Chapter 10: The Statement

By nine o'clock my face was on every screen in the country.

Somebody had cut the bracelet clip down to the scratch test and put music under it.

By ten there were four news vans on the quay.

By eleven there were nine, and a helicopter had circled the harbor twice.

The bakery owner locked the front door and put a sign in the window that said CLOSED FOR BREAD.

Constance sat at the back table with her cane across her knees, drinking her third cup of tea.

"They're calling it the glass heard round the world," she said.

"Who is?"

"The internet. It has opinions about you, dear. Most of them are on your side."

I did not want to look at my phone, so I looked at the rain on the window.

At noon a black coat crossed the quay and stopped in front of the cameras.

I knew the shoulders before I saw the face.

"Don't," I said to nobody.

Constance pushed back her chair and went to stand beside me.

Killian faced a field of microphones with his bandaged hand held at his side.

He had shaved, and he had put on the gray suit.

He stood square to them and did not look away from the lenses.

"I have a statement," he said. "I'll make it once."

The reporters pressed forward, and he waited until they were quiet.

"On the night of my third wedding anniversary, I shoved my wife."

The quay went silent.

"She fell backward onto a marble floor and hit her head," Killian said.

"She was unconscious. I told her to stop faking it, and I left the house."

Constance's cane tapped the floor once, softly.

"She was not faking. She woke up alone and called her own ambulance."

"She spent the night in a hospital, and I did not know where she was until morning."

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