Chapter 56 THEO #2
“Danny knew my foster parents, so he was around constantly, and he just inserted himself into my life. He wouldn’t stop texting me, and he started showing up everywhere and he wouldn’t leave me alone.
He kept telling me he wanted to take care of me.
” My stomach knots up, and I look down at my hands to keep the jury from seeing my face.
She’s never told me this.
“Then he…he offered me a ride home from school, and he…um, he…” I glance up and watch as Alex looks up at the ceiling and wraps her arms around her waist. This also isn’t something we’ve ever talked about.
“Um, he drove me out to a secluded area and raped me and told me that I had wanted it and that it meant we were together.” A pit opens in my stomach as I watch her, but she still won’t look at me.
I wish I wasn’t finding this out in front of a room full of people.
Some of her behavior early in our relationship makes a lot more sense.
“What was that like for you?” Alex’s eyes well up with tears, and she shakes her head, looking back at Elise.
“It was awful and overwhelming. I had no idea what to do.” I feel a slick churn of guilt in my stomach.
“I was a kid who just lost my whole family, and he took advantage of me. I didn’t feel like I could ask anyone for help because he was older and a cop, and I thought no one would believe me, so I just let it happen.
He took over my whole life.” Elise nods sympathetically, and Alex still won’t look at me.
Of course she never told me any of this.
Elise gets Alex to recount years of manipulation and abuse, more details she’s never told me.
She talks about finally having enough, about Danny pulling a gun on her, about running away and building a life in Astoria.
She doesn’t talk about the fact that I did almost the same thing to her that Danny did, but it hangs unsaid between us.
I am never going to stop making that up to her.
I sit there, staring at her, really listening to what she’s been through, aware of everything she’s not saying about our first few months together, and I think about my conversation with Catherine on Thanksgiving.
Alex is the furthest thing from fragile I can possibly imagine.
“Ms. Shearer, how did you and Mr. Anderson meet?” Alex finally looks at me, and her lips twitch into a small smile.
“He approached me at a bar back in September.” I keep my face as neutral as possible. I’m probably supposed to look like I enjoy hearing this part, but it’s just making me nauseous.
“When did you start dating?”
Alex huffs out a quick laugh. “We had our first date a few weeks later, and then we were just sort of together after that,” she says, shooting me a quick, amused look.
Is this funny to her? She’s got a very dark sense of humor if it is.
“How early into dating did you reveal to Mr. Anderson that you were living under an assumed identity?”
“Almost immediately. I’ve always felt safe with Theo.” I hate that it’s a fucking lie.
“What’s your relationship like?” Alex’s face softens almost entirely. A small, warm smile plays across her lips, and I watch her mouth very closely.
“It’s amazing.” Not a lie, thank god. “After being with Danny, I didn’t know what a good relationship was even supposed to be like, but I have that with Theo.
He’s my best friend. He’s kind, and he’s sweet, and he’s very gentle with me.
He understands my past, and he does his best to accommodate the PTSD I have from it.
My therapist says our relationship provides me with a lot of reparative experiences.
He makes me feel safe and loved, and like I’m good enough without ever trying. ”
I can’t help smiling at her. I love that I make her feel this way, and I especially love that she’s not lying about any of it. Hearing this is slightly tempering the overwhelming, painful knowledge that I do not deserve her.
“I was married to Danny for almost ten years, but I’d never been in love before I met Theo. I didn’t realize loving someone was supposed to be easy.” I have no idea what my face does when I hear that, but my expression makes Alex tear up a little when she glances at me.
The questioning moves on to other aspects of our relationship, and Elise and Alex have carefully crafted a narrative of selective truths that make me look like an even-tempered, reasonable person, a perfect boyfriend, and a fucking saint compared to Danny.
When Elise asks Alex about the tracker, Alex tells a somewhat convincing lie about how we found the tracker to be an imperfect solution to making Alex feel safe.
“How did you decide on that as a solution?” Alex looks up at Elise shyly.
“I know it seems unconventional, but I was so afraid that Danny might show up and hurt me, and I couldn’t trust the police to protect me.
I was vulnerable, and it made me feel safer knowing that Theo always knew where I was, just in case.
