“What happens if I refuse to write another Monica book?” she asked.
“Let’s not worry about that now,” Henry said firmly. “Right now, I want you to take a deep breath and relax. Go for a walk through the pine forest. Take a swim in the pool. Or better yet, canoe around the lake. And then have a nice hot bath. Get a good night’s sleep, and call me in the morning.”
“So this means I won’t get the money.”
“You will get the money. When you deliver the next Monica book. If you work really hard, I’m sure you can knock one off in six months. After all, you do know all about ugly divorces now.”
“Thanks, Henry,” she sniped.
Henry sighed. “I did warn you about historical fiction. Most editors won’t go near it these days. It’s not popular.”
She lost Henry when the driver slammed on the brake and her phone dropped to the floor. They had reached the final switchback to the house, and the driver turned around to gape at her. Then he slowly turned his head and looked back at the house, as if trying to put two and two together.
“You live here?” he asked.
Pandy sighed, gathering her things. “It’s not what it seems.”
She got out of the car and started briskly up the path to the house, pausing for a moment to admire the rose garden. The S. Pandemonia and S. Hellenor, the two roses for which she and Hellenor were named, were in full bloom.
This situation—the looming divorce settlement and the book’s being rejected—was going to be a huge problem, she realized as she went hurriedly up the stairs and into the house. Without pausing to wind the clock, she went right into the kitchen.
She placed her sack of groceries on the counter, opened the refrigerator, took out the container of milk, and threw it in the trash.
The milk was from the one and only time she’d been back to Wallis House since that terrible scene with Jonny. It had been nearly a year since the night when she’d secretly moved all her papers to Wallis House.
All the files and contracts; the tax returns, the old phone bills, drafts of manuscripts and Monica scripts; a copy of the will she’d just signed that left everything to Hellenor—including the rights to Monica—on the off chance she might have something to leave behind when Jonny’s lawyers got through with her. In short, anything and everything that Jonny might get his hands on and could then use against her.
He’d already tried to claim that Pandy had attempted to murder him when she’d pushed him into the pool.
Pandy sighed and began unpacking the groceries Henry had shoved into the back of the car at the last second. If she’d known then what she knew now about Jonny, would she have let him slide under the water, watching those last air bubbles rise to the surface—a series of small ones, then a pause, and at last that final balloon-shaped burst of air as the water rushed in and forced out the last molecules of oxygen?
She would have only had to wait fifteen minutes for Jonny to be brain-dead and dead-dead. And then, for the sake of authenticity, she would have retraced her steps, hurrying down the path as if she’d just discovered he wasn’t in the house. When she spotted him floating in the pool, she would have splashed in, lifting him under the arms and laying him flat in the grass. She would have pulled back his head and pinched his nose.
She would then have performed textbook-perfect CPR. After ten minutes, she would have given up. She would have run back to the house, called 911, and waited the thirty minutes it would have taken for the volunteer fire department to arrive.
And by then, it would have been far too late.
Jonny would be dead—an accident! He had taken a nap in Old Jay’s bed, been attacked by chiggers, and had run into the pool to escape them, where, unfortunately, he had drowned.
And what a happy widow she would have been! Free of Jonny without the bummer of becoming another middle-aged divorcée in New York. Instead, her reputation would have grown as that of a tragic figure.
She would have had what her English friends called “the black wedding.” The black wedding was what you wished for ten years after you’d had the white wedding. After you’d produced a couple of children and had had enough time to