Page 24 of Stay Away from Him

“You’re a good dad.”

Thomas sighed and shook his head, dismissing the compliment. “But then the police decided to declare Rose dead,presumeddead, and suddenly they started looking atmeas a suspect, and…I don’t know. It broke me, Melissa. Into a million pieces. To be looking for someone, to be as desperate as I was for her to be okay—and then for the world to take it into their heads that I’d killed her? That I was capable of that? I kept on trying to imagine it, to imagine doing what they said I’d done. To…to stab her to death with a kitchen knife. To roll her up in a tarp, my beautiful wife, like she was nothing more than some trash I was hauling away, to take her to a field and—”

Melissa’s breath came shallow, listening to Thomas describe it. The specificity of what he was saying—a kitchen knife, a tarp, a field—shocked her. These were things she hadn’t heard before, things Lawrence hadn’t bothered to tell her. She snatched her hand away from Thomas’s like she was touching something hot. How could Thomas even imagine such things, have these things in his head? Unless…

“That’s what they accused me of,” Thomas said. “That’s whatthey said I did.” He looked at her with eyes large and pleading, and Melissa realized she’d hurt him by pulling back her hand, by breaking contact with him just then, when he was talking about something that caused him pain. She should reach for him again, she knew, reassure him. But she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry for bringing it up. You don’t have to talk about it.”

“No, I do. I want to finish.” He took a deep breath, let it out. “It honestly makes me sick to even think about it. To think about doing those things. I couldn’t. I’m a doctor. A healer. A protector. Not a killer.”

“I believe you,” Melissa whispered, as though trying to convince herself. Then she said it again, more loudly: “I believe you. Okay?” Her moment of being unnerved by the specifics of it, the details of the accusations against Thomas, passed. She felt herself moving toward him again, tilting into his gravity, his pain. What she wanted, she realized, was tofixThomas, to heal him, to release him from the overpowering emotions that gripped him as he talked through his plea of innocence. He’d claimed that being accused of his wife’s murder broke him into a million pieces. And he wasstillbroken, Melissa could see now, still trying to heal, the cracks still showing. His girls were too. The three of them each carried it differently, the trauma they’d endured—but each of them was hurting in their own way.

“Hey,” Melissa said, trying to catch his eye. “Look at me. I believe you, all right? You’re a good man.”

Thomas let out a grim, exhausted chuckle. “I know of some people who’d like to tell you different.”

“Well, I don’t care what they say. Because I know what I see. I know what Iknow.”

“What do you know?”

She smiled and leaned forward, once more running her handup Thomas’s forearm to the crook of his elbow. “I know that you’re handsome. That you have a kind face. That you saw me, and that I saw you, and that there was something undeniable in it.Issomething undeniable. Something exciting and comforting at the same time. Something that feels like—that feels like itcould be—home.”

“Yes,” Thomas said softly.

“And I know that my son is comfortable around you. That you put him at ease. That you’re the kind of man he deserves to have in his life.”

Thomas sat back and let out a deep sigh. They both spent a long moment in silence.

“Well,” Thomas said after the pause, “things got serious at this table, didn’t they?”

“They did.”

“Where do we go from here?”

“I have no idea,” Melissa said. She glanced behind her and spotted a corridor at the other side of the dining room, a sign for the restrooms. “Tell you what. I’m going to the ladies’ room. And when I come back, we’re going to start over. Keep it light from now on. Deal?”

Thomas nodded. “Deal.”

***

In the bathroom, Melissa gave herself a long, hard look in the mirror. Like most people, she must have glanced at her reflection a dozen times a day, brushing her teeth, checking her makeup. But there was something different about the way she looked at herself now. It was one of those times she looked in the mirror and was surprised by the person she saw there. The woman in the mirror was calm, she was collected, she was beautiful. She looked like she knew exactly what she wanted. Glowing with the certainty of it.

There was no one else in the bathroom, so Melissa let herself speak out loud. “That’s me.” Then she kissed the tip of her finger and planted it on the mirror.

When she got back to the table, there was a woman standing close to Thomas, talking to him. Blond, tan, attractive, the black straps of her bra visible underneath a tank top, shoulders bared and gleaming under the lights.

Thomas glanced at Melissa as she walked up. “Here she is now,” he said, as though he was just talking about her.

“Can I help you?” Melissa said to the woman.

“I was just leaving,” she said coldly, and then walked away.

Melissa grinned as the woman receded to the bar. “Told you.”

“Told me what?” Thomas asked.

“That someone would hit on you if I stepped away from the table.”

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