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age-inappropriate designer jeans clumsily dangling—everything had changed. She should have left him then. She should have taken what the prenup had to offer and made a normal life with her two, still happy children.
    But by then, being Mrs. Bill Whitmire had become the very core of her identity. For their marriage to fail would mean that she was nothing but a cliché, the glamorous carriage having turned back into a pumpkin at the stroke of midnight. It would mean that Bill had never really chosen her. She would be just one in a long string of women—the one who’d gotten knocked up.
    And so watching and monitoring and controlling her husband became her full-time job. If Bill said he was meeting a reporter at Babbo, she would walk him there—and step inside to say a brief hello, supposedly “on her way” to some errand or another. If he had to fly to California for the Grammys, she accompanied him—even if the ceremonies coincided with Julia’s first piano recital. When he announced that he was more productive at the in-home studio out in Long Island, she chose to believe that Julia and Billy were mature enough to stay at the townhouse on their own.
    She felt the vodka burn its way down her throat. She held in the sting, wanting it to burn, wanting to feel something . She’d seen the way those detectives looked at her. Judging her. Casting her squarely inside whatever stereotypes they held about superficial women who valued their looks, handbags, and silverware above the things that actually mattered.
    She knew she deserved every last bit of their scorn. She should have been here with her baby girl. She should have been here to protect her. The least she could do now was to find out who did this to her daughter. The police might be gone, but no way was this over.
    The silence was disrupted by the sound of keys in the front door. She knew who would be walking in, but part of her wished it would be her son instead. She’d called Billy at school with the awful news, but even if he made it onto the last flight to New York, he wouldn’t make it to the city before nine tonight.
    “Kitty?”
    Bill’s eyes were red and damp. He rushed to her and wrapped his arms around her.
    “My God. Our Julia. Our baby—” His voice broke.
    How many times had she wanted him to run to her like this? To need her. To hunger for her love and loyalty like an addict jonesing for the next hit. She felt tiny and fragile against his smothering embrace.
    “It’s going to be okay, Kitty. We’re going to get through this. Together.”
    He grabbed her even tighter, palming the back of her head and pressing her face against his cashmere overcoat. She smelled the sweet floral scent of Cartier perfume on his collar and, for the first time in nineteen years, found that she did not care what became of this marriage.

Chapter
Seven
    U sually,
Ellie enjoyed her time in the Criminal Court Building. She’d heard it described
as “hurry-up-and-wait time.” She understood the term all too well.
    Other people—usually the lawyers—ran up and down
the hallways, struggling to herd witnesses like cattle. They negotiated
last-minute deals, always in shorthand. ROR—release on
recognizance. JOA—judgment of acquittal. SOR—sex offender registration.
Stip - facts bench trial—stipulate that the facts
offered in a bench (no jury) trial establish the material elements of the
offense. Meanwhile, she sat and chilled on a courthouse bench,
usually with some lawyer’s discarded newspaper in hand, collecting her
pay—overtime if she wasn’t on shift.
    But on this particular day, waiting in the hallway
outside Judge Frederick Knight’s courtroom, her thoughts kept jumping back to
Rogan’s look of helplessness as she’d shut the car door on him mid-sentence. She
could tell her partner was pissed. The last words he said to her before she
walked away were: “Should we place an over-under on how long it is before Tucker
gets a phone call?”
    He was