans forward as if she’s ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice. A large black gun sits askew on her hip, revealed by her open jacket. I wonder if that’s on purpose, letting me see her weapon. H
er wide face is makeup-free, ageless in the way that women who refuse to play the appearance game can be. She could be anywhere from thirty-five to fifty.

  “How can I help you?” She glances at my hands. I realize I’ve been twisting the edges of my long cardigan. I drop my hands flat on my lap.

  She hands me a business card exactly like the one Detective Katz gave me, only with her own name on it, and then takes out a small spiral notebook and flips it open.

  “We are investigating a homicide that occurred in the five hundred block of Wentworth early Sunday morning.”

  I swallow hard. “Yes, I heard about it. It’s awful.”

  “Were you awake between the hours of midnight and 6:00 a.m. on Sunday, Ms. Ross?”

  “No, I was sleeping.” Then I remember. “Actually, I did get up around five.”

  “So you were awake. Did you leave the house?”

  “No.”

  “Not to get the paper, let the dog out?”

  “We don’t have a dog.”

  She asks about my routine, then about Mark’s, and about whether we have any security cameras that might offer footage. She wants to know if I’ve noticed anyone suspicious around, any work people who looked out of place in the past few weeks. I feel as relaxed as I can being questioned by a homicide detective when she begins asking about the alley in the back of the house.

  “Your house backs up to an alley,” she says without missing a beat. “As does the property on which the crime occurred. Have you ever walked down that alley?”

  “Sure. It’s the quickest way to get to the metro station at Friendship Heights.” The defensive note in my voice makes me cringe. I have a right to walk down the alley behind my house.

  “How often do you walk it?”

  “I don’t know. Once a week? Mark, my husband, walks it every day on his commute.”

  She jots something down on her pad.

  “A lot of people in this neighborhood used that alley,” I say. “Kids, people walking their dogs.”

  “When is the last time you used the alley?”

  I let out a throaty laugh. “I don’t know.”

  “Think, Ms. Ross.”

  “Umm, last Thursday? Walking Cole home from a playdate?”

  “Have you ever stopped at the Avery residence?”

  “Of course not. I didn’t even know he lived there.” I shift in my chair, feeling restless. “We just moved here a few months ago.”

  “But you knew Robert Avery.”

  I pause, unsure if this is a question. “No,” I say. “I didn’t know him.”

  “I see.” But what does she see? Her face is impossible to read. The only sign of reaction is two deep grooves between her eyebrows. “You’re telling us that you did not know Robert Avery?”

  I shake my head.

  She takes out her phone and pokes at it so loudly I can hear her finger hitting the glass. A look of recognition crosses her face, and she turns the screen to me. “Can you tell me a little about this photograph?”

  I take her phone from her and examine the picture on the screen. It was taken in Daisy’s kitchen on the night of the party. In the center of the photo, two women grin into the camera. But Rob and I are visible in the background. Zooming in on us, we are a portrait of intimacy—our heads so close, they almost touch.

  Blood rushes to my head. I feel dizzy. How can I explain this photo? “Where did you get this?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say, Ms. Ross. Can you describe the circumstances behind this photo?”

  “There are no circumstances.” I hand her phone back to her, trying to keep my hand from shaking as I do so. “We were at the same party. That’s all.”

  “You look like you’re engaged in intimate conversation here.”

  “Conversation? Yes. Intimate? No. People have conversations at parties.”

  “So you did, in fact, know Robert Avery.”

  “Well, I met him that night.” I pause. It feels like a trick question. The old “Have you stopped beating your wife?” If you answer yes, you are admitting to previously beating your wife. If you answer no—well, then, you are still beating her.

  “I see.”

  “Literally thirty minutes before this picture was taken.” Sweat has begun to seep out from under my arms and bra line. I forgot that this room is the warmest in the house, and I debate taking off my cardigan. I don’t want her to see my sweat stains, because I don’t want her to know how nervous this whole conversation is making me.

  “And you never had any communication with Mr. Avery before the night this photo was taken, either via text or email or some kind of phone application?”

  “Phone application?” I swallow the lump in my throat. I know exactly what she means.

  “An app, like Instagram or Tinder.”

  Just hearing that word makes my stomach curl. Stay off Tinder. “No.”

  From his spot in the corner, Detective Katz clears his throat. Both Detective Lopez and I turn to him.

  “Nice picture,” he says, tilting a framed photo of Mark and me at the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco. “How long have you and your husband been married?”

