The Perfect Husband - Lisa Gardner [41]
“The Nogales police will be faxing you some prints this afternoon. I want you to run them for me immediately. Call me here as soon as you know. Talk only to me. Are we clear? No, no, I have to go through the police—I don’t have a fax machine here. It’s not a big deal. They’re just backwater cops, they’ll cooperate. We can trust them.”
NINE
NIGHTFALL. J.T. STOOD over the barbecue wearing a Red Hot Cajun Lover apron and grilling boneless breasts of chicken. Marion was tossing a salad and downing beers as if she were determined to pick up where her brother had left off.
Tess didn’t cook anything. She didn’t help with anything, and J.T. and Marion seemed fine with that. It had been seven years since she’d had someone cook for her. She found she wasn’t very good at letting go. Her fingers twitched at her sides while the anxiety built in her belly. She was supposed to look perfect for dinner, hair done, makeup done, dressed to the nines. She was supposed to have Samantha fed ahead of time so she would play quietly in the bassinet, where Jim could admire his child without being bothered by her. The table had to be set a certain way, candles lit, flowers fresh, forks on the left, dessert spoon above, knife and spoon on the right. Their three-bedroom house should be spotless, the old hardwood floor smelling of lemon wax while the area rugs were freshly vacuumed and cleared of children’s toys.
Jim had chosen their house because of the beautifully carved wood trim around the fireplace and windows. In other old homes, some generation always made the mistake of painting the trim white or cream or olive green. Fine old wood latexed out of existence. Not in their home. Jim had turned the original oak trim over to her like a precious gem. It had survived one hundred and twenty years. It gave their home the class and elegance befitting a decorated police officer. Nothing had better happen to the mantel or the banister or the doorjambs on her watch.
When Samantha was one year old, she’d gotten her hands on a spatula covered in spaghetti sauce. She’d waved it with glee, promptly splattering red dye no. 5 all over herself, the walls, and the oak windowsill. Two drops on the hundred-and-twenty-year-old wood and Theresa couldn’t get them to come all the way out. She tried Formula 409, she tried mayonnaise. She set a plant there on a lace doily and hoped Jim would never figure out that she’d failed in her mission. Two weeks later he’d dragged her out of bed at two A.M. He took her down to the kitchen. He handed her sandpaper and stain. And he stood over her until seven A.M., supervising her sanding down and restaining the window frame, his arms crossed and his face grim. Samantha began to cry upstairs.
Jim made her continue to work while her arms ached, her eyelids dragged down, and her daughter sobbed her name in the little room above.
Tess curled her fingers into the lounge cushion to get them to stop shaking. Those days were gone. She could rest if she wanted. She could wear old shorts and a T-shirt to the dinner table. She could play games with her daughter in the living room without worrying about a Lego hiding under the sofa and getting her in trouble later. She could abstain from makeup. She could simply be herself.
If she could ever figure out who that person was.
She rolled onto her stomach and carefully stretched out her back. She hurt. J.T. had led her through a tough regimen of swimming and weight lifting. She figured she must have some muscle after all, because surely bone couldn’t hurt that much.
J.T. had done most of it with her. He’d stretched. He’d done fifty push-ups