Rating: ★★★★☆ Tags: Mystery Detective, General, Fiction

Would you still love me if? Would you
still love me if
I smacked Go? 
Would you still love me if
I
robbed a bank? 
Would you still love me if
I killed
someone?’
I said nothing. My breath was coming too fast.
‘I would still love you,’ Go said.
‘Go, do you really need me to say it?’
She stayed silent.
‘I did not kill Amy.’
She stayed silent.
‘Do you believe me?’ I asked.
‘I love you.’
She put her hand on my shoulder and went to her
bedroom, shut the door. I waited to see the light go on in
the room, but it stayed dark.
Two seconds later, my cell phone rang. This time, it was the

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disposable cell that I needed to get rid of and couldn’t
because I always, always, always had to pick up for Andie.
Once a day, Nick. We need to talk once a day
.
I realized I was grinding my teeth.
I took a breath.
Far out on the edge of town were the remains of an Old
West fort that was now yet another park that no one ever
went to. All that was left was the two-story wooden
watchtower, surrounded by rusted swing sets and teeter-
totters. Andie and I had met there once, groping each other
inside the shade of the watchtower.
I did three long loops around town in my mom’s old car
to be sure I was not tracked. It was madness to go – it
wasn’t yet ten o’clock – but I had no say in our rendezvous
anymore. 
I need to see you, Nick, tonight, right now, or I
swear to you, I will lose it
. As I pulled up to the fort, I was hit
by the remoteness of it and what it meant: Andie was still
willing to meet me in a lonely, unlit place, me the pregnant
wife killer. As I walked toward the tower through the thick,
scratchy grass, I could just see her outline in the tiny window
of the wooden watchtower.
She is going to undo you, Nick
. I quick-stepped the
rest of the way.
An hour later I was huddled in the paparazzi-infested house,
waiting. Rand said they’d know before midnight whether my
wife was pregnant. When the phone rang, I grabbed it
immediately only to find it was goddamn Comfort Hill. My
father was gone again. The cops had been notified. As
always, they made it sound as if I were the jackass. 
If this

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happens again, we are going to have to terminate your
father’s stay with us
. I had a sickening chill: My dad moving
in with me – two pathetic, angry bastards – it would surely
make for the worst buddy comedy in the world. The ending
would be a murder-suicide. Ba-dum-dum! Cue the laff
track.
I was getting off the phone, peering out the back
window at the river – 
stay calm, Nick
– when I saw a
huddled figure down by the boathouse. I thought it must be
a stray reporter, but then I recognized something in those
balled fists and tight shoulders. Comfort Hill was about a
thirty-minute walk straight down River Road. He somehow
remembered our house when he couldn’t remember me.
I went outside into the darkness to see him dangling a
foot over the bank, staring into the river. Less bedraggled
than before, although he smelled tangy with sweat.
‘Dad? What are you doing here? Everyone’s worried.’
He looked at me with dark brown eyes, sharp eyes, not
the glazed-milk color some elderly acquire. It would have
been less disconcerting if they’d been milky.
‘She told me to come,’ he snapped. ‘She told me to
come. This is my house, I can come whenever I want.’
‘You walked all the way here?’
‘I can come here anytime. You may hate me, but she
loves me.’
I almost laughed. Even my father was reinventing a
relationship with Amy.
A few photographers on my front lawn began shooting.
I had to get my dad back to the home. I could picture the
article they’d have to cook up to go along with this exclusive
footage: What kind of father was Bill Dunne, what kind of

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man did he raise? Good God, if my dad started in on one
of his harangues against 
the bitches
… I dialed Comfort
Hill, and after some finagling, they sent an orderly to
retrieve him. I made a display of walking him gently to the
sedan, murmuring reassuringly as the photographers got
their shots.
My dad
. I smiled as he left. I tried to make it seem very
proud-son. The reporters asked me if I killed my wife. I was
retreating to the house when a cop car pulled up.
It was Boney who came to my home, braving the paparazzi,
to tell me. She did it kindly, in a gentle-fingertip voice.
Amy was pregnant.
My wife was gone with my baby inside her. Boney
watched me, waiting for my reaction – make it part of the
police report – so I told myself, 
Act correctly, don’t blow it,
act the way a man acts when he hears this news
. I ducked
my head into my hands and muttered, 
Oh God, oh God
,
and while I was doing it, I saw my wife on the floor of our
kitchen, her hands around her belly and her head bashed
in.

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