Maya
At some point an officer had taken her shoelaces. Someone had handed her a thin gray blanket folded into a square. It was still beside her on the cot, untouched.
Reid still hadn’t come to see her.
If she closed her hands into fists she could still feel the pressure of the metal biting into her wrists. She rubbed them again without thinking.
The words hadn’t made any sense. Even now they didn’t quite fit together in her head.
Reid didn’t arrest people, and he certainly didn’t put handcuffs on people.
Her stomach twisted.
He had put them on her.
She swallowed hard and leaned back against the wall. The cinderblock was cool against the back of her head.
Maya pressed her fingers against her eyes.
Reid was coming. He would burst through the door and tell her he had made a mistake and now he had fixed it.
The processing room ran through her mind again—the screen where she’d pressed her fingers, the camera as it flashed, the officer’s gruff voice as he told her to face forward.
She tried not to think past the next hour. Every time she let her mind go further—a lawyer, a trial, a… sentence?—she felt like she couldn’t breathe.
She could hear herself gasping for air.
Don’t think about it. Reid will fix this.
Her hands dropped to her lap and Maya stared at the floor.
Maybe he wasn’t allowed to visit her. There were probably rules about that.
Reid knew she hadn’t stolen money from her own charity.
She leaned forward again, elbows on her knees.
Just wait. That was all she had to do. Wait for him to make it okay.
When the lights switched off, she reached for the blanket and curled into a ball.
The mattress was thin enough that she could feel the metal frame beneath it when she shifted. She turned onto her side.
Her wrists throbbed. Her body stayed tense.
Every time she drifted toward stillness she heard Reid’s voice again.
Maya Lawson. You are under arrest.
Maya lay there under the thin blanket, her eyes closed.
Waiting for her husband to come.
Maya stepped through the door out into the daylight.
She hadn't slept much.
The lawyer—her lawyer?—checked his watch. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his wallet, extracting a couple of folded bills. He pressed them into her hand along with a business card—heavy stock, embossed lettering.
She could hear the traffic somewhere down the street, someone laughing across the parking lot.
Normal life.
“Get a cab home,” he said. “Get settled. Then come see me tomorrow.”
She looked down at the card. It had his name and his office address. He was already striding away, audibly barking instructions into his phone.
For a moment she just stood there, blinking in the light.
She was wearing the bright Roll & Run T-shirt and her running shoes, the lightweight jacket she’d grabbed on her way out the door on Saturday morning.
They had returned her belongings in a clear plastic bag, sealed and labeled with her name. She tore it open and pulled out her phone. When she pressed the power button, the battery icon flashed once and disappeared.
She looked around her. Reid wasn’t here. There was no familiar car waiting to pick her up.
Maya didn’t know what to do.
Two days ago she had been standing in the sports center parking lot with a microphone in her hand. Two days ago Reid had been walking toward her through the crowd.
Her stomach turned.
Maya Lawson. You are under arrest.
She closed her eyes briefly.
It still didn’t make sense.
Reid would fix this. He would know what to do. She just needed to get to him.
A taxi rolled slowly past the building and stopped at the light on the corner.
She stepped toward the curb and lifted her hand.
She just needed to get home. She needed Reid to open his arms, and let her step into that circle of safety.
She rubbed the skin at her wrists without thinking.
The marks had faded. But the feeling hadn’t.
The front door opened as the taxi pulled up to the curb.
For one dizzy second, everything was okay.
Reid.
The fear that had been clawing at her chest since Saturday finally gave way. Her husband would fix this. He always knew what to do.
The taxi driver was saying something—farewell, good luck, she didn’t know—but Maya was already climbing out of the car.
Reid waited in the doorway.
Her husband. Her safest place.
“Reid.”
The word came out half breath, half laugh.
She started toward him, the plastic bag containing her belongings gripped in her hand. She was desperate to reach him, desperate for closeness. For him to wrap her up in his arms and tell her this nightmare was finally ending.
She was almost running when Reid lifted one hand.
Palm out.
Stop.
Maya stopped automatically. Years of trusting him activating her muscles before thought could catch up.
Reid crossed his arms across his chest.
The distance between them felt wrong immediately.
Behind him, the house stood open.
She could see straight into the hall: the narrow table by the door, the hook where her keys belonged, the runner she had chosen, the lamp they always left lit when one of them was coming home late.
