I held the phone against my ear.
For a moment, neither of us said anything.
Then Lamar spoke.
“Roberta.”
I recognized the voice immediately.
I had spent two years thinking I would never hear it again.
Now it made my stomach tighten.
He asked where I was.
I didn't answer.
Instead, I asked what he wanted.
He said we needed another conversation.
I looked toward the hotel window.
The afternoon light was falling across the curtains.
Ione sat nearby, watching my face.
“We spoke at the restaurant,” I said.
Lamar told me that hadn't been enough.
He sounded tense.
I could hear him breathing harder than usual.
Then he mentioned Eddie.
He knew I had been talking to him.
I didn't pretend otherwise.
“Yes, I have.”
Lamar immediately accused Eddie of misleading me.
He said the man didn't understand the business records.
He insisted the situation was complicated.
I leaned back in the chair.
“Then explain the amount he showed me.”
There was a pause.
I told Lamar I knew about the two hundred and forty thousand dollars.
The silence changed.
I could feel it.
For a moment, I thought the call had ended.
Then he asked where I had gotten that figure.
His voice was sharper now.
I didn't tell him about every document.
I didn't tell him what Eddie had shown me.
I simply asked whether the amount was wrong.
Lamar avoided answering.
Instead, he began talking about the problems with the bait shop.
He said there had been debts.
There had been difficult decisions.
He said Rhoda had helped him when he felt he had no other way out.
I listened.
Then he asked me to stop speaking with the police.
That was the first completely clear thing he had said.
He wasn't calling to ask whether I was all right.
He wasn't calling to understand what I had endured.
He wanted me to protect him.
I looked at Ione.
She could tell something had changed.
I asked Lamar why I should stop.
He reminded me that we were married.
I stared at the little velvet box sitting on the desk.
My ring was inside.
For forty-seven years, that marriage had meant something to me.
I had understood it as a promise.
We would share our lives.
We would face trouble together.
We would care for each other when age made ordinary things harder.
But Lamar had taken the parts of marriage that benefited him and left me carrying the rest.
I asked where he had been when I needed him.
He didn't answer.
I asked where he had been when I sold our truck.
Silence.
I asked where he had been when the bank came after the bait shop.
Still nothing.
Then I remembered Christmas.
Our kitchen.
The table.
The meal I had prepared out of habit.
I had taken out two plates before remembering that I was alone.
For a long time, I stood there holding the second plate.
I couldn't make myself put it away.
I told Lamar about that day.
He breathed into the phone.
Then he said he had done something foolish.
I closed my eyes.
Foolish.
I thought about the searches for his body.
The church filled with mourners.
The casket.
The debt.
The forged signatures Eddie had shown me.
Nothing about it had been careless.
It had taken planning.
I told him so.
His voice softened.
He asked to see me.
I wanted to refuse.
Detective Walker had warned me about meeting him.
Ione was sitting in front of me shaking her head.
But I still wanted answers.
Not because I hoped to repair the marriage.
I knew that wasn't possible.
I wanted to know whether Lamar had ever intended to return.
I wanted to know why he had used my name.
I wanted to hear him explain what he had done without hiding behind Rhoda.
So I agreed to meet him the following morning.
I told him it had to be somewhere public.
And I wanted him to bring the financial papers.
Everything he had.
He hesitated.
Then he agreed.
Before we ended the call, he began speaking in the gentle tone he used when he wanted me to calm down.
I stopped him.
I told him not to use the old names he had called me during our marriage.
Those names no longer belonged in a conversation between us.
Then I ended the call.
Ione looked at me.
“You're going to see him?”
“Yes.”
She sat forward.
“Roberta, the detective told you not to meet him alone.”
“I know.”
I told her I intended to inform Detective Walker.
And I wanted her nearby.
She agreed, though I could see she wasn't happy.
I understood.
I wasn't happy either.
But I had spent two years living with unanswered questions.
I didn't want Lamar to decide which ones I was allowed to ask.
The following morning, we went to a small café near the marina.
Detective Walker had been told about the meeting.
