Page 29 of Deathtoll

“You can drive it straight to the back parking lot,” Linda told Murph. “Louis will be waiting for you with the Tuesday Night Men’s Group. I’ll give him a call to let him know you’re on your way. They’ll carry everything down to the basement.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Kate glanced over her shoulder just in time to see Murph pick up the nearest box and carry it out as if it were his first instead of his fiftieth. She missed his muscles. Missed seeing them, touching them, kissing them. Murph naked was a sight to behold.

She was a shallow, shallow woman.

“You have a good man there,” Linda commented with a wistful smile. “Reminds me of my second husband.”

“Not my man.” The words tumbled out and made Kate halt with the tape for a second. Was she being petty? Weird? Mean? “But he is a good man.”

Linda tilted her head. “I see the way he looks at you.”

“We used to be…” What? A couple? Fake engaged?

“I see.” A sage look came into Linda’s eyes. “Well, isn’t that a shame.”

Unsure how to respond to that, Kate finished sealing the box in front of her. “So what’s the secret to a long and happy marriage?”

Linda thought about it for a second. Hummed. Then she said, “Every time you see your husband naked, like when he’s coming out of the shower or getting dressed, just look real shocked and sayHow does that thing keep growing?”

Kate had expectedDon’t go to bed angry. She choked on laughter. “Okay. I’ll try to remember that.” She shook her head, pushing the finished box against the wall with her foot. “What happened to the first husband?”

“Got rid of him. Always a day late and an inch short.” Linda winked.

Kate might have laughed a little too hard at that. She was starting to see why Betty had been friends with Linda. Not a dull moment.

“Do you think you’ll get married for the third time?” Kate asked.

Linda gestured at the door through which Tony Mauro had left. “Have you seen what’s out there?”

“He’s a character. I like him. He’s funny.”

Linda shrugged, then changed the subject. “What went wrong with you and Murph?”

That was the last thing Kate wanted to talk about. So after saying, “What didn’t?” she added, “I’ll do Betty’s craft room next.”

Except, as she stepped into the room, she stopped and just stood there. Instead of cataloging the shelves of supplies, her brain was replaying a three-month-old conversation with Murph, the one right before he’d proposed.

“I wanted you from the first time I saw you sleeping in my bed like Cinderella.”

“Sleeping Beauty.”

“I’ll brush up on my fairy-tale princesses when we have kids.”

The thought stole her breath. The image he painted…a little girl on his knee, holding up a storybook…

“I could be a terrible mother.”

It was her deepest fear—that she had some defective gene, and she’d end up being the kind of parent like the monster who had given birth to her.

“You mothered your sister,” Murph said. “And you did that just fine.”

“That’s not necessarily healthy psychologically either.”

“Okay,” he said. “If you don’t want kids, we won’t have kids.”

“As easy as that?”