Low Pressure

“I don’t doubt that.”

For a moment they were quiet, gazing into each other’s eyes and pretending that their tears weren’t tears of despair.

He didn’t doubt her absolute love and devotion. Not today, and not on the day they’d stood at the altar in the company of their children and recited their wedding vows. The day they’d united their families, their lives, had been one of the happiest of his life.

They had met a year earlier at a black-tie fund-raising event. He was a major donor who was being recognized that night for his generosity. She was a volunteer checking people in as they arrived.

As she’d passed him his table-assignment card, she’d remarked on his bow tie being askew.

He patted it awkwardly. “I don’t have a wife to check these things for me before I leave the house.”

“My late husband thought I was pretty good at straightening his tie. May I?” She hadn’t been flirtatious or inappropriate in any way as she came around to the other side of the table and efficiently adjusted his tie. Then she’d backed away and smiled up at him. “It wouldn’t do to have an honoree with a crooked bow tie.”

He would have enjoyed continuing their conversation, but he was summoned into the banquet hall, where the program was about to begin. He didn’t see her again that night.

It took him a week to work up the nerve to call the charity office and ask for her name. During the seven years since his wife had died, he’d dated occasionally. A few of the women he’d taken out he’d also slept with, although never at home, where Susan and Bellamy were under his roof.

But he hadn’t fallen in love until the night he met Olivia Maxey, and it had been an instantaneous and hard fall.

Later, she’d confessed that it had been the same for her. Referring to her husband as “late” had been calculated to let him know she was available. “The most courageous thing I ever did in my life was step around that table to straighten your tie. But I simply had to touch you, to see if you were real.”

After a year of courtship, they had married.

He didn’t fear death, especially. But he couldn’t bear the thought of leaving her. He had to clear his throat before he was able to speak. “What else did you and Bellamy talk about?”

“Oh, she asked if I’d managed to get any rest last night. She wanted to know—”

“Olivia.” He spoke her name quietly, but in a way that chided her for attempting to keep something from him. “I’m not that drugged. I sensed your distress when you were talking to her. What’s happened?”

She sighed a concession and looked down at their tightly clasped hands. “That horrid reporter—”

“Rocky Van Durbin? He can’t be dignified with the title ‘reporter.’”

“He ambushed Bellamy as she left the offices.”

“He’s in Austin? I thought she’d outrun him, that we were through with all that.”

“

Unfortunately, no. She’s still on his radar screen. In his column tomorrow, he’s going to pose a question to his readers. And to hers, in a sense.”

“What question?”

“Was the right man punished for killing Susan? Did they get the right guy? Words to that effect.”

He digested that, then sighed heavily. “God knows what kind of offshoots of discussion that will produce.”

“It was bad enough when Bellamy’s identity was revealed.” For weeks after the disclosure they’d been plagued by telephone calls asking them for comments and interviews. Several regional reporters had even shown up outside their estate and at their business offices. They’d declined all requests and eventually had handed the responsibility of fielding them over to their attorney.

“What I hate most,” she said, “is that our lives will once again be on review in that horrible tabloid.”

She left the bed and, clearly too agitated to sit down, paced the narrow space in front of the window. “Lyston Electronics was touted by the secretary of commerce as a model corporation. Where was Van Durbin then? Or when you instigated the profit-sharing program for every employee? None of that made headline news.”

“Because that’s not scintillating subject matter.”

“But the circumstances surrounding Susan’s killing are.”

“Tragically.”