Free Golden State by Stephanie Kegan

with you?” Julia asked. “You’re watching TV all bug-eyed.”
    I clicked off the set as if I’d been caught viewing porno. Julia picked up the remote and changed the channel to one of her shows. Suddenly I felt grateful for the way kid life blotted out everything else. I finished making dinner, and fed the girls. I jumped when the phone rang, but it was just one of Julia’s friends. I gave Lilly a bath, put her to bed, and then lay beside her when she asked.
    Eric came home at ten to nine. “It smells good,” he said. He walked to the stove, peering into the copper pot. “You didn’t have to do this, Nat.”
    “I wanted to.”
    He slumped into a chair. “Where are the girls?”
    “Lilly’s in bed,” I said, handing him a glass of the good wine I’d opened. I dropped into a chair beside him. “Julia’s holed up in her room.”
    For a ludicrous moment, I thought one or the other of us might say, So how was your day?
    Eric gazed into his glass. “Stu talked to his buddy at the Bureau.”
    One of the things I’d always admired about Eric was that, given half a chance, he went straight to the point.
    He looked up. “They don’t think Bobby’s their man.”
    This is what I’d been waiting to hear, praying to hear. Now I wascertain I’d known it all along. I felt the lifting of weight, the glimmer of normal life ahead. But Eric’s expression, still quietly grim, made me cautious.
    “He doesn’t fit their profile,” he said. “They’re looking for a younger man, someone of average intelligence without a college education. They’re going to investigate, but they’re not on fire. Over the past twelve years, they’ve had four thousand leads on this case that have gone nowhere.”
    Four thousand false leads, each one of them given by someone as sure and as terrified as I had been. “I knew it,” I said. “I knew it couldn’t be Bobby.”
    I was so desperate to have everything be all right that it clouded my head. I was expecting Eric to apologize for railroading us into talking to the FBI.
    “I’m not saying this isn’t good news,” Eric said, sounding like it wasn’t.
    I stiffened. “But?”
    “At this point, I think you and I have to assume that it is Bobby.”
    “I don’t get it,” I said, my voice rising. “You just said it’s not him.”
    “If there’s a one-in-a-thousand chance that he’s the guy . . .” he said. “Or if he knows that guy, then for safety’s sake, we have to make sure he never finds out we talked to the FBI.”
    Instantly I was on my feet. “Bobby would never hurt me or my children,” I said, hitting the my hard in anger. “He’d never hurt anyone. That’s how I know it’s not him.” Then I was crying, wiping my eyes with the back of my hands. I turned away from Eric. He came up behind me, held my shoulders.
    “Bobby can’t ever know I’d accuse him like that,” I said. “It would destroy him. They’d never tell him, would they, the FBI? They promised not to reveal our identity. They’ll just investigate, clear him, and move on without giving him any details, right?”
    “I’m talking about us.” He said us but I knew he meant me. “Don’t say anything to your mother or Sara.”
    I turned around. “You think I want them to know what we’ve done to Bobby?” I held my gaze on Eric, made him look away.
    That night I saw my father in a dream. He stood in the hall of our old house. He wore his tortoiseshell glasses, his gray summer suit with the vest, his hair still dark. I threw my arms around him, felt the light wool of his jacket on my cheek. He smelled of Mennen Skin Bracer in the green bottle, but he did not speak to me. He would not tell me what I needed to hear: that everything was going to turn out all right.
    I awoke crying. Although it was cool in the bedroom, my nightgown was damp and sticking to me. Eric was on the other side of the bed, and either he or I, in our sleep, had put a pillow between us.

chapter twelve
    W HEN WE