Conflict of Interest

Chapter Thirty Two

Jenn

Carrie came home late.

She'd told me she was going to come by after she got off, but not to wait up. She had said that, hadn't she? Maybe it had been yesterday, and the days were just blurring together as they had a tendency to do when you're a detective who's followed all her leads.

Of course Carrie had known that I would wait up for her no matter how tired I was, but she had meant it, too, when she said not to. She wasn't the type of woman who says you don't have to do something but gets mad when you really don't. She meant what she said and she said what she meant. It was me who strayed from that paradigm.

It hit eight, then nine. Before I knew it, it was ten. I got some work done, and then it was twelve. I closed my eyes and when I opened them it was two. I was still alone. I figured she'd just headed home, because it was either that, or she was cheating behind my back and doing an exorbitantly bad job at it. And she didn't do a bad job at anything. If she were cheating, I'd never know it, right? I didn't know if that made me feel better or worse.

But the way my mind tended to run, I'd reduced it to only three options. Home, or cheating, or dead.

At two thirty, I heard a key in the lock. She opened the door quietly, expecting me, I was sure, to be sleeping. Why wouldn't I be, after all? Only a crazy person waits until two thirty in the morning for a woman to come home, a woman who probably wasn't even coming. And yet here she was, and so was I.

She'd changed. Her hair was down. She'd done it in big, sweeping curls. She was wearing a dress, not a suit, and taller heels than she'd left in. Her lipstick was different. So was her eyeliner.

If she's cheating, I reminded myself internally, she's doing a very bad job at it.

And yet, she wasn't home, and she certainly wasn't dead.

"You're awake," she said.

"Where were you?"

She laughed slightly, shaking her head. "Nice to see you."

"Do you know what time it is?"

She just rolled her eyes and shook her head, walking straight past me.

"Carrie?"

She turned around. "Mom?"

I sighed. "You're really just going to walk in here at two thirty in the morning with no explanation."

"Jesus Christ, I'm seventeen again."

"Do you blame me for being worried? If you say you'll come and you don't--"

"I did--"

"Hours late!"

"I told you not to wait up."

"Because you were planning on walking in at two thirty in your best come-and-get-it outfit?"

"Oh my God," she exhaled in disbelief. "You think I'm cheating."

"That wasn't my interpretation."

"Just admit it!" she said sharply. "You don't trust me to be without you. You think I'm cheating."

"I don't know what to think, Carrie, because you still haven't given me an answer as to where you've been for the past eight hours."

"I went out for a drink after work," she said tersely, of course deciding to give the quintessential defense for an affair, as though that would put my mind at ease. "Okay?"