The Man Who Looks Like Him

Chapter 2

The courtroom came back into focus when the bailiff shifted beside her.

“Mrs. Loudrick,” the judge said, softer now, as if softness meant anything after a sentence had already been handed down. “Do you understand?”

Do you understand?

Taylor lifted her head for the first time.

The judge was an older man with silver at his temples and reading glasses low on his nose. He looked at her with that same expression she had seen all through the trial—measured sympathy from a safe distance. The kind people wore when they felt bad for you, but not bad enough to risk believing you completely.

She swallowed once. “Yes, Your Honor.” Her voice didn’t sound like hers.

The judge nodded, relieved by her composure. As if that made this easier for him.

Taylor lowered her eyes again before she did something reckless. Before she said what she wanted to say. That if Andrew had killed her that night, they would have believed every word.

A hand closed around her arm. “Ma’am,” the bailiff said quietly.

She stood because he expected her to. Because she had always stood when men told her to. The thought came and went so quickly it barely registered, but it left a sour taste in her mouth.

Her mother was crying openly now. Her father stared straight ahead with the rigid, stunned expression of a man trying not to come apart in public. Taylor caught only a glimpse of them before the bailiff began to guide her away.

Her mother reached for her. “Taylor—”

The chain at Taylor’s wrists tightened as she was turned toward the side exit.

“It’s okay,” Taylor heard herself say, though it wasn’t, and never would be again. “Mom, it’s okay.”

It was a lie so instinctive it slipped out before she could stop it. She had spent half her life saying those words.

It’s okay.

I’m okay.

He didn’t mean it.

It won’t happen again.

Outside the courtroom doors, the noise changed. The hush of legal decorum gave way to movement—boots against tile, distant phones ringing, voices low and busy and detached. The machinery of the system grinding on to the next tragedy.

Taylor was halfway down the corridor when it happened.

A smell, sharp and bitter, a hint of metal. Someone’s dropped bottle of celebratory red wine. Not blood, but just like that, she was back in the kitchen.

----

June 23, 2015.

Andrew had come home angry. He wasn’t loud. That would’ve been easier. It would’ve announced him and gave her time to brace.

No, Andrew had come home quiet. And with him, quiet meant danger.

Taylor had known it from the way he dropped his keys into the ceramic bowl by the door instead of setting them down. From the clipped kiss he pressed to her temple. From the way his jaw worked while she asked him if he wanted dinner.

He had barely touched his food.

She’d made chicken piccata. His favorite. Lemon, capers, too much butter because he liked it that way. She remembered absurd details like that now, as if her mind had decided the garnish mattered.

The argument hadn’t even started as an argument. He made a comment about the house being a mess. She said she’d been out picking up his dry cleaning and hadn’t had time. He asked why she always had an excuse for everything. She said she wasn’t making excuses.

Wrong answer.

By the time she reached for her wineglass, her hands were already shaking. The spill was small. Barely half a glass. A splash of red across the front of his white button-down.

For one impossible second, neither of them moved. Taylor stared in terror at the stain spreading over his chest.

Andrew stared at her, then he smiled. That was the worst part, that smile. Because she knew that smile. It meant he had gone somewhere inside himself she would not be able to reach.

“Look what you did,” he said softly.

“Andrew, I’m sorry—”

The chair scraped back hard enough to jolt against the hardwood floor. Taylor stumbled to her feet just as he crossed the kitchen in three strides and ripped the chef’s knife from the butcher block.

Her scream barely sounded human.

She ran.