The Guilty One Read Online Free

ushered her around the corner of the building, which was sheltered from the wind and quieter. Maris followed him there, keeping her eyes on the badge pinned to his windbreaker, the holster on his belt.
    â€œYour friend, he’s a man? Adult man?”
    â€œYes—”
    â€œHe didn’t jump. He came here during the earlier shift, they waited with him until his wife—” The man stopped and looked at her carefully. Maris was conscious of her stricken expression, her lack of makeup and lank, greasy hair. “Until a woman came to pick him up. You know who this might be?”
    Relief flooded Maris. “No one jumped today?” she said.
    â€œNo. There was just this one man who went over the edge midspan, but he talked to the officers and came back.”
    â€œAnd they let him go home?” With Deb. Of course Deb would come immediately. She was a good wife, one who stayed by her man no matter what.
    â€œYes. I can have the officers call you if you want—”
    â€œNo. No. Thank you, I don’t need to, I just needed to know that—that he’s, that he’s all right.”
    Already Maris was backing away. She knew her thanks were inadequate, that she had misrepresented herself. She hurried back into the noise and wind, practically ran for her car. When she started the engine, she was trembling. She drove slowly, carefully, the way one drives after being stopped for speeding.
    The air in the car was chilly and stale; she’d driven all the way here with the air-conditioning on high. The weather today was Maris’s least favorite kind, hot and windless, the sky a hazy steel blue. Back in Kansas, where Maris had lived with her mother and sister until high school, such a sky would lord itself over August wheat until lightning ripped through, announcing splattering storms. But here in California, there was no lightning, no storms, just endless talk of drought and ruin, the hills burned brown and fields left unplanted. Inside the house where Maris retreated, there had been nothing but the hum of the air conditioner, the clink of ice shifting in the freezer. Jeff’s departure had galvanized her to ask Alana if she could come stay, but Maris hadn’t been sure she would be able to pull it off, actually putting her things in the car. Actually driving away.
    She might have chickened out about going to Alana’s, chosen to stay numb, to simply give up and die in the house rather than venturing out into the world again. And then Ron had called, and what he threatened to do had ripped her from her self-imposed exile. And maybe she ought to thank him for that. Except—how dare he?
    Maris gripped the steering wheel hard, claustrophobic in the slow-moving traffic through the Presidio. How could he have possibly thought that his life could be worth anything to her? Even if he could die a thousand times, it would never make up for Calla, for the fact that his son had killed her daughter. Maybe she should have told him to go ahead and jump—if only as punishment for his audacity, his selfishness. No, his self- indulgence . Because wasn’t that really what his call was all about? Poor me, she imagined him thinking, drawing out the exquisite luxury of self-pity. A truly repentant man would have simply jumped—he wouldn’t have given himself a lifeline in the guise of that damn phone call.
    Do it, she should have said. Jump! And then she could have gone to his funeral and savored Deb’s loss, her pain. Not that the loss of a husband could ever compare to the loss of a child. But it would have been something.
    A horn honked, then another. A cacophony of them as traffic struggled around a truck stalled on an exit ramp. Ridiculous, to attempt this at this time of day, with no way to get around the city crush and the Bay Bridge approach, the rush-hour commuters all heading out. There, at least, was one advantage of being homebound by grief: no traffic.
    As she