Page 33

Seven days after

I made myself take a shower today. Though, I didn’t totally understand why I felt the pressure to do so.

Why exactly is it objectionable, when mourning, to look the part?

For some reason, my grief seems to be making everyone a little queasy.

There have been droves of people in and out of my house in the last twenty-four hours.

From the size and volume of flower arrangements, it’s hard to tell if we’re in mourning or celebrating the winner of the Kentucky Derby.

People who, for the past year, have taken unique pleasure in skewering me as the interloping gold digger are now giving me consoling hugs.

I guess death trumps social politics. Or maybe social politics still reign supreme and they’re just in it for the spectacle.

Publicly grieving is merely another way these people socialize.

The way they tell me their Will stories—as if they’ve all just lost their dearest friend—makes it feel like everyone wants a piece of the grief. A piece of the attention.

I do my best to stomach it all with a demure smile, propped up by the wine Este keeps passing me. But every now and then a more sinister thought creeps in about the cast of characters surrounding me.

Which one of you fuckers killed Will?

An incalculable number of casseroles and to-go containers from every restaurant in Winter Park is piling up in my kitchen. No one here would bake a thing themselves, but they’ll at least give a show of being polite, civilized, and thoughtful enough to pretend to dote on me.

While all of this pomp and circumstance is happening around me, I still feel like I’m walking on the bottom of a pool.

I hear people’s voices, but it all just sounds like murmurs.

I see Autumn in my kitchen trying to repackage the food into sad single-serving freezer bags complete with little ribbons holding them together.

As if attractive packaging will somehow make me feel better about being a twenty-eight-year-old widow.

Oh, look! My spinach lasagna has a green curlicue bow! Who even cares what happened to my husband!

I don’t mean to be terrible. I know she is trying to do something nice—she is doing something nice. But I’m trapped in a kind of permanent fog. A fog that will never lift, that I will carry with me for the rest of my life no matter where I go, or what I do. My husband will always be gone.

Somewhere under the clutter gathering on my bathroom counter, my phone rings. My mom is calling. It’s the fourth time she’s called since I left a message that they’d found Will.

“Hey, Mom.”

“Nora—”

The sound of her voice catches me off guard, a lump of grief swells in my throat. But no tears come. Just a searing pain in my chest.

“Nora, honey, I just can’t believe this news.

It can’t be happening. Paolo has been talking to the captain since you called, trying to figure out if we can get to any port, or how I can get to you.

But he’s holding his ground that he can’t turn the ship just for me.

And now I’m just beside myself. I’m distraught. You need me and I can’t be there.”

She starts to cry. A familiar whimper that inexplicably makes me angry. I can’t console her. I haven’t even been able to access my own tears.

“Mom, it’s okay. Really.”

“Bu—No—I want—flights—can’t—”

Her phone starts cutting out.

“Just call me when you get to dry land, okay, Mom?”

I don’t get an answer and hang up. I stand there for a second, considering calling her back, but I don’t have the energy for it. I head downstairs instead.

When I come into the kitchen, Mia is standing in front of the refrigerator, looking over all the random meals.

There’s a pile of her clothes on the counter behind her.

It’s the first time I’ve noticed how much she stands like Will.

She’s the spitting image of Constance, but she has Will’s easy posture, and his slightly crooked grin.

My heart hurts for a minute, but this time it isn’t for me.

This is happening to Mia, too. Will wasn’t just her father.

He was her person—her Pal—long before he was mine.

Shit, I’m an asshole. Where has Mia been in all of this?

I think about the first time we met, and Will saying Mia was struggling with the divorce.

How could any of us have known then that things were going to get so much worse?

Mia gives up and closes the door. Her hair has barely been brushed, and she’s too young for the circles under her eyes. She sees me and jumps a little.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to sneak up on you,” I say. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

“I probably should’ve texted.” She moves around the island toward her phone on the counter.

“You don’t have to. You never did before.”

Before. When this was her dad’s house. And he lived here. And she just came and went.

I realize that I need to say something, but I don’t know what.