” She seems so earnest when she talks about it, and she’s making it sound almost believable.
Judging from the face of at least one person on the jury, I think she’s fairly decent when it comes to lying to other people.
“Can you tell me why, after only a few months of dating, you’d entrust Mr. Anderson with something like that?” Alex smiles softly and tucks her hair behind her ear.
“Well, I was certain he wasn’t going anywhere.” She shoots me another amused look, and I struggle not to smile at her.
She’s fucking flirting with me.
“You’d only been dating for a few months. How could you be sure?”
Alex shrugs. “It took me a while to open up emotionally, but that was not the case for Theo.” She looks down at her hands, laughing weakly. “He was very open about how he felt about me from the beginning, and we only put the tracker in after we started talking about a real future together.”
I sneak another swift glance at the jury, who are all focused on her sweet, vulnerable face as she lies through her teeth. Some of them look skeptical, but most of them don’t.
Elise transitions to asking Alex about the kidnapping and the cabin again, but she gets a lot of details out of Alex that the prosecution didn’t, which makes Alex cry so much that she has to be granted a five-minute break.
Someone on this fucking jury has to understand that Danny forfeited the right to his life the second he touched her.
Alex’s testimony takes all day, and the prosecutor is a dick during cross-examination, calling her Mrs. Murphy again. I can tell Alex is wrung out and exhausted by the end of it, and then Elise has to go again.
Alex is completely withdrawn as she gets escorted off the stand, and I lock eyes with her as long as possible. She tries to smile and mouths I love you, and it takes everything in me not to rush after her.
I’m slightly calmer as I watch Bailey get up from her seat in the gallery. She locks wide eyes with me and nods at me quickly before she wraps a protective arm around Alex and leads her out of the courtroom.
I need to find a way to thank Bailey, even though I’m not sure anything will ever be enough.
Once the jury is dismissed for the day, Elise leans close, keeping her voice almost inaudible as she slowly packs up her bag.
“She made you look like a knight in shining armor,” she whispers, barely moving her lips.
“I believe the word is perjury,” I mutter through my teeth, catching Elise’s sharp look out of the corner of my eye. “Sorry. Bad joke,” I say, glancing at my feet.
“Do not throw away the gift she just gave you,” she hisses at me.
I shake my head slightly. “Story of my fucking life.”
***
“Mr. Anderson, can you please explain what happened in that room?” I grit my teeth and take a deep breath, blowing it out quickly.
I need to keep my shit together.
“Yes. I looked through the window and saw Danny raping Alex on that bed, and I was positive she was going to die.” I have to pretend I didn’t think Alex was actually dead, otherwise it doesn’t legally count as self-defense.
“I entered the house, took a knife from the kitchen to defend myself, and went in to save her. Danny and I fought, I defended myself to the best of my ability, and then I got Alex to the hospital.”
“Alex being Mrs. Murphy?” I scowl at him. The whole fucking room knows she goes by Alex.
“I’ve only known her as Alexandria Shearer, which she prefers.” Prick.
“Can you explain why you thought Mrs. Murphy was going to die?” I nod, taking another deep breath.
Despite the sedatives, the breathing exercises, and the fact that I know I need to keep my emotions under control, I have a tough time staying calm.
My knee starts bouncing instantly, and I push my hands back through my hair as I describe in graphic detail what I saw through that window and what I saw in the bedroom.
I watch the prosecutor pale a little when I tell him what I heard Danny saying to her, and I need a minute after sharing it to keep my shit together.
I still have nightmares about it every single fucking night. In the future, this will be one of the things I never think about, but right now I need everyone in the courtroom to know what that bastard put her through.
I think it makes the crime scene photos look like an underreaction.
“Mr. Anderson, can you please review Exhibits 1 through 20?” I pointedly ignore the large printouts to my left and look down at the crime scene photos in front of me, focusing just to the left of the photo, then just to the right before I slowly flip to the next one.
Elise had to coach me not to look at the pictures. Apparently, I can’t hide the look of satisfaction on my face when I see them, no matter how hard I try, and the jury can’t know that I’m thrilled that I killed Danny.
“Would you consider this to be an extreme level of violence?” I take a deep breath, working hard to keep my face neutral, but I accidentally glance at one of the photos.