“Does she trust you?”
“Of course.”
“Then tell her to turn herself in. A good lawyer, and a babe in arms, might get her out of the murder rap.”
“She’d never betray Bryan.”
“Tell her to start thinking about her baby. They take babies away from women doing life without possibility of parole.”
“You mean when she calls?”
“ ‘I can’t meet you, Jennifer, because I don’t want to be responsible for them taking your baby away from you.’ Something like that. Sow the seed.”
“I don’t know,” Susan said doubtfully.
“Have you any better ideas?”
She shook her head, then started to cry.
“That’s not going to do any good. And I don’t want that lady FBI agent to get on the phone and tell her boss you came to work looking like you’d been crying. They might interpret that as meaning something.”
That speech had the precisely opposite reaction to the one Matt had hoped for. It seemed to open a floodgate.
He tried to comfort her, fully aware as he did so that comforting a weeping woman was not among his social skills.
When she was finished, she pushed herself away from him, sat up, and knelt on the bed. There was a box of Kleenex on the bedside table, and she blew her nose loudly.
“Sorry,” she said.
“Honey, you’re just going to have to get used to the idea that your friend Jennifer is beyond salvation.”
“I know,” Susan said. “That’s not what I was crying about.”
“Then what?”
“Us,” she said. “Where the hell were you, my precious beloved, when I needed you? To deliver that Jennie-made-the-wrong-choice speech, to tell me ‘I won’t let you get yourself in for an aiding-and-abetting charge’?”
“I wish I had been there,” Matt said. “Jesus, I can’t believe how someone as intelligent as you are has fucked yourself up like this!”
“Truth, they keep saying, is stranger than fiction,” Susan said.
Matt didn’t reply.
“What are you thinking now?” Susan asked.
“You don’t want to know.”
“Yes, I do. I thought about that in the wee hours last night. I’ve got to start thinking about how things really are, not how I wish they were.”
“That’s a start,” he said.
“So what were you thinking just now?”
“How things really are?” he asked. “The naked truth?”
She nodded.
“I want to take your clothes off,” Matt said.