Chapter 33

Dotty and I stayed seated in the courtroom as everyone else began to file out. It was a game of chicken driven by inertia rather than speed.

After hugging his lawyers, William was immediately accompanied out of the room for safety reasons with his family trailing close behind. I watched William leave, followed by Mark and Bentley and their wives. No one turned to say goodbye to me.

I missed the fantasy. When William's freedom was a hut on the sea.

The journalists left to file their stories. Lauren excused herself, saying that she needed to get on the road. I resented her pragmatism in the face of the unexpected, a skill that I assumed came with age that I'd somehow never acquired.

"Maybe find a new hobby," I told her as we hugged goodbye.

Then it was just Dotty, the victims' friends and families, and me. We were frozen with it, the impossibility of the situation. Jill's sister let out intermittent shrieks that were so loud that security told her that she needed to quiet down. Later, she would tell the waiting television crews that she hadn't slept in months.

"I just wanted to go to bed secure in the knowledge that William Thompson was behind bars. Now I'll never sleep again," she cried.

"My wife deserved better," Tripp said, paused, and then added, "from everyone," before leaving to start a weekslong bender.

They would see one another again, the friends and family of the victims, bound forever by the tragedy that had altered their lives. It was a bitter community, one that they would give up in a second if only they could revive the dead. The police would investigate other leads, find other suspects, but the taste for justice would forever be soured by what had occurred at William's trial, like biting into a moldy strawberry and then throwing away the rest of the fruit for fear of repeating the experience.

"He's not coming, is he?" I said.

"No, I don't think so," Dotty replied. She picked up her purse, a leather thing that was more expensive than anything I'd ever owned.

"Best of luck, Hannah," she said.

We hugged and there was comfort in the heaviness of her perfume.

Police officers approached me.

"It's time to go," they said.

I gathered my things and walked outside, confused by the brightness of the sun. My legs wobbled and I sat down on the courthouse steps. It seemed possible that I might die right then and there with the way that my heart ached. I recognized the feeling. It was the same way I'd felt when Max started dating Reese, when a man failed to text me back after a good date, when the potential of something dissipated into nothing at all. An irrational kind of heartbreak, based more off the relationship I'd built inside my head than anything that had existed within the world. I was a widow mourning the loss of a husband who never existed and who didn't have a grave.

After an indeterminable amount of time, I slowly made my way to my car. It hurt to move. My legs mourned the loss of William as much as the rest of me. I'd always understood our relationship to be conditional, predicated on the notion that he would forever be in jail and I was the pathetic woman willing to date him while he was there. In that situation, I was the one with the power if only because I was the one who was free. With William's release, the situation reversed and suddenly, it was like every other relationship I'd ever had.

I held it together for the drive back to the hotel, but just barely. Gulping sobs took over my body as soon as the door of my hotel room closed behind me for the final time. I collapsed onto the bed and cried about William, about the loss of my job and the wreck of my finances, about the dead women and their loved ones who would never get the answers that they needed. I cried about Kelsey Jenkins, both for her death and the way in which she'd messed with my life. I cried about Max and Meghan, all the people I'd become distant from as I aged. I cried about Bentley, how our kiss was a betrayal and his disappearance into the night a second kind of treachery. Tears rolled down my cheeks and snot came pouring out of my nose. Everything, everything, was wrong and I didn't know how to make it right.

As my thoughts grew increasingly desperate to the point where I started to consider ways that I could sacrifice myself to the ravine that would be both painless and memorable, there was a knock on my door. Someone, somehow, had sensed my desperation.

I don't really want to die,I wanted to clarify. I just don't know how to continue to live.

I opened the door to find William Thompson standing there with a bouquet of flowers. He was still wearing the suit that he'd worn earlier that day to the trial. He looked handsome, unreal. A mirage of a man in the desert of my love life.

I turned and looked at my reflection in the full-length mirror next to the door. My face was wet and puffy. My hair, once straightened to the best of my ability, had grown frizzy with the summer heat. He wasn't supposed to see me like that. I knew from experience that it was important to be beautiful and coy for as long as possible. Men didn't like women who were a mess. Men wanted women to be calm and stoic no matter the chaos that they wreaked upon their lives.

"William," I said. "How did you find me?"

How strange it was to realize that he had a body, pores and all. My eyes traveled across his face, taking in every freckle, the patch of hair he'd missed while shaving. I wanted to reach out and touch him, but I appeared to be frozen in the doorway.

"I wanted to go to you right away, but they wouldn't let me," he said.

The words were so much what I wanted to hear that they became painful.

"They told me it wasn't safe to talk to you in the courtroom, and then I realized that I didn't have your number. We've only ever written each other. I came here to find you."

"I thought you forgot about me," I said.

"Forget about you? I could never forget about you. I meant what I said, Hannah. Your words kept me going through the worst time of my life. I don't know how I can ever repay you."

He took a deep breath. His hand was shaking. What was happening? It seemed unlikely that he would kill me right then and there, but it was possible that he was hungry for murder after the months that he'd spent in jail.

"I know this is crazy," he said. "But I promised myself that if I was ever free again that I would do crazy things. I spent months lamenting my loneliness. I can't let this opportunity pass me by. I can't let you pass me by, Hannah."

I was dizzy as he got down on one knee. Snot continued to run out my nose.

"Hannah Wilson," he said. "Will you marry me?"

Somehow, I'd become trapped in one of my own fantasies, but everything was slightly off. Where was the beach? Why was my dress so rumpled? He didn't even have a ring.

I pasted a smile on my face.

How I'd judged those women who went on reality television shows where they got engaged and married to men that they'd never even met. The hours upon hours that I'd spent alone in my studio apartment analyzing the genuineness of their relationships. What I hadn't understood at the time was how enticing an invitation to enter another person's orbit could be. Falling in love was always a risk, I just chose to raise the stakes by falling in love with an accused serial killer. How ironic that I'd been imagining my own death when he came knocking on my door.

"Yes," I said. "Yes."

I would've started crying if I hadn't been crying already. William swept me into his arms, and I was aware of a slight smell emanating from my pits.

That's when I kissed my fiancé. Only time would tell if he'd let me live long enough to become his wife.