Page 115 of The New Couple in 5B

But there’s no answer as I wait in the foyer.

I’ve never felt so totally alone. Not since I left home and came to the city by myself to go to school. I remember lying on my dorm room bed, staring at the ceiling, listening to the city noise, and thinking I might as well be on the moon so far away was I from everything I had known. I had a new roommate, a girl named Noel, but she was a stranger sleeping on the other bed. The loneliness was almost unbearable.

“Ms. Lowan?”

I spin to see Detective Crowe standing before me. In his gloved hands, he holds a gun, a flat black menace across his palms.

“Whatis that?”

“Is it yours?”

“No,” I say, frowning. “Of course not.”

A gun. In our house. How could I not have known about it? What else am I not seeing that’s right in front of me?

“It was in the kitchen, sitting on top of the cabinets.”

“We don’t have a gun,” I say, staring at it. “Maybe it was Ivan’s.”

I follow him back inside my apartment and he slips the gun into a plastic evidence bag, hands it to a waiting officer. It looks so foreign. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a real gun. Even from where I’m sitting, it looks old, dusty. Maybe it’s been up there for decades, untouched? I hope.

I sink onto the couch, and he sits across from me. He steeples his fingers in that way that he does and looks up at the ceiling as if wondering how to say what he wants to say.

Then, “I spent a lot of time talking to the cop who investigated Bethany Wright’s murder. You know what he said about your husband?”

I’ve read every word Detective Marlo Graves has to say about my husband. He is a vocal and passionate believer that Chad got away with murder and the wrong person is in jail. He’ll tell anyone who will listen. I say nothing.

“That he’s a sociopath and a stone-cold killer. Graves believes that your husband killed his girlfriend Bethany, then somehow menaced her mentally challenged brother into confessing. He also believes, though he can’t prove and has no evidence, that Chad Lowan tampered with his parents’ car and was responsible for their deaths, as well.”

This does not surprise me. I’ve heard all these things before.

“It’s not true. None of that is true.”

“I know you want to believe that,” he says with a careful nod, and for a moment he almost seems like he cares about me, about us. “We always want to believe that the people we love are who we think they are.”

Again, I opt for silence, willing my phone to ring. It stays dark and heavy in my hand. I feel like my lifeline to Chad has been cut, that he’s floating further and further away from me.

“Do you know what I think?” he asks into the silence.

“I have a feeling you’re going to tell me.”

“I think your husband is a very talented actor, and he’s been playing a role for you, wearing a mask.”

I flash on the image of him in his horrible witch costume on stage, hear Dana’s words that he shared with me that so closely echo what the detective is saying.

I close my eyes and try to feel Chad’s energy. His love. His kindness. His arms around me. I don’t know where he is, but I can feel him. My husband. My love.

“You’re wrong.”

He stares at me long, then, “I hope I am.”

When he rises, I stay on the couch, the room, my world spinning.

What next? What should I do?

I can’t just sit here, waiting for the next horrible event or piece of terrible news.

Should I call Max? No, because then I’ll have to tell him all these things about Chad.

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