Accused

by Mark Gimenez

  "Remember that spring break?" Rebecca asked.

  He did. They had come to Galveston with a group from SMU, he the former football star and she the reigning Miss SMU. They had partied at the Balinese Room and had sex on the beach. Every night.

  "I could never drive past the Balinese without thinking of that week," she said.

  "Why, Rebecca?"

  "Those nights on the beach—"

  "No. Why'd you leave me?"

  Twenty-two months and eleven days he had waited to ask her that question.

  "Scott, I …"

  "I kept your letter. You said—"

  "Don't, Scott. I'm not that person anymore."

  "Rebecca, what did you need from me that I didn't give you?"

  "It wasn't you, Scott. It was me."

  "Was it because I lost everything?"

  "It was because I was lost. I didn't know who I was. I was playing a role. All my life I had played a role. Little Miss Texas. Miss Dallas. Miss SMU. Miss Cheerleader. Mrs. A. Scott Fenney, the most beautiful woman in Highland Park. I felt like I was always onstage … or in a cage. Like an animal in the zoo, everyone staring at me. When the cage door opened, I ran." She faced him. "I'm sorry, Scott. I know I hurt you … both of you."

  They walked another block before Rebecca spoke again.

  "Can I see her? Boo."

  EIGHT

  "And Scotty Junior was a girl named Boo," Rebecca said.

  Scott had parked in the shade of the beach house, but they had not gotten out. They sat and watched Boo on the beach. She had changed into a white swimsuit and was building a sand castle with a little shovel and bucket. Her head of red hair bobbed like a buoy in the Gulf.

  "Last time I saw her, she had her hair in cornrows."

  "That lasted a while then she went to the ponytail."

  "She's so tall."

  "She's eleven now."

  "I sent her birthday presents."

  Boo had never opened them.

  "How is she?"

  "She's good. Makes straight As. They both do."

  "Both who?"

  "She and her sister."

  "Sister? You remarried?"

  "I adopted."

  He pointed at Pajamae, who came running down the beach to Boo. Louis soon followed and stood watch nearby, holding a book in one hand as if reading to the girls below or the gulls above.

  "Shawanda's daughter."

  "That's her? The little black girl you brought home?"

  Scott nodded. "Her mother died. She's mine now."

  "She's living with you in Highland Park?"

  "Yep."

  "How's that working?"

  "It has its moments."

  "I read you got her mother off."

  "She was innocent."

  "So am I."

  They watched the girls a while longer, then Scott said, "She might act mad at first, so be prepared."

  Rebecca took a deep breath and opened her door. They got out and walked to the beach. Pajamae spotted them and waved. Boo looked their way then shielded her eyes from the sun. Her hand dropped, and she stood frozen, as if trying to choose between her anger or her mother. After a long moment, she broke into a big smile and ran to her mother. Rebecca dropped to her knees and held her arms out; Boo dove into her arms, and they fell to the sand. Their heads of red hair became one. Scott left them alone and walked over to Pajamae and Louis.

  "Boo's real happy to see her mama," Pajamae said.

  Louis looked up from his book. "I expect she is."

  Pajamae stood motionless, watching Boo and her mother and wondering if she would lose her sister to that white woman.

  Scott arrived and said, "Honey, let's find some seashells."

  "Soon as I finish this chapter, Mr. Fenney," Louis said.

  "I meant Pajamae."

  "Oh. Say, I like this Cormac dude. Writes like real folks talk." He snapped the book shut like a preacher who had just finished his sermon. "Reckon I'll build us a fire ring. Mr. Herrin, he says we're gonna barbecue shrimp on the beach tonight."

  "Shrimp on the barbie and man beer on the beach," Bobby said. "Doesn't get any better than this."

