Page 97 of I Will Ruin You

We were sitting in the kitchen. Marta had left about ten minutes earlier. In another ninety minutes I was supposed to be at my school to talk to parents about the books I had assigned their kids to read.

I said, “Let me guess what happened. When you got there, he was dead.”

Bonnie slowly shook her head no. “I went to the house and no one answered. I saw a light in the garage and went out there. That’s where I found him.”

She took a breath.

“He was alone. I told him who I was, that I was your wife, that I knew what he was doing, and it had to stop. He pretended to have no idea what I was talking about.”

“He denied it?”

She nodded. “He told me to get out, but I wasn’t having it. I guess I raised my voice, kind of lost it. Told him you were a good man and would never have done what he was accusing you of, and he said something like, ‘I don’t know who the fuck you’re talking about.’ And that’s when he started waving a gun around.”

I shuddered. “Jesus.”

“He pointed it at me, and...”

Bonnie’s hands were starting to shake. “...and I wondered at that moment whether he was going to kill me. I’d never in my life had anyone point a gun at me, and it changes you, you know?”

Like facing down someone with a bomb, I thought.

“And I thought about you and Rachel and what a huge mistake it had been, to go there. So I said I was leaving. And the second I was out of that garage I ran back to my car, didn’t look back, was scared that he might be chasing me, that he’d take a shot before I could get out of there.”

I put my hands over hers to calm them. “But you’re okay. Nothing happened.”

Or hadn’t happened yet. Because at some point, things came to an end for Billy.

She nodded and wiped a tear from her cheek. “I guess, for a moment, I was thinking I was back learning how to be a cop, before I decided to do something different. Thinking I could handle this. What I should have done, what we should have done from the beginning, was bring Marta into it, tell her everything. I’d been thinking all day that when I got home, I’d talk to you about it, insist we call her, because this wasn’t something we could handle. But then she shows up here, and says he’s dead... I had no idea. Somebody killed him, and my car was spotted, and even then I thought I could find a way to explain it, but then you—”

“Jumped in and covered for you.”

“Why? Why would you—” Bonnie cut herself off. She was trying to put it together. “Because you thought maybe I’d done it.”

“I never seriously considered that as a possibility.”

“Not seriously,” she repeated. “But you hadn’t ruled it out. Oh my God, Richard.”

“I didn’t think it was good for anyone to think you might have been anywhere near Billy Finster’s place.”

“So you came up with that story because... you knew he was dead. You knew he was dead before Marta came here.”

“I did.”

The kitchen suddenly seemed very quiet. The only sound was the faint noise of Rachel’s movie.

“How... how would you have known he was dead?” she asked tentatively.

“I was there last night, too,” I said. “Clearly, after you were. I wanted to confront him, get real evidence he was lying in case he went public. So I asked Mrs. Tibaldi to look after Rachel. I was thinking I shouldn’t face him alone, so I dropped by Trent’s place to see whether I could talk him into going with me. But he was out. By then I was hyped up, had to see it through. I had this idea I could record him on my phone, get him to admit there was nothing to his accusations, that he just wanted money. So I went there.”

“You shouldn’t have.”

“Look who’s talking.”

“Richard, tell me you didn’t...”

“Let me finish,” I said. “I get there, but then this other car came along. A man and a woman get out, go to the house first, and then the garage, and I hear shouting and all this banging about. And then these two came back out, went into the house, and I could kind of make out through the blinds and curtains that they were tearing the place apart. Finally, they left.”

Bonnie waited.