“Are you okay?” Detective Puhl asked.

This wasn’t working.

“Mrs. Wilson?” She seemed to let her tongue linger over the syllables. “Are you all right?”

I shouldn’t have come here.

“Mrs. Wilson?”

“Yes,” I said, my voice shaking, and I straightened up in my chair. I cleared my throat. “Look, I think maybe we got off to a bad start. I’m not…”

“Not what?” Detective Puhl asked, leaning even farther across the table.

It was an intimidation tactic, I knew, yet I still couldn’t find the right words.

“I didn’t…”

“Didn’t what?” Detective Puhl said again, her voice louder.

I was losing control of the situation. “No, you don’t understand,” I said. “It’s not what it seems like. I have a—”

“Husband?” Detective Puhl said.

The single word, said so knowingly, catapulted over the table and slapped me across the face. I locked eyes with her, unsure how to respond, but then I didn’t have to, because she kept talking.

“I know you do, Mrs. Wilson,” she said, and there was something like satisfaction on her face. “You’ve been saying that since you arrived.”

Had I?

I finally swallowed and looked up at the clock.

Maybe I’d mentioned it once or twice, but certainly not more than that.

Right?

The sick feeling continued to grow, and she stared at me with a knowing look in her eyes. I began to recognize, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that coming here had been a mistake.

A big mistake.

Detective Puhl leaned back in her chair and shared another glance with the strangely silent Detective Greg before looking back at me.

“That’s the reason we’re supposed to believe everything you’re saying, right?” she asked, and she actually smiled a little bit. “We should believe you because you have a husband, and let me guess—you love him very much?”

• • •

Maybe I shouldn’t have rehearsed so much.

I’d gone over my story several times before I walked into the police station and asked for Detective Puhl. I’d first seen her on TV a few days earlier, tall, sharp, and serious in her navy blazer. She was the first person I’d thought of after the break-in, but it had still taken me a full hour to muster up the courage to go in to see her.

As I sat in front of her and Detective Greg, I wished I’d rehearsed a little bit less; the words fell from my lips in a way that was too practiced, too perfect.

I’d started off by telling them about the grandparents.