The Merriam-Webster Spell-Checker
We were not allowed to pay a visit to Forrest in jail.
Seeing him in his suit—too big for him now—as he approached the witness stand was the first time I’d laid eyes on him since the morning after Regina’s death.
He was thinner, but even now, after months in jail, he carried himself as if he were walking across a golf course or hopping into his Chris-Craft.
Under oath, Forrest admitted to engaging in an extramarital affair with Brenda Barnett, as well as having had numerous other affairs over the years, with women whose identities the police had been able to track down—an aspect of the case that eventually resulted in at least three divorces among members of the Lake Catherine Country Club.
“I’m deeply ashamed of my behavior,” Forrest said. “But being unfaithful to my wife is not the same as killing her.”
“Objection.” The DA stood up. Her name was Vivian Latournier.
“Strike from the record,” the judge agreed.
About the suicide note: It was true, Forrest said, that he could barely write a sentence in the English language. All his life he’d depended on his friend Hank—meaning my father—to help him when it came to writing.
But he wasn’t an idiot. Putting aside the fact that he loved his wife—he’d said this again: I loved my wife—if he was going to fake a suicide note, he wasn’t so stupid that he’d leave it filled with the kind of errors that would point to him as its author.
“I keep a book called the Merriam-Webster Spell-Checker in my bureau drawer for times I need to be sure my writing isn’t too bad,” he said. “Go look. You’ll see it there.”
Not likely. The Cabots had long since moved Forrest’s possessions out of Wonderland.