On the Table She Finally Recognized Me

Chapter 2 The Marriage

The investigators were not impressed with my revelation. Detective Marsh, the woman, had a face like a closed door. Her partner, Detective Keller, was softer around the edges but kept looking at me like I was a suspect.

"You're saying you're the ex-wife," Marsh said. "And you just happened to be the medical examiner on call tonight."

"I'm the chief medical examiner. I'm always on call."

"Convenient."

I didn't bother to correct her. Convenient was the last word I would have used. I had spent nine years building a life that did not include Daniel Reyes. I had built walls so high and so thick that even I couldn't see over them. And now he was back, in the worst possible way, and I was standing in a morgue at three in the morning trying to explain a marriage I had never explained to anyone.

"We need a full statement," Keller said. "Where you were tonight, your relationship history, any knowledge of threats against him."

"I was here," I said. "I was on shift. And I haven't spoken to Daniel in nine years."

Two pairs of eyes stared at me.

"But you recognized him," Marsh said. "You recognized the body immediately."

"Because I know him."

"Knew him. You said nine years."

"I said I hadn't spoken to him. That's not the same as not knowing him."

Marsh made a note. I couldn't see what she wrote, but I could imagine. Estranged wife. Possible suspect. Emotional instability questionable. She would check my alibi, interview my staff, dig through my personal life. And she would find nothing, because I had been careful. I had always been careful.

But Daniel had not been careful. Daniel had never been careful in his life.

They let me go at six in the morning, after I had given a statement that felt like a confession. I drove home through the gray pre-dawn, the streets of Bell Harbor empty and wet with last night's rain. Bell Harbor was a small coastal city that had once been a fishing town and was now mostly a destination for people with money who wanted to pretend they had taste. I lived in a bungalow near the cliffs, far from the downtown sprawl, in a neighborhood where nobody asked questions.

I made coffee. I did not drink it. I sat at my kitchen table and stared at the wall and let the memories come, because there was no stopping them now.

I had met Daniel at a bar in the city, back when I was a first-year medical resident and he was a freelance photographer who had just come back from six months in South America. He was handsome in a way that felt accidental, like he hadn't meant to be, like he'd been given a face and a body and had never quite figured out what to do with them. He had a laugh that filled a room and a habit of touching the red cord on his wrist when he was nervous.

We had married three years later, on a beach in Portugal, with no one but a local officiant and a stray dog as witnesses. It had been the happiest day of my life. It had also been the last truly happy day.

The trouble started slowly, the way it always does. A missed dinner here. A late night at the studio there. He was working on a book, a collection of photographs of the California coastline, and it was going to be his masterpiece. He was sure of it. He had never been more sure of anything in his life.

And then he had met her.

I didn't know her name for a long time. I only knew that he was coming home later and later, that he was distracted, that he was touching that cord again, all the time. I had asked him once, and he had told me it was nothing. I had believed him, because I had wanted to.

I found out the truth six weeks later. I found out because she called the house, and I answered, and she said his name like she had a right to it.

"Daniel," she said. "Tell me you've told her."

I hung up. I waited for him to come home. And when he did, I did not yell. I did not cry. I did something far worse.

I went cold.

For three months, I lived in the same house as a stranger. For three months, I made my coffee in the morning and left before he woke. I came home after he was asleep. I did not touch him. I did not look at him. I did not speak to him except to say pass the salt, or the mail came, or I'll be late. He tried to apologize. He tried to explain. He tried to tell me it had meant nothing, that she had meant nothing, that he had been stupid and lost and afraid.

I did not listen.

And then one day, I came home and he was gone. His cameras, his clothes, his books, the framed photograph of us in Portugal—all of it gone. He had left the red cord on the kitchen table. He had left everything else, but not the cord.

I had picked it up and held it in my hand for a long time. Then I had put it in a drawer and closed it.

I had not thought about him for nine years. Or rather, I had thought about him every day but had built a life around the thinking, a life that did not require me to remember. I had become the best forensic pathologist in the state. I had published papers. I had trained residents. I had built a reputation for precision, for detachment, for a kind of coldness that people found off-putting but respected.

And now Daniel was dead, and someone had left him for me to find.

I looked at the clock. It was nearly seven. I had a job to do. But first, I needed to do something else.

I opened the drawer in my bedroom. It was still there, buried under old receipts and a spare key. The red cord.

I had lied to the detectives. There were two cords. I had given him one, and I had kept one for myself, tied around my own wrist for a year after he left. Then I had taken it off and put it away, because it had stopped feeling like a promise and started feeling like a wound.

I held it now, and it was still red. Still braided. Still the same knot.

I tied it around my wrist and pulled it tight.

Then I went to work.