Chapter 13 #2
She fell silent for a moment. “For the record, I’m grateful to Reno for exposing my husband’s crimes and prosecuting him. But mostly, I am eternally grateful to your brother for being my voice at a time in my life when I had completely lost the ability to speak for myself.”
She plowed on. “We’re almost to the end of the tale.
He got the maximum sentence for each of his crimes, and it totaled up to over thirty years in prison.
Winston’s lawyers pleaded for a twenty-four-hour reprieve for him before he had to report to jail so he could say goodbye to his young children. The judge granted it.”
She realized she was wringing her hands until they’d turned bright red. She laid them both flat on the table, palms down. Then she looked up at Hank bleakly.
“I knew exactly why Winston had his lawyers ask for that reprieve. He was going use it to flee the country. I got in my car and drove home with the kids while he was tied up at court signing various documents. I left the kids in their car seats and marched into his office. I found a one-way airline ticket tucked inside his fake passport, and I cut them both up in tiny pieces and left them on the kitchen counter for him to find. Then I got in the car and drove to my parents’ house because I was scared to death of what he would do to me.
‘I have no idea what he did that afternoon, but that evening, he went to visit his mother, and then he drove to the shipping company and killed himself in the parking lot.”
Hank winced, and she gave him a moment to work through his initial reaction.
Then she continued. “He got his way and didn’t go to jail.
He was too big a coward to face his crimes, and his ego was too fragile to withstand the humiliation.
He chose to die rather than face his crimes and face himself.
And he didn’t give a damn about the mess he left behind for me, sorry for the bad language, but there’s not a nice word for it. ”
Hank smiled tightly, obviously not the least bit concerned about her swearing in the face of the other things he was feeling at the moment toward her deceased husband.
Feeling utterly drained by the telling, she said tiredly, “Afterward I took my maiden name back. Carter. I made the children Carters too, so they wouldn’t carry the stain of his name for the rest of their lives.
” She pressed her lips together. “I figured out soon enough that you can change a name on paper in an afternoon. It’s everything underneath a person’s skin that takes years to erase. ”
“Is there more?” he asked gently.
She met his gaze and smiled sadly. “I could stop there. Everything I’ve told you so far, you could find online or get from a stranger at a gas pump in California given how much news coverage it got.”
She looked down at his hand lying on the table mere inches from hers.
“But you told me once that everybody keeps a room or two locked up and sheeted over. You were describing my whole life when you said that, and you didn’t even know it.
I’ve decided I don’t want to be a locked room to you.
So here’s the part that was only ever mine. ”
“I’m responsible for Winston’s death. If I hadn’t destroyed his fake passport, he would be alive right now, living in some obscure corner of the world. And knowing him, he’d be as happy as a clam and not giving me or the kids a moment’s thought.
“As I drove home from the courthouse that day, I thought about what was going to happen to me and the kids when he fled the country and disappeared. The police and the press would’ve camped on our doorstep for years to come.
Strangers would’ve quizzed my children about where their father was hiding.
The kids would’ve had their father’s crimes thrown in their faces everywhere they went.
None of us would ever have escaped the suspicion and scrutiny of law enforcement or the public.
‘My dirtiest secret of all is that I cut up his passport not to keep him from running away and hiding from his crimes but to selfishly protect myself and the children from the aftermath of him running.” She inhaled shallowly.
“So you can quit looking at me like I’m the wronged party in this story.
I lived a luxurious, expensive life on the back of other people’s loss and suffering and never thought to ask where the money for my extravagant lifestyle came from.
I’m the woman who decided my life came first and left a man no way out except to die.
I changed my name and my kids’ names and fled California the exact same way Winston planned to.
I condemned him to death and then turned around and did the exact same thing I condemned him for.
Which makes me the worst possible sort of hypocrite. ”
She fell silent and even the house seemed to be holding its breath around her. She said quietly, “That’s the whole ledger. That’s what Winston was and who I am.”
Sunny stood with her back to the sink and her arms around her middle, hugging the cold knot under her ribs. She braced herself to watch the warmth drain out of a good man’s face, the way she’d watched it leave every face she’d ever trusted with a great deal less than this.
For a long moment Hank said nothing at all, and every second of it was a small death. She’d handed people a tiny bit of her soft underside before and watched them flinch, recalculate, and take a careful half-step back, so she knew exactly what it looked like.
But it didn’t come.