  They were drinking bottled beer iced in a tin bucket stuck in the sand and eating char-broiled shrimp dipped in Louis's homemade Cajun-style barbecue sauce. Louis had constructed a fire ring from rocks that would have made a brick mason proud. Inside the ring, the fire spit flames up through a black grill that made the shrimp sizzle. They were sitting around the campfire like cowboys on a cattle drive. And there among his friends and his children and his wife—ex-wife, anyway—Scott Fenney felt whole again.

  The air had cooled enough for the girls to need sweat shirts. Boo's head lay in Rebecca's lap and Pajamae's in Boo's lap. They were fighting sleep, afraid they might miss something grownup and interesting. Consuela held Maria in her arms; the baby was wrapped in a blanket like a papoose. The moon and fire provided the only light. The burning wood cracked and popped and spit sparks that floated up into the dark sky and filled the air with a sweet aroma. Rebecca's face glowed in the light of the fire. She had showered, and her red hair was now full and fluffy in the night breeze. She did not look like a murderer.

  "You're in your eighth month?" she said to Karen.

  Karen was eating cookie-dough ice cream out of the carton. Bobby was helping her.

  "And enjoying every constipated moment of it," she said.

  "Louis's barbecue sauce will take care of that," Bobby said.

  "Guaranteed cure for all that ails a body," Louis said.

  Rebecca held her plate out to Louis again. She was eating as if she'd been a political prisoner on a starvation fast in jail; but the food had improved her spirits. She had spent the rest of the day walking the beach with Boo. When Boo had gone inside to clean up, Rebecca had stood alone on the beach, staring out to sea, as if the answer to her prayers lay out there, somewhere. Scott had gone to her and stood by her. She had seemed depressed, but that was to be expected. She was the prime suspect in a murder case. Rebecca now turned to Karen.

  "Did you go to SMU?"

  "Rice."

  "But you're pretty enough to have gotten into SMU."

  "I was smart enough to get into Rice."

  "Oh. So how'd you hook up with these guys?"

  "I worked for Scott at Ford Stevens. Didn't care for that life, so I left to help them with Shawanda's case. Plus, I fell for a certain handsome lawyer."

  "But she married me," Bobby said.

  "Don't make me laugh, Bobby, I'll pee in my pants again."

  "Diaper."

  "You'll be a great father, Bobby," Rebecca said. "Seems like yesterday we were all at SMU … What happened to all that curly hair?"

  "Too much testosterone. Makes you go bald."

  "Oh, that explains it," Karen said. "I've gained forty pounds and he still can't keep his hands off me."

  "I've only gained thirty," Bobby said, digging his spoon into the ice cream carton.

  They talked and laughed and ate shrimp and drank beer, as if they were on a family vacation. Scott wished they were. But they were there because the man who had taken his wife was dead.

  "Those were good times back then," Rebecca said.

  "Last time we were down here, that spring break," Bobby said, "I almost got into a fight at the Balinese with some UT guys. Scotty saved me."

  Boo sat up. "A. Scott got into a fight at the Village," she said. "Mother, it was so exciting!"

  "A fight?" Rebecca said. "At a shopping center?"

  "He beat up a car with his nine-iron," Boo said.

  "Why?"

  "Because I didn't have a three-wood," Scott said.

  "Because the bad man followed me and Pajamae there," Boo said. "So I called A. Scott and he came and broke out the windows on the man's car with his golf club, then the man drove off. It was great."

  "What bad man?"

  "McCall's goon," Scott said.

  "When was this?"

  "The day y
ou left," Boo said.

  "Oh."

  There was an awkward moment of silence. Everyone stared at the sand. Scott stood. "Okay, time for bed."

  "Can Mother stay here? She can sleep with us."

  "She's going home." To Rebecca: "Where is your home?"

  She pointed west into the darkness. "About two miles down the beach. But I can't go home."

  "Why not?"

  "The police told me not to go back when they released me from jail, said it was still a crime scene, said I can't even get my clothes."

  "They've got to finish processing the house soon. Then you can go back."

