Never In Another Life novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: Fourteen Months

Declan's motel room smelled like wet carpet and burnt coffee.

Sammy had fallen asleep on the far bed with the television murmuring, his shoes still on.

We stood on the walkway outside the door, where the wind came off the lake and nobody could hear.

"You said before Friday," I said. "It's Tuesday. Tell me now."

He leaned on the railing.

He looked down at the parking lot for so long that I thought he had decided not to.

"They found the boat on a Thursday," he said. "Empty. Your phone on the deck, your shoe, the life jacket cut loose."

"I know. I set it up."

"On Friday the police came to the hospital. Two detectives. They asked me to come to the station and answer some questions about my wife."

I said nothing.

"I went. I thought they wanted a timeline. I brought coffee." He gave a small, ugly laugh. "They asked about the fights. They asked about the lake house. They asked if I'd ever put my hands on you."

"You never did."

"I know. I told them. And then they read me Margo's statement."

"What did it say?"

"That I'd told her I wished you were gone. That I'd said, 'I'd rather see her at the bottom of the lake than in a courtroom.'"

My mouth went dry.

"Did you say it?"

"No."

"Did you think it?"

He turned and looked at me.

"I thought it once, in the kitchen, after you left the room, because I was a coward and a child," he said. "I never said it out loud. Margo was in the doorway. I didn't know she heard."

The wind pulled at my sleeves.

"They arrested me that night," he said. "Murder. No body, but a wife who'd gone missing, a husband with an affair, and a witness who swore I'd threatened her."

"Declan."

"They held me without bail. The judge said I was a flight risk."

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