He knew where I would be.
Ione sat at another table, positioned where she could see us.
I chose a chair facing the entrance.
For a while, I watched customers come and go.
A man carrying a newspaper.
A woman in a pale blouse.
A couple speaking quietly over coffee.
I noticed every face.
Then Lamar arrived.
He was fifteen minutes late.
He wore khaki trousers and a clean white shirt.
His beard had been trimmed.
He looked rested.
Healthy.
There was something almost offensive about that.
I had spent two years worrying about bills.
I had lost sleep.
I had cried through holidays.
I had stood beside his grave.
And here he was, looking as though he had simply come from a pleasant morning at home.
He spotted me.
For a moment, he slowed down.
Then he walked to the table.
I watched him sit.
There were familiar things about him.
The way he pulled out the chair.
The way he rested his hands.
The small movement of his jaw before speaking.
I had seen those things thousands of times.
Suddenly, I remembered our first date.
We were both twenty-four.
Lamar took me to a diner.
I was nervous.
Too nervous to tell the waitress what I wanted.
So he ordered hamburgers for both of us.
I stole some of his French fries.
He laughed.
I remembered thinking I wanted to spend the rest of my life hearing that laugh.
For a moment, the memory hurt so much I couldn't speak.
Then I remembered why I was sitting there.
Lamar placed a brown envelope on the table.
He said he wanted me to understand his decisions.
I didn't touch the envelope.
“Then tell me.”
He began with the bait shop.
The business had been losing money.
Loans had piled up.
He had tried to manage them.
He said he was frightened of telling me how bad things had become.
I asked why he couldn't simply come home and admit we had a problem.
He looked down.
He said he didn't want me to worry.
I stared at him.
For years, we had paid bills together.
We had worked hard.
We had lived through difficult seasons.
I had spent decades in hospital rooms watching families handle terrible news.
I wasn't a woman who needed every unpleasant truth kept away from her.
But Lamar had decided that rather than tell me about debt, he would let me believe he had drowned.
I asked him whether that had been easier.
He looked ashamed.
He said he was afraid of losing the business.
Our home.
Everything we had built.
I leaned forward.
“You left me to lose it for you.”
He lowered his eyes.
Then he began talking about Rhoda.
He admitted they had been close before he disappeared.
He said she had understood what he was going through.
He said they had discussed the possibility of leaving Georgia.
Starting over somewhere else.
I asked about Clifton.
Lamar hesitated.
Then he said Clifton had already died by the time they left.
I reminded him that the affair began before Clifton's death.
Rhoda had told me so herself.
Lamar looked away.
He didn't deny it.
I thought about Clifton bringing tomatoes to our house.
The way he smiled when he spoke about his garden.
The way he trusted his wife.
I asked whether Lamar had ever considered how Clifton would feel.
He said nothing could be done about the past.
I looked at him.
That was becoming his answer to everything.
He couldn't change it.
He had been afraid.
Things became complicated.
He had made decisions.
None of those words explained why he had used me.
I looked at the brown envelope again.
“What's in there?”
He pushed it closer.
He said it contained papers that might help me understand.
I opened it.
There were bank statements.
Property documents.
And a handwritten letter addressed to me.
I recognized his writing.
I unfolded the page.
It was an apology.
He admitted that his plans hadn't worked as he expected.
He said he had wanted to move money, settle obligations, and perhaps return when the trouble had passed.
He acknowledged that he and Rhoda had made choices that hurt me.
He wrote that he didn't expect forgiveness.
At the bottom was his name.
Lamar.
I read the letter again.
Then I folded it.
For years, I had wanted one more letter from him.
One more note.
One more ordinary message saying he would be home soon.
Now I had a letter, and I didn't know what to do with it.
I put it on the table.
“Why give me this now?”
He looked at me.
He said he still cared about me.
I watched his face.
I wanted to believe there had been some part of our marriage he hadn't thrown away.
But caring about someone meant more than remembering them fondly.
It meant considering what your choices would do to their life.
Lamar hadn't done that.
I asked him whether he had truly planned to come back.