  "I don't think so. A lawyer for Trey's sister sent me a letter in jail, said I wouldn't be allowed back in, that she was the administrator of his estate and the sole beneficiary. Said she owns the house now, that I have no legal right to enter."

  "I need to see that letter."

  "Scott, I'll stay at a hotel … if you'll loan me the money."

  Scott had put the beach house on his credit card. Four thousand dollars for two months. Now a hotel room for Rebecca. Another expense he couldn't afford.

  "Miz Fenney," Louis said, "you can have my room. Me and Carlos, we'll bunk in."

  Carlos finished off his beer then said, "You snore?"

  Louis shrugged. "How would I know?"

  Boo jumped up and tugged on her mother until she stood. "Come on, we'll have a sleepover. The three of us. You, me, and Pajamae."

  Rebecca looked to Scott. He looked out to sea. The horizon was dotted with the lights of a dozen oil tankers lined up at the entrance to the Ship Channel, transporting oil from the Middle East to refineries in Texas, no longer the center of the crude oil universe. Scott Fenney had once been the center of his wife's universe, or so he had thought; now he was again, but for the law instead of love. He turned back to her and nodded.

  Rebecca Fenney would stay that night and every night until the verdict was read.

  NINE

  Scott was running the beach at first light.

  Knowing that after almost two years Rebecca was again sleeping in the same house—in a bed just on the other side of two Sheetrock panels thin enough that he could hear her every movement—had kept him tossing and turning all night … and recalling memorable moments from their sex life. So when the sunlight hit the blinds of his room, he put on his shorts and running shoes and hit the sand.

  He ran west, away from the rising sun. The wet sand glistened in the morning light and felt spongy beneath his shoes. The tide was out, and the beach sat wide, filled with a fresh assortment of seashells and sand crabs scurrying sideways and jellyfish stranded out of water. Seagulls picked over dead fish, and a pelican stood witness. The wind was down, the sea smooth, and the waves low swells instead of whitecaps. The air was fresh, and the beach was his.

  He ran hard to burn up his desire for her. All that time without her, now they were suddenly living together again. He hadn't bargained for that. But then, he wasn't sure what he had bargained for when he agreed to defend her. It wasn't a lawyerly decision; it was a manly decision. He needed to know how he had failed her as a man.

  Scott Fenney did not have to confront his past during that morning's run—because he was now living it.

  Shortly after Rebecca had left him, a Dallas divorce lawyer who had suffered the same marital fate had shared with Scott his "seven stages of wife desertion":

  (1) disbelief—you're numb with shock that your wife had actually left you for another man;

  (2) denial—you decide she must have a brain tumor, the only plausible explanation for such bizarre behavior;

  (3) anger—you lash out at her for betraying you;

  (4) remorse—you promise to change if she will only return so life can be the same again;

  (5) shame—you isolate yourself because you know that everywhere you go everyone knows;

  (6) blame—she left you and your child, but somehow you failed her. You blame yourself. It was your fault.

  The first five stages, Scott had discovered, pass in due course. But the blame stage lasts … forever? And only when he had escaped from the sixth stage would he embark on the final stage: (7) recovery.

  Would he ever recover from Rebecca Fenney?

  He saw her in the distance, a lone figure dressed in white standing on the beach before a stark white house rising in sharp relief against the blue morning sky. The sun's rays highlighted her and the house and made them both glow. The sand rose up from the beach to a low manmade earthen dune, the developer's apparent attempt to tame the sea. The front portion of the house sat atop the dune, the back half atop tall stilts. But this was not a beach bungalow rented out to tourists and college kids on spring break. It was a four-story multimillion-dollar residence with a second-story deck extending out toward the sea; stairs led from the deck down to the beach. Yellow crime scene tape stretched between police barricades staked out around the perimeter of the house. He stopped running and walked to her. She felt his presence and turned to him. Tears ran down her face.

  "I dreamed last night that he was just at a tournament, and he came back. How can he be gone?"

