Worse than Elizabeth’s discomfort was the voice I could hear in my head. Aimee’s raspy tone: Those vultures want to pick your bones clean. They’ll be feasting on you at every gossip session for a month.

“And the reporters, they’re always there?”

“Since I got home after …” I didn’t want to say after my husband showed up covered in blood and we fled in terror to spend the night at the police station.

She frowned, her lips pinched together. “That’s ridiculous. I’m going to—” She shook her head. “Later, I’ll make some calls. Tell me about Grace. It’s only been a week, but she looks like she’s growing.”

For the rest of the day, we pretended nothing was wrong, absorbed in the babies and the food and the comfort of each other’s presence. We were still there on the floor when Michael came home from work.

“How did it go?” I asked automatically, and then flinched. He wouldn’t want to talk about this in front of Elizabeth. Maybe he’d been fired; maybe we’d be homeless. He gave me a wan smile and shrugged, and the only thing I could tell from that was what I already knew. My husband was exhausted.

As Michael fumbled for words and I struggled to tell Elizabeth how grateful I was, she got Theo settled in his car seat and put her packet of wipes, her baby’s play quilt, and the remains of our lunch back in her bag. Then she gave me a quick, fierce hug, and without another word, she hefted the car seat and left, not sparing so much as a sideways glance for the reporters on our lawn, not even the one I recognized from CNN.

Without her comforting presence, the room seemed darker. I asked again. “How was it?”

“Okay. Just like I said. Everything is okay.” He took me in his arms, and for just a second I let myself relax, even though I knew things couldn’t have been that easy. Oh, I really wanted to believe in this lucky moment. Michael wasn’t fired, we still had a paycheck, our family was intact. For now.

But I couldn’t shake the fear born of a thousand true-crime dramas that he still might be charged. And that was the big legal fear. The personal one was that he’d already been tried and found guilty in the eyes of everyone in Texas.

My peace didn’t last a second longer than our embrace.

C2C TRANSCRIPT

8

Helen: So this is where things get weird. According to everything I could find, the police hadn’t identified an active serial killer at this point. Some of the cases were classified as missing persons, some hadn’t been reported at all, and only Frankie Watts, victim number two, and one couple, Jessica and Damen Weber, had been discovered and were being investigated as homicides.