James shrugged helplessly. “How could he? I didn’t kill her. There wouldn’t be any evidence to find.”

“So what happens next? What do we do now?”

“We wait for the bond hearing tomorrow.”

“There’s no way that can happen today? There must be someone I can call. Don’t we know one of the judges in town? Or know someone who knows one?”

It was James’s turn to look at me with concern. “Maggie, that isn’t how this works. It’s not about who we know, or who we are, or who’s in our social circle. They think I killed someone. They’re not just going to give me a hall pass because we have a friend in common with some judge.”

I knew he was right. Of course he was right. We both fell silent, bonded by the horror of what was happening, and yet separated by the fact that, for the first time in our marriage, even though we were inches away from one another, we weren’t allowed to touch. I couldn’t reach out and rest a comforting hand on James’s arm. He couldn’t lift my hand to his lips.

Was this what the rest of our lives would be? I wondered. Other people dictating when we saw one another, and how?

Just the day before, I’d questioned if it was possible that my husband loved another woman, a dead woman, more than he loved me. Now I would do anything to go back to a time when that was the most terrible thing I could imagine.

Chapter Thirteen

James’s appearance before a judge was held the following morning. I expected him to be transported to the courthouse to appear in person, but I was wrong again. Instead, the hearing was held inside the jail, in a utilitarian room with a TV monitor set up in front of two lecterns. The State’s Attorney was named Ryan Hubert, a guy in his late twenties with shaggy hair and wearing a suit that was several sizes too big. A bailiff who was present in the jailhouse room instructed us to stand when Judge Medved appeared on the TV screen, and took a seat behind the bench.

I was beginning to realize that everything I thought I knew about the criminal justice system had been gleaned from television shows and movies. The reality was so much more grim, and so much more soulless. No one cared that James was a good man, a doctor who had healed thousands, who had dedicated his life to helping people. Here, he was just another faceless pre-trial detainee the bored bureaucrats had to process through the system.