Reid
It wasn’t working. Standing here staring at them wasn't changing anything.
It wasn’t enough.
He could hear it from here. The shrieks, the splash.
He was a private person.
He had always been a private person. He wasn’t showy, he didn't perform. He was the man who sat in the corner of the room and watched.
That wasn’t enough. He needed to do more. He needed them to understand what he’d done. What Maya hadn’t done.
Walking away from the bake sale was easy. There was nothing he wasn’t willing to do.
The volunteer coordinator was a teenager. "I want to take a shift," Reid told him.
The teenager looked at him. "You know it's a dunk tank."
"Yes."
"You go in the water."
"I understand how a dunk tank works."
The teenager looked at his clipboard. "We’re taking a break until—“
“I’m going now,” Reid said. He held out his hand. “Give me the mic.”
The feedback squeal got everyone's attention faster than he expected. Conversations paused and heads turned. Even the children nearby slowed.
Reid looked out at the crowd. At the faces he had been watching all afternoon. At the people who had known Maya since she was a child and had decided despite everything they knew about her that she was a thief.
His palms were damp. He was doing this not for their sake but for hers.
Maya loved these people. God help her, she loved them. This was her home and they were her community and that was how she worked. She gave without keeping score. She had given and given and given and they had taken all of it and then turned on her, and she would still want them back despite that.
He knew that. He knew her.
He cleared his throat.
"I arrested my wife,” he said into the microphone. "At the Roll & Run." He paused. "In front of all of you."
He looked at the people in front of him. He met their eyes.
“I was wrong," he said as firmly as he could. "She is innocent and I arrested her anyway." He looked out at the crowd. "I am the one you should hate. Not Maya. Me."
He tried to see if it was getting through to anyone.
“The charges are going to be dropped," he said. “I’ve found compelling evidence that the charity’s bookkeeper was the one who was taking the money. And I’m going to make sure he’s arrested and charged and convicted.
And then you’ll have to believe me. But you should believe me now.
I made a mistake. I couldn’t understand why Maya loved me, and my insecurities made me stupid. ”
He watched it ripple out, it was working.
“She showed up for this community over and over again and asked for nothing except the chance to keep doing it. You all loved her and I poisoned that.”
He tracked it happening in real time. One person turning to another, brows furrowing, expressions shifting.
"I'm going to sit in that tank for the next thirty minutes. Every dollar raised goes to Maya's bake sale. And I would strongly encourage you—" he looked at the gathering crowd "—to throw as hard as you can."
He handed the microphone back to the teenager, who was staring at him, slack jawed.
Reid emptied his pockets. He rolled up his sleeves. He climbed up onto the platform and sat down on the small metal seat and looked out at the people watching.
For a moment nothing happened.
Then a kid at the front of the line—seven years old, maybe eight—picked up a ball.
The kid threw, the target rang.
And Reid was falling.
He surfaced coughing. Water streamed from his hair into his eyes.
He pushed the hair out of his face, and climbed out of the water. The metal rungs were slippery beneath his hands. His shirt clung to his chest and shoulders.
He hauled himself back onto the platform.
The next person in line was already winding up.
Each drop came with the same brief sensation of weightlessness, followed by the same violent shock when he hit the water. The cold forced the breath from his lungs over and over.
He waited on the platform in his soaking shirt and looked at the line wound through the picnic crowd.
It would never be enough. He could sit in this tank every day for the rest of his life and it would not be enough.
But it was something.
He lost count of the number of times he hit the water.
Every splash felt like a correction. Every throw chipped away at the lie.
He could feel it—a shift in the atmosphere. People were changing their minds.
Every dollar dropped into the ticket booth was another person choosing to believe in Maya.
He sat on the platform and let them dunk him and every time he came up out of the water he thought about his wife on a stage with a microphone in her hand and a crowd she had built looking back at her and a life she had made out of love for people who didn't always deserve it.
He thought: I will spend the rest of my life being worthy of her.
The next ball hit the target.
Reid hit the water.
He came up.
He pulled himself back onto the platform.