Winter 2010
Lies of the Heart
A Novel
Michelle Boyajian
As her husband's murderer stands trial, a woman must come to terms with her marriage's hidden fault lines—and her own culpability
Katie Burelli is living a wife's worst nightmare. Her husband Nick, a speech therapist, has been shot at point blank range and killed by Jerry, one of his developmentally disabled patients. Now, she sits in the courtroom, playing and replaying the events that led up to the murder. As the trial progresses and Katie searches her own recollections for answers, she begins to confront the truth about her marriage and her own responsibility for her husband's tragic death. A powerful debut novel and a rich tale of psychological suspense, Lies of the Heart masterfully dissects a marriage and explores the path of self-discovery that can sometimes be found in grief.
Michelle Boyajian holds an MFA from the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, where she received the Austin Robert Hartsook Fellowship in Creative Writing. Her short stories have appeared in Third Coast and Timber Creek Review and were nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
It would only take about twenty seconds—twenty-five, tops. But Katie times it in her head again anyway, because Richard is really on a roll now, he's pacing back and forth in front of the jurors and unbuttoning the jacket of his dark suit. Katie knows exactly what this means, knows that now he's presented her husband to the jurors—Nick's faithful service to the speech pathology community, his selfless behavior with his clients, his devotion to the mentally handicapped population—it's time to tell them about that day, it's time for Richard to take Nick away again. So she closes her eyes and carefully times it out again:
Five seconds to rise and make her way to the end of the front row. She will be polite, of course, she will say excuse me, excuse me the whole way, but she has to be quick so she won't hesitate if she accidentally tramples a foot or two. Another five to push open the little gate, to step through, and then walk around to the right and face the defense table. At least a full ten seconds to throw herself directly across the table and onto Jerry, to dig her right index finger into one of his eye sockets, hooked and pulling, or to slam the heel of her palm up on the underside of his nose, hard. Yes, about twenty seconds. But possibly another ten if the bailiffs are quick, if they beat her to where Jerry is sitting there, hunched over a yellow writing tablet with a pen.
A pen.
Add a few more seconds to wrestle it out of his hand, to raise it high and then plunge it—
"And then that defendant walked into the Warwick Center gymnasium on May 5th of this year, at approximately two-thirty in the afternoon, where Nicholas Burrelli was playing a game of pickup basketball with two of his clients," Richard says in his confident, sonorous voice.
Katie opens her eyes because she knows what will happen if she keeps them closed, how the words will begin to form and take shape, how she will see it all over again: her husband side-stepping with the ball, his face flushed with happiness, the beads of sweat forming. And then, always too soon, the blind rush of film moving forward—her husband flat on his back, face ghostly, fading. Dark blood pooling underneath his head, the fingers of thick liquid slowly escaping from underneath.
Richard stands in front of the jurors, his arm outstretched and pointing at Jerry. Jerry's lawyer, Donna Treadmont, places her hand lightly on Jerry's back, but Jerry stays bent over the pad.
"And Jerry LaPlante reached into the pocket of his windbreaker—" Richard mimes this, puts his hand into his pocket and then pulls it out with his index finger pointing, thumb up in the air "—and he pulled out a gun. He raised the gun to eye level, and walked across the basketball court towards Nick, who had his back to him."
Richard holds his finger-gun in front of him and slowly walks to the defense table. Donna's hand makes wide swirling motions on Jerry's broad back, but he's still focused on the pad, the pen moving slowly across the page.
"And he didn't stop until he got to within three feet from Nick."
Richard stops, gun trained on Jerry's lowered head, and there is complete silence. But it's too late for Katie because his words have already taken form—she sees Nick's face, his dark eyes squinted and filled with laughter, and she hears the sound of the bouncing basketball echoing off the walls, the squeaky shuffling of sneakers on the court. And then the inevitable happens, in the precious seconds before the bullet takes Nick to the floor: he is suddenly in the room with her, she feels Nick's hand in hers, his warm breath against her neck. Her entire body full of him, of who he still is, until Richard's dramatic sigh intrudes.
She checks on the jurors, turns quickly to follow their intent stares: Richard has become a statue in front of the defense table, body frozen in place, gun still pointing. Katie stares too, and then a sudden anger zippers through her body, a hot scraping on the inside of her skin—Richard's pose so theatrical, so deliberately staged that she has to turn away. She flicks her eyes back to the jury box, focuses on an elderly male in the middle of the back row—his hand flat over his heart, mouth slightly open. Better, she thinks. We should all have our hands over our hearts.
—from Lies of the Heart
