The Architect Read Online Free PDF Page A

smile that lasted longer. “None of the police or FBI agents asked these kinds of questions.”
    “They’re not psychiatrists.”
    “I could have used you a long time ago.” She chuckled to herself, then grew serious again. “Let’s just say I bought a set of plans from Jeffrey.”
    “Plans...”
    “You don’t quit.”
    Never. “Should I?”
    She took a deep breath, let it out. “Plans for a life together, a family. He had an incredibly poetic and powerful way of describing how it would be to travel, to raise children.”
    “You couldn’t resist him.”
    “Him, his plans... whatever.” She folded her hands on her lap, looked down.
    “The two of you didn’t get to build what he had in mind.”
    She looked up. “Not even close.”
    “Why?”
    Her eyes filled up. “Christ. What does this have to do with his murder?”
    “Maybe nothing,” Clevenger said. “But we are talking about it. So maybe it does.”
    A tear started down her cheek. She wiped it away. “Or maybe you just like causing people pain.”
    He blew he was causing her pain. For a psychiatrist to be any good, he has to be willing to corner you, close off the easy exits, even when it hurts. It’s supposed to.
    They stared at each other for several seconds.
    “I really don’t care if you know,” Groupmann said, finally. “I don’t care if the whole goddamn world knows.” Her lip began to quiver. “My husband was gay.” She looked down, hugged herself. “That was definitely not part of the plan.”
    Clevenger waited until Groupmann seemed to be in control. “When did you find out?” he asked her.
    “Around the time we moved here from Carmel.” She looked at Clevenger. “A little over four years ago.”
    “How?”
    “He sat me down one night and told me. He pulled out all the old clichés: How he’d been ‘living a lie.” He ‘didn’t want to pretend anymore.” It ‘had nothing to do with me.””
    “Did he have a... partner?”
    She cringed. “I didn’t ask. He didn’t tell. But I doubt he would have confessed he was gay if all he’d done was fantasize about it. I don’t think we ended up in San Francisco by accident.”
    “That was your husband’s idea?”
    “He said he ‘fell in love” with this property. I’ve never wanted to know what he really fell in love with here.”
    “Did you think about leaving him?” Clevenger said.
    “Sure,” Groupmann said.
    “But...”
    “The kids were younger, in new schools, with new friends. We didn’t want them to have to deal with a divorce, headlines in the papers, whatever. And I...” She shook her head.
    “You... ?”
    “I really could have used you back then.”
    Clevenger stayed silent.
    She shrugged. “I already had my own life. Jeff and I hadn’t been good together—in that way—for a couple years before he told me what was going on. I had pretty much moved on.”
    “To another relationship.”
    “Yes,” she said, her voice warmer, as though thinking of her lover.
    Clevenger put two and two together. ‘The man in the kitchen with your children?”
    “That’s right. David.”
    He heard real tenderness in her voice. “So you and your husband decided to live together, separately,” he said. “You had David. He had... whoever “
    “That’s putting a very positive spin on it,” she said. “We lived a lie.”
    The bitterness was back in her tone. “It wore on you,” Clevenger said.
    “It basically wore us out”
    “How so?”
    “We had chosen new partners. Jeff had a whole new lifestyle. We tried the friendship routine, but it’s hard to be friends when you feel abandoned or tricked or whatever”
    “Who had a harder time of it?”
    “I think we were about equal on that. Neither of us did well with it.”
    That didn’t add up. Groupmann’s husband had radically altered the family structure by declaring his sexual orientation. Why should he resent his wife expressing hers? “What problem did your husband have with your new