Karen came into the room holding a cup of coffee, still wearing her nightgown. He pulled her to him and planted a kiss on the top of her head, inhaling the smell of her sleepy self, something he’d never thought of missing till he didn’t have it. There was an intimacy in knowing what someone smelled like first thing in the morning. It was a privilege to be the person who got to experience it, who knew that part and not just the part they showed to the world.
“I missed you,” he said for the hundredth time.
She smiled at him, still wary. She’d let him back in the house, but it would take a little longer to let him back into her heart. She had to know he wouldn’t abandon them ever again, not for any case, not for anything. That would take time. But he would wait as long as it took.
“Big meeting today, huh?” It was not really a question, but she posed it as one.
“Yeah,” he said, sitting down on the bed to slip on his shoes. He needed new soles.
“I hope it goes well.”
“I think I’m going to stop by and see Maria on the way in,” he said. He’d been putting it off, but he couldn’t anymore.
“I’m sure she’ll appreciate that.”
He turned to look at Karen. “It scares the hell out of me.”
She sat down beside him. “So do it scared.”
He grinned. “I guess I’m gonna have to.”
“Are you going to tell her, about that last day with Matteo?”
He was quiet for a moment, thinking it over again. He looked at Karen. “Should I?”
Now it was her turn to think it over. “I don’t know. It’s the truth. But it’s also a hard thing for her to know about her dead husband.”
“I thought I’d just ask her if she has any questions about the autopsy report, make sure she understands that it was likely an accident. He was drinking in his car. Probably had the car running. Passed out and somehow the car went into the lake. And that was it.”
“But why was he at that lake drinking on a Wednesday evening?” Karen mused. “That’s what she’s got to be asking herself.”
“Because his brother had just sent him away,” Nico said, sadly. “He’d chastised him, and sent him away.”
“He’d just confessed he’d been with a prostitute. You had a right to be angry.”
Nico nodded, thinking about that day. Matteo had been in agony over what he’d done. But he’d also been concerned about what he’d seen, more importantly about who he’d seen, a man he said he recognized but couldn’t place. “I’m telling you it’s someone I’ve seen before, like in the papers. Some government official. He didn’t like that I saw him. I wasn’t supposed to.” Matteo’s eyes were wild, darting around the room.
Nico hadn’t handled it well. He’d called his brother an idiot. He’d told him he didn’t have time for his shit that day. He had a huge case in court the next day and needed to go over his testimony. “You got yourself into this. You get yourself out.”
Then Matteo said the thing that Nico could never—would never—forget. “But I need you.” And Nico had turned his back on him. He’d never seen him again.
The truth—the whole truth about what had happened with Matteo—had gotten him back into the house. Once he had explained to Karen why he’d been so dogged in his search for his brother, why he’d thrown himself into investigating Norah Ramsey, Karen understood much more. She still didn’t like the decisions he’d made, but she gave him the chance to make better decisions going forward. It was all he could ask for.
Now, Karen planted a kiss on his cheek. “You’ll do the right thing,” she said. “You always do.” She raised her eyebrows. “Eventually.”
He laughed, grateful for the bit of humor. Grateful for his wife. Grateful for the life he’d been given back, a second chance to do the right thing. He didn’t intend to ever need a third.
Polly
She’d done this before, of course. With Norah when she was a kid. But that had been many years ago. Now they had fancy gadgets to make it easier. She spread the newspaper out on the table and placed the pumpkin in the center of it. She’d bought a new pumpkin to replace the other one, a casualty of Calvin’s rampage.
Bess sat at the island watching her spread the paper out, drinking wine with her good arm. “This is all the lifting I can do these days,” she quipped, and raised the glass to her lips.
“Well, cheers to that,” Polly said. She went back to arranging the paper so not one bit of Norah’s table showed. “You said Casey’s dropping by?”
“Yeah, she’s busy packing to go back to school, but she said she’d come supervise for a minute. She says she’s an expert pumpkin carver, but I think she just wants to keep an eye out for Violet, make sure Micah has the best of intentions.”
Polly rolled her eyes. “Well, according to Violet he has no intentions at all. But you should see the way he looks at her. I give it a coupla months, and they’ll be an item.”
Bess smiled knowingly, then changed the subject. “You doing OK?” she asked, her voice tentative.
“Yeah,” Polly said. “It gets a little easier each day. I’m not having as many nightmares. You?”
“Physical therapy is gonna be a bitch. And I worry I’ll never have mobility in my arm like I used to. You don’t realize how much your shoulder controls what your arm does.” She sighed. “Funny how one thing can affect so much.” She ran her good hand through her hair. “But mentally, I’m doing OK. I’m not as scared as I thought I’d be. Course I’m militant about the security system being on.”
Polly raised her eyes heavenward and nodded an emphatic agreement to that. She felt much the same about their security system ever since “the incident,” as she’d come to call it. Sometimes she replayed that moment of letting Barney in, her eyes straying to Bess pouring the wine, forgetting all about locking the door behind her in the process. She’d always regret leaving it open for Calvin to walk right through. But that was the past, and there was nothing that could be done about it. And, as Bess said, she’d apologized enough.
“You’d think I’d be freaked out now that it’s just me and the girls,” Bess continued. “But I’m weirdly OK with it.”
“Your ex giving you any trouble about splitting up?”
Bess pursed her lips. “Kind of hard to when he was MIA for hours after I’d been shot because he was with another woman.” She and Polly both laughed at this, even though it really wasn’t funny.
“And besides, you’ve got Jason,” Polly teased. She’d given Bess a hard time about that as soon as Bess confessed that she actually knew the homeless man who’d saved them, that she’d been helping him out for a while and they’d actually become friends, of sorts. Bess insisted she didn’t have feelings for him, but Polly wondered. She’d seen him when he had come by to visit Bess after she got home from the hospital. He’d showered and shaved and had on new clothes. He cleaned up good, as they say.
“Oh, I do not,” Bess groused. Then she smiled. “But he did get a job. And he’s looking for an apartment.”