“How are you holding up?” Dani asked.
“I’m doing okay,” I lied. “How’s Ethan?” Dani’s son, Ethan, had just turned three, and since they lived in Cincinnati, I hadn’t seen the little boy, or Dani, in over six months.
“Oh, girl,” Dani sighed. “He’s driving me bat-shit crazy. He’s into everything. I can’t turn my back for one minute.”
It was always hard for me, listening to Dani complain about how tough it was being a mother, when I would have given anything in the world to be a mother myself. But she was my very best friend, so I always heard her out and ignored my own insecurities.
“I can only imagine,” I said.
“So…do you want to talk about it?”
“About Ryan? I don’t know. There’s not really much to say.”
“Who do you think killed him?”
“Dani, I have no idea. It’s just so random.”
“And you’re lucky you weren’t killed too. My God, I can’t imagine what I’d do if I lost you. Tell you what…I’m going to look at my calendar and find a time to get down there to visit you soon. I know you could use a friend right now. It’ll have to be a weekend when PJ isn’t working, so he can watch Ethan.”
“You know you’re welcome any time, Dani.”
We disconnected the line after saying goodbye. I was relieved to know I had at least one good friend who would stand by me no matter what.
***
Wednesday morning, I flipped the channel over to Channel 18 News, watched, and waited. The story about Ryan was the third of the day, behind a prison escape in New York and a shark attack in North Carolina. They showed a picture of him they must have gotten from his mother. He was smiling at the camera, but I was nowhere to be seen. I thought I recognized it from a picnic at her house earlier in the summer. Then they showed a video clip of our house surrounded by yellow police tape and those blue and red lights reflecting off the white vinyl siding. The reporter explained that the coroner had finally released the cause of death as a large caliber bullet wound to the head. The manner of death? Homicide. Then she said exactly what I had been afraid to hear for days—that police had a suspect in the shooting and that his wife had already been questioned by local police. It wouldn’t take a Mensa member to put two and two together.
It was less than an hour later that Mark Logan called to explain that the firm just couldn’t handle the negative PR right now and that he was sorry but he had to let me go. I wasn’t all that surprised. Logan and Logan was one of the most widely publicized firms in Kentucky and I knew their image was important to them. But that didn’t take the sting out of being let go for political reasons.
I picked up my phone and sent a text to my co-worker, Amy.
Guess you heard I got canned.
She had her read receipts turned on so I could instantly see she had read my text. The little bubbles appeared to show she’d started typing a reply, but then they disappeared. I waited. And waited. No reply ever came. Bad news travels fast, I realized. I knew in that moment I would likely never hear from any of my so-called friends at Logan and Logan again.
Nearly a week after Ryan’s death, on Thursday afternoon, Dave Rogers called to tell me the grand jury had convened and issued a “true bill,” which meant they found sufficient evidence to charge me with the murder of my husband. I had been indicted.
I sank slowly down onto the rose-patterned sofa and dropped the phone into my lap. I could hear Dave saying my name over and over, but I was in such a state of shock it sounded like he was a million miles away and I was in a vacuum where time and space stood still. I had known this might happen—would probably happen—but knowing something and experiencing them are two totally different things.
Mom walked into the room and saw me sitting in a somewhat catatonic state.
“What’s wrong, Libby?” she asked, but it sounded like a far-away echo. “Elizabeth! What is wrong?”
Finally I started to come around to the present. I ignored Mom, picked up the phone, and held it back to my ear. “What…what do I do now?”
“Well, unfortunately, they’ve issued a warrant for your arrest. Now, I was able to talk with the prosecutor and he’s agreed to give you until tomorrow to turn yourself in, but first thing Saturday morning, if you haven’t, he’s going to let the warrant go out and they’ll come get you. I think it would be best if you came to my office and we walked into the jail together.”
“Jail?” Of course I’d go to the county jail. I knew that. But for some reason, hearing him say those words caught me off guard and frightened me more than I thought it would.
“Jail?” Mom repeated my words. “Libby, what is going on?
Please
tell me.”
I put my hand over the receiver and said, “I’ve been indicted, Mom. I have to turn myself in.” I just threw the words out there without any emotion, as if I were telling her what I wanted to eat for dinner.
Mom’s hands went to her face and she began to cry. Her shoulders were shaking, and she kept repeating “not again” over and over. Now, on top of the panic and dread, I was overcome with a terrible sense of guilt. My father had put my mother through hell, and now here I was doing the same damn thing. Like father, like daughter.
“I’ll be at your office tomorrow morning first thing,” I informed Dave before hanging up and walking over to my mother. It was now my turn to comfort her. But I had no idea what to say to make her feel better.
“I’ve failed you,” she said, suddenly looking up at me with her hands still on her cheeks.
“What? Mom, how on earth is this possibly your fault?”
