Chapter 28

Bentley returned to the trial at the end of the week, without Virginia. I waved at him enthusiastically when I saw him in line for security and was hurt when he gave me a mere hand raise in response. I worried that I had misconstrued the depth of our friendship after the night we'd spent talking. He'd been so protective of me, first rescuing me from having to converse with the older man who had called me pretty and then warning me against getting too close to William, and I took that protectiveness as a sign of intimacy. It was possible that I was wrong. I was always misreading the things that men wanted from me.

The defense moved to questioning witnesses about the things they'd seen in the hours before the women disappeared. Nothing they had to say proved conclusively that William was not a killer; rather, the suggestion was that there were potential killers all around us.

I wrote in my notebook:

Jill had a client who repeatedly asked her on dates.

A drug bust went down at the gas station shortly before Kimberly's death.

There are a limited number of cameras with views of the parking lot at the building where Anna Leigh worked. Anyone could've been hiding in the blind spots.

Look at all the bad men,the defense tried to say.

Things had been tense with Lauren since she'd caught me spying on her and Mark in the coffee shop. She pointedly sat down on the other side of Dotty rather than next to me.

"Honey, Hannah was only trying to protect you," Dotty tried to intervene on my behalf.

"I don't need her to do that. I'm an adult," Lauren insisted.

The statement made me jealous, if only because I struggled to conceptualize myself as an adult even in my early thirties. Whenever any small inconvenience surfaced, I longed for someone older, wiser, and with more money to come fix it for me.

It surprised me how much Lauren's snubbing stung. The three of us had bonded quickly over our love for William and it hadn't occurred to me that the glue was so fragile or how much I depended upon the two of them to get through the days. It made me miss Meghan and I started typing several text messages before deleting them and putting my phone out of reach.

Another packet of letters from William arrived. The front desk employee looked at me when she handed them over like I was going to open them in front of her. It felt like she'd asked me to send her nudes.

I took them back to my room and read them while eating spoonfuls of peanut butter. Every meal reminded me of my precarious financial state. I'd always struggled with money, but the difference was that I also used to have a paycheck, regardless of how insufficient it was. I was caught in the catch-22 of wanting to splurge on food that comforted my anxiety and having anxiety about spending money on food.

Dearest Hannah,the first letter began.

The only way I've been able to get through these days is by disassociating. Physically, my body is in a courtroom. Mentally, I'm somewhere far away with you. At first, it seemed silly to daydream because I knew they were impossibilities. Then I realized that daydreams are the only thing that they can't take away from me. I think that treating you well would be a type of justice in itself.

You mentioned once that you've never been able to take a real vacation. In truth, I haven't either. I always meant to go places—Japan, Iceland, Brazil—but my job was so demanding that I never found the time. Traveling was something that I was going to do in the future when I made partner or had a family. It never occurred to me that the future might not exist. Now I dream of taking you to the beach. As much as I love visiting cities, the allure of the ocean is that it disappears into nothing. This is both calming and exciting. Anything could be over the horizon or below in the depths.

We would stay in one of those bungalows that is on top of the water. At night, the sound of waves lapping would put us to sleep after our lovemaking (I hope this isn't too forward to say). In the daytime, we would drink those ridiculous beach cocktails and eat any foods that our hearts desired. We would forget what day it was, what time it was.

We would get to know each other, really know each other, in ways that are impossible with letters. I would throw my phone into the sea so that I could devote all my attention to you and you would devote yours to me. I would make sure that you had everything you ever wanted, no matter what the cost.

My lips were gummy with peanut butter as I opened the next letter. Nowhere within William's fantasies was there mention of if and when he might kill me, but the ocean was good for that. He could rent a boat and dump my body in the sea. No one would know until my body washed ashore. There were ravines in the ocean too, places where the seafloor dropped off and all the really scary fish lived. I filled in the parts of the fantasy that he wouldn't, couldn't name.

Dearest Hannah,

There are days that I wish that the trial were over already so at least I could know my fate. I don't think that I ever fully understood the pain of purgatory before this. I understand why people plead guilty if only to end their suffering sooner.

Are you going to stay with me when they find me guilty? I can't blame you if you want to stray. It used to make me angry when people valued me only for my money and not what I had to offer, and now I realize that I valued myself in that same way. I wish I could buy you flowers and diamonds. I wish I could hold you at night as you fall asleep. I wish that I could make promises that I could keep.

William wrote all the things that I'd wanted men to tell me for years and it left me with the same sensation I had when I finally purchased a food item that I was craving, only to discover that it wasn't what I wanted after all. I wanted him to tell me about his pain, his violence, who had hurt him, and whom he hurt in return.

I knew that William couldn't give me those answers even if he wanted to, at least not until the trial was over. He wasn't going to incriminate himself to satisfy my curiosity and I wasn't going to ask. I needed to talk to the person who had the answers that William was withholding, who knew the trauma of his childhood, the havoc he had wreaked.

I needed to talk to Bentley.