“This part is weird. I don’t know what to do about it either.” Mia unlocks her phone and scrolls through some text messages, answering them rapid-fire the way only a teenager can.

Mia is often more of an adult in any given situation than most adults I know.

“I just…needed a break. My mom’s house is so crowded. She keeps begging her friends to come over so they can drink wine and watch her cry about Dad. Like she hasn’t spent the last millennium badmouthing my dad to anyone who will listen. Everything’s always so dramatic with her.”

Something about Constance getting to own any piece of Will’s loss makes the ache of losing him feel heavier and chafe in all the wrong places. I curse his death for the thousandth time.

How am I supposed to carry all this?

I am about to tell Mia that she can come here whenever she wants, and that I really do want her to still consider me family, but Este comes through the sliding glass door, a bottle of Prosecco in her hand, shifting the mood.

“Hey, Mia. How’re you holding up?” Este sets the Prosecco down on the counter and goes to the butler’s pantry for glasses.

“I’m okay. But I better go. If my mom finds me here, she’ll kill me. I’ll, uh, see you guys later, I guess?”

“Of course.”

I pull Mia into a hug. It’s the kind of hug my mother has never been able to give to me.

And for a brief moment, it’s exactly what I need.

She lingers for a second, her body slumping into mine, but when she starts to shake a little, she pulls away.

And so do I. We’re not ready to settle into the pain yet.

She scoops up the clothes off the counter and shows herself out the front.

I look at Este, the glisten of a tear in the corner of her eye.

I can see her fighting it off, being strong for me.

Very on brand for Este and her “never let them see you bleed” motto.

She hands me a glass of Prosecco and more of whatever stash of Xanax she seems to have an endless supply of.

For a flash, I see my future as the subject of a cautionary tale, but I slam them both back.

We walk to the living room and I climb into the corner of my couch, pulling a pillow across my lap and hugging it close.

“Has Ardell called?”

Este brings the bottle of Prosecco and her glass over and plops on the couch next to me. “I checked with him, and he said they still haven’t heard from the medical examiner. Fritz was going to go down to the office to talk to the guy himself as of about twenty minutes ago.”

“I want to talk to him. I want to know what evidence he’s been able to gather.” I’m wringing my hands with the anxiety of it all.

Este reaches out and stills my hands. “You’re about twenty minutes away from being a little drunk. And high. Maybe another day?”

“I have things to say.”

“Like what?”

I sink back into my seat. All I can fixate on is that Constance was drunk and angry about her social demise the night Will died.

It’s the one card I have, so I need to be careful about how I play it.

I’ve even withheld it from Este, because she runs so hot she’d be on Ardell’s doorstep in an hour with the information.

I need more to back up my theories before I can say anything.

“Never mind,” I mumble.

Will is dead—murdered—and everything is upside down.

I have so many questions running through my mind.

How did we fast-forward from trying to find Will to this?

It feels like as soon as his body was found, a switch flipped, and now everyone is in a hurry to bury him.

I keep waiting for one of the mourners who’ve come to pay their respects to pull me aside with their conspiracy theory of how this is all a farce.

If they’re talking about how this could have happened, they’re not talking to me.

Everyone gives me a wide berth as I move through the house.

They’re all so somber and certain of their grief. Meanwhile, if I open my mouth, I might just scream.

Isn’t someone going to do something? Aren’t we looking for answers? What could’ve happened? Was he scared? Did he…suffer?

The last thought almost makes me want to puke. And I must look like I am going to because Este reaches over and rubs my knee. I can tell that she doesn’t really know what to do or say, and “at a loss for words” is a very weird look for Este. I don’t like it.

Este must sense my feelings because she picks up the remote and turns the TV on.

She’s flipping through the guide, trying to find something mindless to watch when the current channel up in the little box is Lindy Bedford—the nationally syndicated newsmagazine host who makes Nancy Grace look like a kitten—talking about Winter Park.

Este clicks on the box and I hear myself gasp when I see Will’s face front and center on the screen.