“Apparently I’m doing something wrong. First your father, and now you.” Her eyes went wide as moons when she realized what she had said. “Oh, no, I’m not saying you’re guilty like your father. I just mean—oh, I don’t know what I mean.”
I knew exactly what she meant. I was the one who’d had to tell her my father had been arrested. And I was there in his attorney’s office when we learned exactly what he’d been charged with. Immediately after I told her about Randy’s arrest, we’d received a call from his attorney, asking if we could come speak to him.
B. Cecil Hayes was an old man, even then. He leaned over his desk and told us matter-of-factly that the Commonwealth of Kentucky had charged my father with the murders of nine prostitutes. Mom doubled over and cried like a wounded animal. She kept shaking her head and saying “It can’t be true,” over and over again. I never wanted to see her hurting like that ever again, but here I was causing her the same pain she had felt all those years ago.
“It’s okay, Mom,” I told her as I kissed her forehead. “I’ll be okay. You’re right about Randy. He was guilty. But I’m not. Just because they’re prosecuting me doesn’t mean I’ll be found guilty. Like you said, there’s no evidence. I’ve hired a good attorney. He’ll help me. Plus, I have you.”
We stood there for I don’t know how long, crying and holding one another. Finally, Mom broke free from our embrace and looked at me. “Well,” she said as she swiftly wiped her tears away with both hands. “If you have to go to jail tomorrow, that means today is your last day of freedom until we can get you out of there. So, instead of cooking tonight, I’m taking you out to your favorite restaurant.”
“Malone’s?” She knew how much I loved Malone’s but it was one of the fanciest restaurants in the Central Kentucky area, and Ryan and I rarely had the extra funds to go out to eat. So, it was usually Mom who took me—on my birthday and other special occasions. I almost laughed when I thought that this must qualify as a “special occasion.” My last night of freedom. “Sounds great, Mom. Thank you.”
***
We sat in a booth in the back corner of Malone’s, afraid someone might recognize me. Luckily, the lighting in the restaurant was dim. Either no one recognized me, or no one had the courage to approach me. I ordered the twin filets, cooked medium, with béarnaise sauce and the potato croquets. Mom ordered “Coach Cal’s” Chicken with lobster mac n’ cheese and we both split the very popular Lexingtonian salad with homemade ranch dressing. We ate in silence as we gorged ourselves on the delicious fare.
“Are you nervous?” Mom asked when we both pushed our plates away.
“A little, yeah,” I admitted.
“Maybe you won’t be there for long. Maybe Dave will be able to get you an affordable bail. I’ll certainly pay whatever it takes to get you out of there. I’ll mortgage the house, if I have to.”
“Mom, no,” I said. “I don’t want you to do that. Let’s just see what they say and go from there. I’ll be okay.”
We split the World’s Best Dessert, which was a three-layered ice cream cake covered in whipped cream, chocolate, and caramel. By the time we were done, we could barely walk to the minivan.
Later that night, I lay in my old daybed, staring at the ceiling, too nervous to sleep. Mom’s ceiling was white and textured with patterns that looked like little starbursts from wall to wall. Then I thought of my ceiling and how the peeling paint was the first thing I noticed when I woke up that dreadful morning. What had woken me? I had tried to recall this a million times, but never came up with anything, no matter how hard I strained my mind. Why couldn’t I remember anything at all? Why the headache? Why so dizzy? Was there something I was missing? Obviously I had somehow slept through the sound of a large-caliber gunshot. But how was that even possible? I took antidepressants at night, true. But none of them had a strong sedative effect. I’d been on them for years, and I’d never slept that soundly before.
I recalled our argument. Recalled my last words to Ryan. It wasn’t true. He didn’t only love himself. I knew he loved me. I just said that hoping he’d take me in his arms and tell me he loved me more than anything, and then we’d make love like we had in the beginning of our relationship. In the beginning, we made love nearly every day. And that lasted for many years. But somehow, gradually, over the past year or so, we’d gotten to where we only had sex once every few weeks. And even then it was me who initiated it. I just couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me. Sure, I’d put on that extra twenty pounds or so, but that had happened over the course of about a year, thanks to that stupid medication. It wasn’t like it just happened all of a sudden. And maybe, if I’m being honest, I didn’t pay quite as much attention to my looks as I used to in the beginning. But that’s normal, right? You get comfortable.
What made me sad was remembering what I had thought after I’d said those nasty words to him. As I lay there next to him, turned over so I was facing the wall with my back to him just to prove my point, I was actually thinking that, starting the next day, I was going to put an effort into our relationship. I was going to come up with fun things for us to do. Buy some lingerie. Make love in the park. Get the spark back in our humdrum relationship. But now I would never get that chance. Ryan was dead. Murdered right there next to me…or by me.