But he had told her to stop, so she’d stopped. She stood frozen, suddenly uncertain, waiting for him to tell her what was happening.
“You thought you would be welcome here?” he asked.
The words didn’t make sense.
“What?”
His face stayed hard.
Maya gave a small, confused laugh. “I live here,” she said.
Her toothbrush was upstairs. Her winter coat was in the hall closet. There was cookie dough she had made in the freezer and a half-read book facedown on her nightstand.
Reid’s expression didn’t change.
“Not anymore.”
There had to be a missing piece she didn’t understand.
Maybe it was some legal instruction, or some terrible advice from someone at work. Was he being watched?
Maya didn’t understand what was happening.
Why wasn’t Reid explaining anything?
“Everything is wrong.” Her voice sounded thin, odd to her own ears. “Something’s gone wrong and I—”
“You’re a liar and a thief.”
The words were impossible and her mind did not, could not, absorb them.
He didn’t mean that.
Not Reid.
He was her husband. His mouth said sweetheart. His mouth said come here. His mouth pressed sleep-warm kisses to her shoulder on Sunday mornings.
He didn’t call her a liar. He didn’t call her a thief.
Maya stared at him.
She waited for the correction. The apology. The explanation that would put the world back in its proper order.
But Reid only looked at her.
His eyes were cold.
And somewhere beneath the shock, something in her began, slowly and terribly, to understand.
Reid thought she had stolen money. Not just any money, he believed she'd stolen money from the charity, from their friends, from her life's work.
The porch beneath her feet felt oddly unstable, as though the wood had shifted.
This was Reid. This stranger was her husband.
Maya took another step toward him. If she could just get close enough to him, if he would just look at her properly, this would stop feeling insane.
She wanted to touch him. She wanted this to make sense. If she could feel him, it would make sense. Her hand lifted, reached out to him.
“I have seen the accounts,” he said. His voice was cold now, edged with anger. “I know exactly what you did.”
“I didn’t—” Her breath caught. “Reid, I swear to you—”
“Stop lying to me.”
Maya’s fingers tightened around the plastic bag.
“Reid…” Her voice cracked around his name.
He didn’t react.
Maya swallowed hard and forced herself forward another step.
Reid believed in evidence. Reid believed in facts. Reid believed in her.
The way he was looking at her said differently.
“We can figure this out,” she said urgently. “You can show me what you think you found and I can explain it and we can—”
Reid stepped backward. A line drawn between them.
“You’re not coming back into this house,” he said.
He reached down, dragged a suitcase forward, and let it drop heavily onto the porch.
“I don’t care where you go.”
For a moment she could only look at it. Her suitcase.
“Reid…”
It barely sounded like her voice anymore.
“You are the subject of an active investigation,” he said.
The language was clinical.
Official.
Like she was a stranger, and not his wife.
How could the man who had slept beside her, laughed with her, held her, looked at her like she was something precious—
“Reid, you know me.”
How could he possibly believe this about her?
Reid held her gaze.
“You should speak to your lawyer,” he said.
Maya stared at him.
“Reid,” she whispered. Her voice was strained. “I didn’t do this.”
The words hollowed her out.
“Please believe me.”
Reid looked at her with an expression she wasn’t used to. He looked at her with contempt.
She took an involuntary step back.
Then he stepped backward into the house. He didn’t look back as the door slammed shut.
Maya stood on the porch. Reid believed she was a monster who could steal from her own charity.
She looked down at the suitcase.
He had packed her things. At some point over the weekend, as she had been lying in a cell, telling herself he would come to her, Reid had opened her drawers and taken out her clothes and put them into a case and left it by the door for when she came home.
The trunk of her car clicked open. She put the suitcase in. She closed it and got into the driver's seat.
The engine started.
She didn’t move.
She looked at her hands gripping the steering wheel.
The marks from the handcuffs had faded so why could she still feel the ghost of them around her wrists.
Reid had put the handcuffs on her. His hands had done that. The same hands that had held her so many times—
She exhaled and the breath shook.
She pressed the back of her hand against her mouth and waited until her breathing steadied, watching the house through the windscreen.
Like an idiot she was waiting, she realized, for the door to open and for Reid to come back out.
For him to run to her, to tell her it had all been a terrible misunderstanding.
For the reality of the last ten minutes to be different.
The door stayed closed.