  She buried her face in his bare chest. Her tears felt cool on his hot skin, and she felt good in his arms. No matter what she had done to him, they still shared a child. When a man and a woman come together and create another human being, they forge a bond that is never broken. The marriage might break, but that bond does not. And so he now embraced that woman, the mother of his child, not the woman who had deserted him for another man. He held her and let her cry until she had cried out. Only then did he say, "Rebecca, what happened that night?"

  "I woke up and found him. Dead."

  "Before that."

  She wiped her face. "We had dinner at Gaido's."

  "What time?"

  "Seven."

  "Did you drink?"

  "We both did."

  "Were you drunk?"

  "We were celebrating."

  "What?"

  She hesitated and turned away. "Trey asked me to marry him."

  "After two years?"

  She shrugged.

  "What did you say?"

  "I said yes."

  Two years and it still hurt.

  "Who saw you there?"

  "Other locals … Ricardo, our regular waiter."

  "Did you argue?"

  "With Ricardo?"

  "With Trey."

  "No. We were happy. It was a special night."

  "Did Ricardo hear Trey propose to you?"

  "I don't think so. But we told him later."

  "Then what happened?"

  "We came home."

  "Who drove?"

  "Trey. He never let me drive the Bentley."

  "He had a Bentley?"

  "Convertible. It's in the garage."

  "What time did you get home?"

  "Ten."

  "Long dinner."

  "Like I said, it was a special night."

  "Then what?"

  "We took a walk on the beach. Right here. Then we went to bed."

  "What time?"

  "Eleven. Trey was going to get up early, practice for the Open."

  "Then you woke up?"

  "I was cold."

  Her eyes fixed on the deck above them. Her voice was dispassionate, as if she had been a third-party observer of the events that night.

  "The bedroom's right there, just off the deck. We slept with the French doors open, to hear the waves. I got up to close the doors, but I came out onto the deck. It's quiet out here, just the waves … the sea spray hit me, I wiped my face … but I still felt wet … I looked down at myself, saw something dark all over me … I ran back inside, turned the lights on … blood was everywhere … all over him … all over me. I slept in his blood."

  She started crying again. He put an arm around her shoulders.

  "Rebecca—"

  He waited until she turned to him. He needed to look into her eyes when he asked the next question—and w
hen she answered.

  —"did you kill him?"

  She did not avert her eyes.

  "No. I swear to God. Scott, I loved him."

  And Scott Fenney had loved her. Maybe he still did. He wasn't sure. But he was sure about one thing: after eleven years of marriage—eleven years sharing the same bed—he knew her. Rebecca Fenney was not a murderer.

  They walked back to the beach house and found Consuela and Louis cooking breakfast, Karen feeding Maria—the baby wasn't taking to the broccoli any better that day—and Bobby, Carlos, and the girls watching TV. Boo jumped up and ran to him.

  "A. Scott, we've got cable!"

  "Just for the summer—and only the Disney Channel."

  She looked at him with an expression that said, As if, but she said, "Did you check your pulse?"

  "No."

  "Do you feel faint or dizzy? Are you experiencing chest pain?"

  "Boo, I feel fine. Stop worrying."

  She frowned and turned to Rebecca. "Mother, you were gone when we woke up."

  "I took a walk on the beach."

  "I would've gone with you."

  "Get dressed, Bobby," Scott said. "We're going to see the D.A. And bring the camcorder. Karen, take Rebecca's statement."

  "Mr. Fenney," Louis said, "how about some pancakes and sausage?"

  "Maybe one. Or two. Of each."

  "Coming right up."

  "Louis, go over to Gaido's today … Carlos, you go with him, you might need to translate. Talk to a waiter named Ricardo. Find out what he knows, if he saw any strangers there Thursday night, someone who seemed interested in Trey." Scott went into the kitchen and stepped close to Louis; he faced away from the room and said in a low voice, "Ask him if he heard Trey propose to Rebecca."

  Louis nodded. Scott turned back to the room.