I could see where the police would suspect me; I really did. Hell, even I was still unsure what had happened that morning. Number one, I was the wife—always the natural first suspect, no matter what. Number two, I had no memory of anything between the time we went to bed and when I woke up around six a.m. to find Ryan dead beside me. Very suspicious. Number three, Ryan had no other known enemies, so no one else had a motive to murder him. But then again, neither did I.
So then
if
I killed him in some strange blackout rage, which I highly doubted, it still didn’t explain
why
I would do it. True, our relationship was in a rut, but that didn’t mean I would want him dead. Marriages go dull all the time and spouses don’t just randomly kill each other. There’s always a motive of some kind. Adultery. Money. Revenge. None of those applied to our marriage. We still loved each other very much. I couldn’t have killed him. I just couldn’t. But that still left the question of who
did
kill him. And I was still at a loss on that one.
***
The thought that twelve random people all came to the conclusion that there was enough evidence to suggest I might have killed him hurt my feelings. That’s all that was needed for an indictment—just enough evidence to prove probable cause. But these people didn’t know me. It was hard not to take it personally. It’s not fair that I wasn’t allowed to plead my case. I knew if they’d met me, heard my side of the story, they’d believe me. Instead, I was just some nameless, faceless woman who, according to the prosecutor, had flown into a blind rage and murdered her husband with a large-caliber pistol. Of course they believed Dorne. There was no mitigating evidence presented to a grand jury—just the prosecutor’s case. So unfair.
But here I was. Nothing I could do about it; I had to resign myself to my fate. I was going to jail, and there was nothing I could do to get out of it.
I eventually fell asleep around two o’clock in the morning. I usually didn’t dream, or at least I never remembered my dreams. But when I woke up Friday morning, I was covered in sweat, my t-shirt sticking to me in all the wrong places. I was breathing heavily.
In my dream, I was standing next to Ryan’s side of the bed, holding a gun which was almost too large for my small hands, pointing it right at his head. I stood there for what seemed like an eternity, trying to decide whether or not to pull the trigger. But before I could make up my mind, Ryan woke up and looked right at me. Instead of begging for his life, a Cheshire Cat-like smile spread across his beautiful face. “Go ahead, do it,” he said confidently. When I didn’t pull the trigger immediately, he let out a loud, maniacal laugh. “You can’t do it, can you? You’re weak. Weak and barren and no good for me. Go ahead. You’ve already killed me. I’m dead in this marriage. You can’t even give me a child. What do I have to live for?” That did it. I closed my eyes and pulled the trigger. The imagined sound of the gunshot was what woke me.
I shook the dream off as best I could and padded into the upstairs bathroom. As I went through my normal morning routine of showering and brushing my hair, then my teeth, I wondered how on earth I was going share a shower with dozens, maybe hundreds, of other women. I was never all that modest; nakedness never bothered me. But something about actually parading around naked in front of hardened female criminals made me uneasy. I wondered if they really put soap on a rope. Or was that just for male prisoners?
I debated on whether to fix my hair and put on makeup. After all, what’s the point? By noon I’d be in jail wearing a black-and-white striped jumpsuit with a chain around my ankle…okay, maybe that’s a bit melodramatic. Ultimately, I remembered there would probably be news reporters there, taking pictures of me as I did my perp walk into the jail. I wanted to look my best, vain as that may sound. I knew that whatever pictures they took of me today would be plastered all over the television, newspapers, and internet, which meant they’d be out there forever. So I applied some of the makeup I’d bought at Walmart and blew my hair out with a round brush. Those stupid roots still bothered me, and I wished I had thought to get them touched up before today. But I quickly realized that in the grand scheme of things, imperfect hair was the least of my concerns.
I said goodbye to Mom, which was more difficult than I had imagined. She hugged me as if she never wanted to let me go. I’m sure she didn’t; I didn’t want to let her go, either. But ultimately I was running late, and we had to say goodbye. She kissed me on both cheeks and then my forehead, just as she had when I was little.
Thinking of the old days, as I prepared myself for jail, reminded me of the first and only time I had visited Randy in prison.
It was right after he had confessed. Mom had insisted, and since I was only sixteen at the time, I didn’t have much say in the matter. We sat across from him at an institutional steel table. Mom was calm and happy to see him, but I was nervous, uncomfortable, and unable to look up from my lap. Randy was smiling and trying to exude confidence, but I just couldn’t bring myself to look at him for more than a few seconds at a time. He kept trying to speak to me, but I just ignored him and looked either at my hands or out the window to the right. Mom kept trying to make small talk, as if we weren’t sitting in a maximum security prison, but I couldn’t bring myself to say one word to him. If I opened my mouth, I knew I would upset Mom, so I remained silent. I swore then and there I would never return to prison.