  “Five years.” I wonder if he is thinking of Cole and doing the math to figure out that our son was conceived out of wedlock.

  “Marriage is tough these days,” he says. “A lot of temptation.”

  “Half of all marriages end in divorce,” Detective Lopez says. It takes a millisecond for me to realize that they have shifted into sympathetic, marriage counseling mode. They think I’m going to confess to sleeping with Rob Avery.

  “Maybe,” I say in as deliberate and calm a voice as I can manage. “But I still didn’t know who Rob Avery was before I met him at this party. In fact, I didn’t even know his last name until I saw the news yesterday.”

  The two detectives exchange a glance, and that silent look does more to scare me than anything they’ve said so far. I hear the back door open, and a few seconds later, Mark calls out from the kitchen, “Hello! Anyone home?”

  “In here,” I call back in a shaky voice. I stand up, wiping my sweaty palms on my jeans. “That’s my husband. You should go now.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see Leah and Daisy across the street, standing at the curb, talking to Heather. They are all dressed in black yoga pants and colorful fleeces. I wonder if they have spoken to the police. Could Leah have said something about what I told her, about Rob attacking me in the bathroom?

  Detective Lopez stands, snapping her little notebook shut. “If there’s anything you remember, or anything you want to tell us, I strongly encourage you to reach out. Secrets have a way of outing, Ms. Ross. Especially in a murder investigation. In my experience, it’s better to just come clean in the beginning.”

  “Come clean? What’s this about?”

  We all turn to see Mark at the doorway to the room, a plastic-wrapped bouquet of grocery store mums hanging by his side.

  His eyes zip from me to the detectives and back to me again. “What’s going on?”

  Lopez pockets her notebook and pivots toward Mark.

  “Detective Lopez, Montgomery County Police. This is Detective Katz.” She jerks her head in the other detective’s direction. “We are canvassing the neighborhood in regard to Sunday’s homicide. Do you have a minute, Mr. Ross?”

  “Actually, I don’t.”

  A slight wave of surprise crosses the detective’s face, and I love Mark for standing up to her. He’s a lawyer, albeit an arbitration lawyer, but he knows his rights.

  “Then I’ll leave you a card, and we can arrange another time to talk.”

  “Fine.” His voice is crisp and officious.

  An awkward silence ensues until Mark steps back and gestures with his arm toward the front door. “Let me show you out.”

  Mark and I trail them to the front. As they head down the walkway to the unmarked car, he puts a hand on my shoulder and squeezes. As soon as they drive off, Daisy, Leah, and Heather turn and smil
e at us, all three waving in unison.

  14

  Mark doesn’t mention the police visit during dinner. I am unsure if he is avoiding the topic because Cole is there or if he really doesn’t think it’s a big deal. Instead, I tell him about the potential Valerie Simmons shoot, but I am unable to tap into the excitement I felt earlier.

  The visit from the police has infused me with anxiety.

  After dinner, Cole runs upstairs, and Mark and I get a moment alone while clearing the table.

  “I’m freaking out about that visit,” I say, passing him a stack of dirty plates. “Those detectives, especially the woman—”

  “Lopez. Detective Lopez.” Mark puts down the soapy sponge and focuses on me.

  “Right. Detective Lopez. She was so suspicious.”

  “She was certainly very aggressive.”

  “Like she thought I actually was involved somehow.”

  “I’m not sure you should read too much into it, honey.” He walks around the island and wraps his arms around me. “They’re just doing their job. To a cop, everyone looks like a suspect.”

  In his arms, some of the tension I have been holding begins to melt. I lean my cheek against the cool poplin of his dress shirt, inhale his scent. “I guess so. I just got a weird feeling.”

  He pulls back a little. “I saw Trip Gordon. You know, Daisy’s husband? On the metro. He said the police were at their house, too, if that makes you feel any better. I’m sure they’re questioning everyone who had any contact with this guy.”

  “You’re right. It’s probably just routine.” But it doesn’t make me feel any better. It makes me feel like a noose is tightening around my throat.

  * * *

  Tuesday at work is uneventful. I take advantage of downtime at lunch to finish the last chapters of Disheveled for book club. After dinner, I leave Mark to give Cole his bath and head across the street.

  At Leah’s, Dustin answers the door when I knock, clutching his quivering chihuahua.

  “Hi, Dustin,” I say. “Is this your new pup?”

  He tilts his long head, his eyes almost hidden by a swoop of thick, black hair. “Wozniak.” Wozniak shivers at the sound of his name, his eyes bugging in different directions.