Page 47 of The Wife

“Except she didn’t hire an employment lawyer. She said she hired someone to protect her ‘victim’s rights.’” He placed air quotes around the words with both hands. “She wouldn’t give me the lawyer’s name, but she definitely doesn’t want to answer any hard questions—the kinds she’ll face on cross. And if Olivia Randall finds out our victim’s hired a lawyer already, she’s going to claim that the real motive for this case is money in a civil suit.”

“So where does that leave us?”

“It leavesmewith a case my boss wants me to take to trial. I tried telling him I have a bad feeling, but all he knows is that we’ve got a rich celebrity accused by two different women in a week. If we don’t charge him, he’ll be accused of favoritism. When I told him Olivia Randall was here trying to get the case dumped, he told me I could offer him seven years. Seven years? You can kill someone in this city and get seven years. He’s going to make me try the case, and Olivia Randall’s going to make it feel like getting stabbed in the eye every single day for a month straight.”

“So are we going to arrest him on a warrant, or let him turn himself in?”

“Oh, there’s no doubt he’s getting a perp walk. I’ve got the affidavit for the arrest warrant ready to go, just like I promised the boss. You ready to pick this guy up? If we’re lucky, you might bump into the wife and have a little chat with her about the hooker. She may be a total doormat, but no woman wants to know she’s been swapping bodily fluids with a pro.”

29

I should have known that nothing good was going to come of my phone call to Olivia Randall when she began with her attempt at small talk. “So Jason told me you drove Spencer to camp this morning?” I heard a pause midsentence and pictured her checking her notes to confirm my son’s name.

“Yeah, up in Westchester, outside South Salem. Almost Connecticut, really.”

“That’s great that he gets to go to camp. Gives you a break, right?”

I was glad we weren’t speaking in person, so she couldn’t see my glare.

“Jason said you wanted to speak to me?”

She thanked me for calling and explained again why she had kept me out of her meetings with Jason and Colin. I assured her it wasn’t necessary to repeat the reasons.

“So my understanding is that Jason has told you that our defense is that the contact between him and the complainant was consensual.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Did he also tell you that he doesn’t have any texts or e-mails to prove they had a relationship?”

“No.” He hadn’t told me that, but it explained why I hadn’t been able to find any, despite all my attempts.

“Obviously it would be helpful if a third party could corroborate his version.”

“If anyone could, it would have been Colin. He already told me that he suspected, but didn’t really know anything.”

“I wasn’t talking about Colin. I was talking about you. Jason indicated that you may have been aware that there was someone else.”

“You’re asking me to lie for him. Just say it.”

“No, I’m explaining how you might be in a position to help, if you wanted to. I understand that this isn’t easy. To be clear, Jason has no idea I’m talking to you about this, and it has been a real challenge to get him to open up to me about your marriage, although I’m sure you can see how it will be relevant to his case.”

I closed my eyes. I could feel all of the doors ripping open around me, and there was no way I could pull them shut. Every new word she spoke made me feel dizzy.

“He says that intimacy—or physical intimacy, at least—has not been a regular part of your marriage, and not at all for three years.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Please, hear me out. We have a good argument for consent, and all we really need is reasonable doubt. But it’s hard to paint Jason as the good guy when his defense is that he was leading a secret life, cheating on his wife. If that part of your relationship was over, if you knew—if even part of you knew... Some couples have unspoken understandings. Maybe the two of you even had a good reason for separating that aspect of intimacy from your marriage.”

She knew. She fucking knew. It wasn’t going to be enough for me to smile and stand by Jason’s side and make sure the whole world knew that I believed he was innocent. She neededmeto be the reason he cheated. I would be the screwed-up wife who was too frigid to keep a young, attractive man happy in the bedroom. He would seem heroic for loving me in the first place and then staying with me despite all my damage.

I cut to the chase. “You think the DA will back off if he knows I’m the girl who spent three years getting tortured by Charles Franklin.”

“I’ll be honest, Angela. This is not exactly my favorite part of the job. But, yes, your background gives a different dimension to your marriage and therefore to Jason’s interactions with this woman.”

So I was right. Jason had told her about me, unless, of course, Olivia had found out on her own, which seemed plausible. “I didn’t know about Kerry,” I said. “At least, not specifically about her. And definitely not about a three-monthrelationship.”

“So three months is longer than you suspected?”

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