The Stranger Beside You Read Free Page B

pages torn. 
    I went to our master bedroom and found Tom’s digital camera stowed in his sock drawer.  I wanted to document the damage, so I started taking photos of everything in every room.  The tears came as the flash popped.  The memory card in the camera had a lot of room, so I kept going, taking hundreds of shots, clicking the little silver button like a woman possessed.  I wanted heads to roll, and I didn’t want anyone to be able to deny what had happened.
    My hands were shaking.  I leaned against a wall in Ashton’s bedroom.  I wanted to lie on the floor and cry myself to sleep but there wasn’t time because my husband was in jail.
    Then I remembered his words.  I went back downstairs, sat on the sofa with my pad and pen, and struggled to piece together what he’d said.
    Pray also for me, for I am an ambassador in chains .
    What did that mean?
    I closed my eyes, putting myself back inside the interrogation room withTom seated at the table, his eyes on the two-way glass.
    Pray also for me, that whenever I open my mouth, I will fearlessly make known the mystery for which I am an ambassador in chains.
    I opened my eyes and scribbled wildly.  Those words were the weirdest thing to ever come out of his mouth.   It sounded like gibberish.  Standing next to him, looking down into his eyes, it had felt like standing next to a total stranger. 
    I put the pad away.  I was buzzing from the wine.  I paced until the exhaustion hit me like a wall, then staggered back to the sofa and put my legs up.  With a pillow under my head, I did my best impression of a relaxed mother of two with her husband in prison.  My eyes fluttered and eventually settled shut.  My breathing mellowed.  I could feel my heart thumping.  Sometime around four in the morning I drifted off.
    •  •  •
    Tom and I met a few months before I graduated college.  He was a couple of years older than me and had already begun his career in banking when we were introduced by a mutual friend named Karly.  The attraction was instantaneous.  Karly owns an upscale boutique in Manhattan and knows nearly every celebrity in the city.  She’s cool and hip and edgy, rude and crude, and knows more gossip than all the tabloids combined.  We love her to death. 
    Tom was already a big shot banker on Wall Street and I was finishing up my teaching degree at Columbia when we fell madly in love.  It was a short courtship, all of nine months before he popped the question.  We went for a long walk on a late spring day and took our lunch to Central Park.  Tom brought a blanket and we lounged on the grass.  My memory is of a sunny, cloudless, perfect afternoon spent with the man of my dreams.  I remember the secure embrace of his arms and the twinkle of Manhattan’s skyline surrounding us and feeling such joy and contentment I thought my heart might burst.  Most of all, I remember him bringing out that small Tiffany’s box, opening it right there before my eyes, and the way the diamond ring glistened.  Admittedly, everything for those next few minutes is a bit of a blur.  I vaguely remember him asking me to marry him, and I vaguely remember saying yes.  My legs felt like Jell-O as we walked hand-in-hand back through midtown to his apartment.  I felt like the luckiest woman in the world, and that feeling has never changed.
    My husband is a brilliant man.  Smart, funny, warm, loving, caring, and sensitive.  You get the picture.  He volunteers down at a local soup kitchen once a month.  He’s in great shape and does those 5K charity runs a couple of times a year.  He gives blood and is always hauling clothes and shoes and stuff like that down to the Goodwill store.  It’s almost enough to make you sick, but it all comes from the heart.  That’s why it’s impossible to conceive that he would murder someone. 
    I slept for a short time on the couch.  It was a fitful sleep, crazy dreams spinning through my head.  Maybe it was the wine,