“Mr. Lee, after everything that’s gone on before this moment, there’s really only one question that matters. I’ll ask it point-blank. Adam Lee, did you murder your wife?”
Just as Monty has coached me, I do not hesitate with my answer, yet still, in the time it takes me to open my mouth and spit the words out, I can feel the eyes of the jury on me, drinking me, eating me, like the body of Christ.
“No,” I say. “No. I loved my wife.”
TWO
Rachel had always been a good wife. But at some point, and without my realizing I had done it, I did to her what had been done to me and my brother so long ago. I delegated her to a lower level. She was still there, with me, seemingly an important fixture in my life, as always, but now in a place below me, separate.
Or perhaps it was I who was separate, who had remained separate. Had never left the damp coolness of the lower levels.
She would never leave me; of that I was certain. Her love for me, from the very beginning, was fanatical.
I did not meet Rachel until we were both in our twenties, yet she had never kissed a man, much less the other things. And although her devotion to me was, from the very beginning, that of the born-again convert, I still suspect that had it not been me she found, it would have been another. In the end, her love would have found a blistering focus on any man who could withstand it. It did not have to be me. I could never tell her this, but it is true.
We met at a college graduation party. Her date was drunk and became belligerent when she asked to leave. Already settled into a sober-minded life, I was not drinking and offered her a ride to her dormitory. She accepted. Outside the dorm building, she opened the car door to get out, then hesitated.