He turned away from her, paced the room, voice bitter. “And do you think I did it?”

That startled her. “No. Of course not. Absolutely not! But why didn’t you tell me when you talked about Jessica last night? It must have been so painful for you…so horrible to be accused like that.”

She could only scratch the surface of imaginings of what he had been through. He had loved his wife. She had been killed, after they’d argued. And then in that intense, soul-shattering grief, he had been arrested for doing such a heinous act.

His thumb twitched, but he stopped walking. “Horrible? Oh, yeah, it was horrible. That’s why I didn’t tell you, Mandy. How do I find the words to tell you that the cops thought I followed my wife, angry that she’d spent too much money, angry that she flirted with other men, and I raped her, and closed my fingers around her neck and squeezed the life out of her?”

His voice cracked.

“Damien…” Even she could hear the pity in her own voice.

“Don’t.” He raised his hand. “Please don’t feel sorry for me. I saw that so many times at first, the deep pity people felt for me. They meant well, but it was smothering to look at so many faces and never feel normal, never have them understand that my life was over just as sure as Jessica’s. Then the looks turned, and they started to suspect, started to question, started to remember all the times that Jessica and I had fought, how she’d complained about my stinginess, how she ran around with other men, and really who could blame a husband for being angry about that? But murder…it was there in all their eyes, in the cold, hard stare of the detectives, in the prosecutor. They all thought I did it.”

Damien clamped his mouth shut to stem the words. He hadn’t meant to tell her this, any of this, ever. But he couldn’t stop it all from spewing out of his mouth. “I didn’t tell you because there’s nothing to tell. It’s ugly, it’s bitter and hateful, and it’s thankfully over. But if you want, I’ll tell you all the evidence they supposedly had against me, and I’ll tell you why they didn’t indict if that would make you feel better. Tell you all about forensic evidence and how my semen was found in her, and my skin under her fingernails, because before our argument we had sex—I mean, how crazy is that? A man sleeping with his own wife?”