“Healthy, as far as we know,” I say, ignoring the bitterness of her tone. I open the door for her to walk inside. “She’s coming up on six months. What about you and Al?”
“We’re good. Al got a promotion at work, so we’re moving back. We’re buying a new house in Corona. Should close at the end of the month.”
“Congratulations.”
The word rebounds off the deeply Victorian walls. This place is like a tomb—the air musty, the lights dim.
We’re greeted by a forty-something woman in a pantsuit who steps out of the shadows. She’s much too chipper for her working atmosphere. Heather and I take the seat across from her desk and pick out a casket, followed by a funeral schedule and music. I let Heather decide everything, deferring to her taste and her beliefs in what Joanna would want. I know better than to toss my hat into the ring. Joanna and Heather shared headstrong, stubborn personalities. Which was probably what kept them from swallowing their pride and calling each other after their fight—whatever it was about.
“I’m thinking we should have her funeral at a Catholic church,” Heather states. And then she turns to me. “Don’t you agree?”
“Heather, you know Joanna was an atheist.”
“But the detective said she was found wearing a necklace with the Virgin Mary on it. Maybe she changed her mind in the end, and this was what she would’ve wanted. Don’t you think?”
I don’t totally agree with Heather, but I’m the last person who would know what Joanna wanted. She’d changed so much in the last few months of her life. We both had.
In the silence before I answer, realization creeps in. Whoever murdered Joanna could have given her the necklace after she was killed, like a token. Or maybe it was from her lover, our baby’s father—her baby’s father, I correct. I’d wanted a family with her so damn bad….
I sigh. “Catholic church it is.”
As the woman helping us disappears into the back to tally up the fee, Heather turns to me.
“You’re on the news down there,” she says flatly.
“In L.A.?”
She nods.
“Christ.” I scrub my hands through my hair. My face is plastered on every local news station. I can’t go anywhere without people glaring, suspecting I’ve killed my wife. Now I’m making national news? The thought revolts me. People are too eager to gossip, to sink their teeth into this case. I’m guilty before the cops even have the facts. “What are they saying?”
“Officially? Nothing. But everyone thinks you murdered my sister. And I might believe it too, to be honest.”
Her resemblance to Joanna strikes me again. Their candor is nothing if not cunning.
“Knocking up your girlfriend right after your wife was murdered doesn’t exactly help your case,” she goes on, keeping her sour gaze locked on mine. “Honestly Michael, it looks like you killed Joanna to get her out of the way so you could whore around with your secretary.”
“Jesus, Heather, I know how it looks! It’s all I can think about.” Knives pierce my temples. I attempt to rub the pain away. It doesn’t help. “But Joanna left me, not the other way around. I’m sure she told you.”
She shakes her head. “You know the thing I don’t understand, Michael?”
Here she goes.
“I know the kind of hot-cold relationship you and Joanna had. I remember how thrilled she was to marry you—I’d never seen her so happy. But then she’d call late at night, sobbing, locked in the second master bedroom because she couldn’t stand to lie next to you.”
“I remember those things too.”
With ugly, painful clarity.
I couldn’t sleep those nights, when the sound of her weeping seemed to fill our home. When I let my