Chapter 7: The Smile Doesn't Work Anymore
They brought Gareth through the lobby just after eleven.
He wasn't in handcuffs — not yet, not in the hotel — but Officer Reyes was on one side of him and her partner on the other, and the lobby had gone very quiet in the way that lobbies do when everyone has stopped pretending not to watch.
Gareth saw me the moment he came through the corridor door.
He adjusted his expression immediately — the calculation was almost impressive.
He went from cornered to composed in the space of two steps, and by the time he was crossing the marble floor, he looked like a man who had simply been inconvenienced.
"Marissa." He stopped.
Reyes stopped with him.
"I want you to know I'm not angry with you."
"I didn't ask," I said.
"You're going to feel terrible about this when the full picture comes out."
"Gareth." I kept my voice level.
"They have Kit.
They have the CCTV.
They have Diane's phone.
They have Dad's statement about Patricia Holt." I watched his face.
"How many full pictures do you need?"
The composure slipped.
Just slightly.
His eyes went to the corridor he'd come from — looking for Diane, I realized.
Looking to see if she was there, if there was still something to manage.
She wasn't there.
"Diane wouldn't—" he started.
"She did," I said.
"She's been carrying those screenshots for two weeks.
She came to me.
She went to the police herself."
Something moved across his face that I hadn't seen there before.
It wasn't guilt.
It was closer to the particular fury of a person who has never genuinely been stopped before and cannot quite process that it is happening now.
"You've destroyed my marriage," he said.
"You understand that?
My wedding day.
My career.
You've taken everything."
"You put a phone in your eight-year-old niece's pocket," I said.
"You swung a board at her head in front of two hundred people.
You've done this before, to at least one other person we know about." I looked at him steadily.
"I didn't take anything from you.
You built this.
Tonight it just finally stood up."
"I want to speak to my lawyer," he said to Officer Reyes.
"You'll have that opportunity," she said.
"Let's go."
He went.
But at the lobby door, he turned back one final time.
His voice was very controlled and very cold.
"Mom will never forgive you for this."
I thought about that for a moment.
"She might not," I said.
"But Nora will remember that someone fought for her.
That's the only thing I care about tonight."
The door closed behind him.
The lobby was very quiet.
Then, from the bench by the coat check, a small sleepy voice: "Mommy.
Is it time to go home?"
I crossed the lobby and picked up my daughter, star bandages and all.
May you like
"Yes, baby," I said.
"It's time to go home."