He nodded.
I waited.
“When?”
He looked down.
He said he hadn't chosen an exact time.
He thought he could return after the financial trouble settled.
I asked how long he expected that to take.
A year?
Several years?
Until I was too old to question him?
He didn't give me an answer.
I looked at his hands.
Those hands had held mine when we married.
They had held our children.
They had built things around our house.
They had reached for mine during difficult moments.
Now they rested on the table while he tried to explain why he had left me to mourn him.
I realized I could no longer tell which memories were honest and which had been convenient.
Then I noticed another document in the envelope.
It had been partly covered by the bank statements.
I pulled it free.
A property deed.
The property was in Georgia.
It was owned by a company registered under my name.
I frowned.
I had never heard of the company.
I hadn't knowingly bought property through it.
I asked Lamar what it was.
He said the property was intended for me.
I looked at the value.
Approximately one hundred and eighty thousand dollars.
My heart began beating faster.
He explained that he had purchased it using some of the money he moved before disappearing.
I put the document down.
I thought about the financial records Eddie had shown me.
The checks.
The loans.
The signatures.
Money moved through accounts using another man's identity.
Now Lamar was offering me a property connected to those same funds.
I asked whether the money had come from the bait shop.
He admitted some of it had.
I moved the paper away.
He looked surprised.
“You don't want it?”
I told him I didn't want anything that might have been bought with money taken dishonestly.
His expression hardened.
He insisted the money hadn't been stolen.
I looked at him.
“Then you should have no trouble explaining it to investigators.”
He leaned toward me.
For the first time that morning, his voice became urgent.
He said I needed to think carefully.
He warned that cooperating with the authorities could make things worse.
I asked for whom.
He said everybody involved could suffer.
I looked at the envelope.
My name on the deed.
My name on documents I hadn't signed.
My name connected to accounts I didn't understand.
He was still trying to make me responsible for the consequences of his choices.
I had already paid for them.
With my savings.
With the bait shop.
With the truck.
With two years of my life.
I stood.
Lamar reached for the envelope.
He looked frightened now.
Not the helpless kind of frightened.
The kind I had seen in patients who knew something important was about to be discovered.
He asked me to sit down.
I shook my head.
I told him I wouldn't make any agreements.
I wouldn't sign more documents.
And I wouldn't help him hide what he had done.
He called after me.
I kept walking.
Ione stood when she saw me approaching.
She looked toward Lamar, then back at me.
“Are you all right?”
I took her arm.
“No. But I know what I have to do.”
Outside the café, the Florida sunshine hurt my eyes.
I had come hoping for an explanation.
Lamar had given me excuses, a letter, and a deed to property I had never authorized anyone to purchase for me.
I thought about Detective Walker's instructions.
Keep the evidence.
Don't make agreements.
Don't sign anything.
I had followed them.
And now I had more information to provide.
Ione walked beside me toward the car.
She didn't ask whether I still loved Lamar.
That was a question I couldn't answer in a way that would make sense.
For forty-seven years, love had been part of how I understood myself.
It didn't disappear because I learned something terrible.
But I knew something else.
I no longer trusted him.
Not with money.
Not with decisions.
Not with the remaining years of my life.
I opened the car door and sat down.
Ione started the engine.
I looked at my phone.
Detective Walker's number was still there.
I called to tell him about the meeting.
About the letter.
About the property in Georgia.
About the company registered under my name.
I didn't know what the investigators would find when they examined everything.
But I knew I was finished protecting Lamar from questions he should have answered years earlier.
For two years, I had believed there was nothing left to learn about his disappearance.
Now I understood that the truth had been sitting inside business records, hidden signatures, and accounts I had never known existed.
And I was going to give the authorities every piece of it that I could.
Click here to continue reading: PART 5: After I Told the Detective About Lamar’s Secret Property, the Investigation Began Uncovering What He and Rhoda Had Hidden for Years
I Sat Across From the Husband I Had Buried Two Years Earlier and Waited for Him to Explain Why He Was Alive
Part 4 of 25
