Her attention stays on the table between us.

“I’m not here as your wife,” she says.

I’m not sure I heard her correctly. “I don’t understand.”

“I can’t be your lawyer after today, either.”

“Kristen, what’s going on?”

She looks up at me. No, right through me. I can see her eyes are bloodshot. She’s kneading her hands together, and I detect a palpable heaviness in her breathing. I’m worried about her.

My pulse begins to accelerate. “Are you all right?”

She shakes her head. “Are you really going to ask that?”

Now her eyes are darts, and they are aimed at me with Kristen precision.

“I don’t get it,” I tell her, glancing around as if there were someone else here to help me explain.

Kristen keeps up her stone face. “You raped and murdered that woman,” she says, her words carved out of ice. “The police have DNA. Yours.”

“They are wrong,” I say, scrambling for words of certain denial. “They can’t have my DNA.”

“Connor,” she says. “Stop. Just stop. The lies have to end now. They can’t make me testify against you. We’re married. That’s in your favor. I won’t tell them about the bloody sheets. But you can’t keep lying to me. You raped her.”

“I never did that,” I say. “I could never do that. You know me, Kristen.”

“I thought I did, Connor. I really thought I did.” She stops to take a breath. “I don’t know you at all.”

I stand and lean across the table. I want to believe that this isn’t really happening, but it is. I feel my heart beat as it pulses against my rib cage.

I am alive. This is not a dream.

“Why are you saying that?” I ask.

“Sit down, Connor, or the guard will come in.”

I sit and start to beg. “You have to believe me.”

Kristen puts her hand up as if to stop me from any further nattering.

“I believe the evidence, Connor,” she says. No emotion. “Your semen was inside of the victim. That’s a fact. That’s something that will carry you through to a conviction. Maybe you don’t remember doing it. I don’t know if there’s a plausible excuse for that kind of a lapse—and, really, I just can’t believe it.”

“You know me, Kristen.”

“You lied to me. You lied to everyone. Didn’t you?”

“No. I didn’t,” I say, suddenly feeling like I’m involved in a tit-for-tat kid’s game.

“You knew Sophie Warner, didn’t you? Isn’t that true?”

Having her stating the truth like that, so starkly, is like a sledgehammer to the chest.

“I didn’t kill her.”

“The evidence the police have says otherwise.”

“I loved her,” I say. “I would never kill her.”

Wrong words. I know that immediately. I’m not thinking clearly.