Free Accused by Mark Gimenez

stranded out of water. Seagulls picked over dead fish, and a pelican stood witness. The wind was down, the sea smooth, and the waves low swells instead of whitecaps. The air was fresh, and the beach was his.
    He ran hard to burn up his desire for her. All that time without her, now they were suddenly living together again. He hadn't bargained for that. But then, he wasn't sure what he had bargained for when he agreed to defend her. It wasn't a lawyerly decision; it was a manly decision. He needed to know how he had failed her as a man.
    Scott Fenney did not have to confront his past during that morning's run—because he was now living it.
    Shortly after Rebecca had left him, a Dallas divorce lawyer who had suffered the same marital fate had shared with Scott his "seven stages of wife desertion":
    (1) disbelief—you're numb with shock that your wife had actually left you for another man;
    (2) denial—you decide she must have a brain tumor, the only plausible explanation for such bizarre behavior;
    (3) anger—you lash out at her for betraying you;
    (4) remorse—you promise to change if she will only return so life can be the same again;
    (5) shame—you isolate yourself because you know that everywhere you go everyone knows;
    (6) blame—she left you and your child, but somehow you failed her. You blame yourself. It was your fault.
    The first five stages, Scott had discovered, pass in due course. But the blame stage lasts … forever? And only when he had escaped from the sixth stage would he embark on the final stage: (7) recovery.
    Would he ever recover from Rebecca Fenney?
    He saw her in the distance, a lone figure dressed in white standing on the beach before a stark white house rising in sharp relief against the blue morning sky. The sun's rays highlighted her and the house and made them both glow. The sand rose up from the beach to a low manmade earthen dune, the developer's apparent attempt to tame the sea. The front portion of the house sat atop the dune, the back half atop tall stilts. But this was not a beach bungalow rented out to tourists and college kids on spring break. It was a four-story multimillion-dollar residence with a second-story deck extending out toward the sea; stairs led from the deck down to the beach. Yellow crime scene tape stretched between police barricades staked out around the perimeter of the house. He stopped running and walked to her. She felt his presence and turned to him. Tears ran down her face.
    "I dreamed last night that he was just at a tournament, and he came back. How can he be gone?"
    She buried her face in his bare chest. Her tears felt cool on his hot skin, and she felt good in his arms. No matter what she had done to him, they still shared a child. When a man and a woman come together and create another human being, they forge a bond that is never broken. The marriage might break, but that bond does not. And so he now embraced that woman, the mother of his child, not the woman who had deserted him for another man. He held her and let her cry until she had cried out. Only then did he say, "Rebecca, what happened that night?"
    "I woke up and found him. Dead."
    "Before that."
    She wiped her face. "We had dinner at Gaido's."
    "What time?"
    "Seven."
    "Did you drink?"
    "We both did."
    "Were you drunk?"
    "We were celebrating."
    "What?"
    She hesitated and turned away. "Trey asked me to marry him."
    "After two years?"
    She shrugged.
    "What did you say?"
    "I said yes."
    Two years and it still hurt.
    "Who saw you there?"
    "Other locals … Ricardo, our regular waiter."
    "Did you argue?"
    "With Ricardo?"
    "With Trey."
    "No. We were happy. It was a special night."
    "Did Ricardo hear Trey propose to you?"
    "I don't think so. But we told him later."
    "Then what happened?"
    "We came home."
    "Who drove?"
    "Trey. He never let me drive the Bentley."
    "He had a Bentley?"
    "Convertible. It's in the garage."
    "What time did you get home?"
    "Ten."
    "Long dinner."
    "Like I said, it was a special