Free Identical by Scott Turow

disapproval.
    The ceremony began. It was a wedding with an asterisk. Francine and Nella had gone to Boston last weekend to be legally married. What was taking place here, in the presence of friends and family, was all that local law allowed, a religious commitment ceremony.
    The officiant, an Episcopal priest who was a longtime friend to both women, blessed their union beautifully.
    “Life,” he said at one point, “is much too cruel to go through it alone.” The remark pierced Evon like an arrow. Yes. That was true. She took Heather’s hand and squeezed it hard.
    And on the power of that observation, it turned into a great night. A few years back, at the age of fortysomething, Evon had found out that she loved to dance. The music, especially the seventies tunes of her teens—“Stairway to Heaven,” Springsteen—liberated her as liquor or drugs did other people. Heather and she danced until they were a clammy mess, requesting four separate run-throughs of “Born To Run.” The club personnel shooed everybody out at 1 a.m.
    By the time they arrived home, Heather was caught up in the inebriated fantasy of the wedding she would make. She had a thousand ideas: walking down an aisle lit by floating candles, in doubled crystal globes also containing orchids, the ceremony conducted on a mat of fresh lavender.
    “And I want Cartier,” Heather announced. “My kisses do not begin with Kay, and if you come home with Zales, I don’t even know your name.” Heather was laughing when she said it, but there was a knife blade buried in her eyes.
    When Heather left her to shower, Evon, who’d had far more to drink than usual, felt a stark mood shadow her heart. Heather’s talk of marriage, her regal demands, left Evon feeling how remote the chances were. Her doubts had little to do with her skepticism about whether same-sex marriage would ever be legal in this state, or even whether she had shed enough of a closeted person’s anxieties to be able to refer out loud to anyone as her “wife.” Something else concerned her, even if all the champagne made it impossible for her to be more precise. It was a shock to find herself dubious, because the story of the relationship had been that she pursued Heather, put up with her, forgave her. And it was true that she still craved Heather, loved her zany side and terrific sarcasm, and had touched something strong and good in herself by doting on her. In the past several months she’d realized she was basically Heather’s mother, which was not as bad a deal for Evon as putting it that way made it sound, because she enjoyed—no, relished—being a kinder, more patient and understanding person toward Heather than Evon’s mother had been to her. She wasn’t prepared yet to give any of that up.
    But she was starting to lose faith in the myth or the legend or the fairy tale, whatever you called it, by which she’d been operating, the belief that Heather would ‘calm down,’ as Evon put it to herself, and love Evon as she wanted to be loved. Life was much too cruel to go through it alone. So she was here. And tomorrow when she awoke she’d believe it all again. But for now, the last glass of champagne had made her feel like a seer or an oracle who looked through the smoke called the future unable to make out any comforting shapes.

6.
    Georgia—January 17, 2008
    T im saw the first of Hal’s ads about Paul and the murder Monday afternoon, when he put aside his book of myths and turned on the early news at 5 p.m. He’d given up on the local TV journalism years ago—it was all about Chihuahuas hunting lobsters, or Jesus appearing on a grilled cheese sandwich—but he was excited to find himself with a role in current events. At his age, he was accustomed to feeling irrelevant.
    Paul’s lawsuit had made headlines for a couple of days, and now Hal was hitting back. Tim watched the commercial in amazement. A piece of paper that could have just as easily been obliterated by the seepage