Page 33 of It's One of Us
He needs to call his wife.
Needs to avoid the reporter.
Instead of picking up the phone, he walks the house, just to be sure no one has gotten in. He sees nothing amiss on the first floors, no windows unlocked or screens askew. The second floor is too warm, reinforcing why they don’t turn on the heat until it gets damn cold out.
He stops at the room they’ve slated to be a nursery when the time comes. The first pregnancy, they’d gone hog wild, moving out the guest bed and furniture, painting the room a soft green, adding elegant animal murals—an artist friend of Olivia’s who does the nurseries in her houses came by one sunny afternoon and sketched the animals—giraffes, lions, an elephant peeking from the corner. The sketches are simple lines, just a few strokes, almost a shadow of what they could be. Fitting, really, to have shadow animals in this desolate space.
They haven’t touched it since the first miscarriage. No more blankets and booties bought, no more paint and lampshades. No crib. No nursing chair. Just a shaggy throw on top of the gray carpet and the lurking animals with no one to watch over.
He stands there, leaning against the frame, letting his imagination fill in the blanks of what he should be seeing, until his eyes blur with unshed tears and he has to close the door to lock in the possibilities.
Their lives are coming apart, and he can do nothing to stop it.
15
THE WIFE
Olivia’s phone chiming halfway through Park’s recitation of his moments of glory in graduate school gives her exactly what she needs. With half-hearted apologies and promises to check in later, she excuses herself from the meeting. She has never been as grateful for an expedited granite delivery as she is this morning.
Park looks astonished, but the cops only glance at her, don’t push back at all. She is not their primary target, this she knows. They’ll take advantage of having Park to themselves to dive deeper into his sordid past, all the things he can’t—won’t—admit in front of her. She hadn’t been with him when the murder happened in Chapel Hill. She’d been pining away here in Nashville, going to design school and trying to decide which Bender brother she hated more.
She’s managed not to think about it, but God, Perry is coming home. Could he have picked a worse time to make his grand re-entrance into their lives?
She can’t fathom this situation they’ve found themselves in, and the only way she can cope is to work. She will lose herself in samples and glory in architectural drawings. It is the only way she knows to move forward.
On the way to the build, she dials Lindsey, who answers on the first ring.
“Hey, girl. What’s shakin’?”
“Have you talked to Park?”
“No. I was trying to give y’all some space. Why, what’s happening?”
“Oh, it gets better. Or worse. I don’t know what to call it. Did you know Park donated sperm back in grad school?”
“Um...no. And eww. Sorry, talking about my brother’s sperm isn’t something high on our chat list. So that’s how he has a kid, huh? That’s wild.”
“Yeah. Wild.”
“Are you okay, hon? You sound stressed.”
“Finding out my husband lied to me does that. No big.”
“I thought you said you’d encouraged him to donate at one point during all the fertility stuff.”
“I did. I didn’t want him to be left with no one if we couldn’t stay pregnant, and I was pretty clear with him that if something happened to me, I wanted him to find someone and have a family. That’s not what’s going on here. He did this when he was younger. The kids are nearing adulthood. Some already are. And obviously, one is a murderer.”
“All right. That’s arguably very bad. But why are you mad at him? How is it different? Explain it to me.”
“Technically...” Olivia gathers her thoughts. Lindsey is right. She’s being a bit hypocritical. What difference does it make that he donated sperm then, or now? “When I brought it up, he didn’t tell me. That’s the issue. He had every opportunity to say hey, Liv, just FYI, I donated years ago, don’t worry, my evolutionary trail is covered.”
“But you would have been upset.”
“Damn straight. I’m upset now.”
“Understandable. I’m not defending him, truly. But I can see him not wanting to mention it to you simply because he knew it would set you off. It would setmeoff. Wait. You saidkids, plural. There’s more than one?”
“Are you sitting down? There’s twenty-eight of them. And counting, apparently.”
