“No, uh-uh.”
Vera sighs. “You are so dramatic. Fine, I will call Uber. It will be so expensive in the city, you know. Daylight robbery. But I have no choice.”
“Are you seriously going to do this?” Oliver cries. “It’s so—I don’t know—so inappropriate!”
“His poor wife is probably wondering what happen to Marshall.”
“Wha—but—wait—”
Vera gives him a withering look. “Oliver, don’t waste my time. Time is precious. Just because you young people have a lot of it, you think you can waste it? Is obvious he has wife. She come by to my teahouse yesterday with a toddler, but then she run away when I see her. Who else can it be but his wife and daughter? Now we have to check on them, make sure they are okay. His poor wife. Her husband suddenly turn up dead, you don’t think she needs company? Unless, of course, she is the one who kill him. Either way, I have to pay her a visit.” Vera takes out her phone and makes a big show of tapping on the Uber app. “Oh my, twenty-five dollars one way. Ridiculous! Still, I have no choice.” She gives Oliver a pointed look.
“Oh my god,” he groans. “Fine! Jesus.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Look, we can’t just show up there out of the blue, okay? Let me give her a call first, for god’s sake.”
Vera nods happily. “Good idea, yes. Put her on speaker, there’s a good boy.”
Oliver gives her a look. “I’m not putting her on speaker.”
Young people nowadays. Vera tuts but decides to let him have his way on this one. She’s lived long enough to know the importance of picking your battles. She waits patiently as Oliver calls Marshall’s wife, pricking her ears when the call is answered. In the silence in the car, she can hear the woman’s voice on the other end ever so faintly. Marshall’s wife sounds lovely, she thinks. Not at all like a murderer (or murderess?), but then again, you never know nowadays, do you?
“Hey, Julia. It’s me. How’re you holding up?” Oliver grimaces to himself.
Vera notes with interest that Oliver’s voice has turned soft and tender. Well, well. She makes a mental note of this obvious show of affection. Perhaps a motivation for killing Marshall?
“Yeah, uh, listen, this is going to sound really weird, but, uh, is it okay if I drop by? Just for a bit. There are some people with me who want to meet you. I know it’s probably the worst time . . .”
“Tell her I cook lots of food,” Vera hisses, nudging Oliver brutally with her elbow.
Oliver winces and tries to move away from her, but there’s not much room inside the car, and Vera is able to get another vicious elbow nudge in before he bats her arm away. “We have food. Lots of it.”
“Chinese barbecued pork, when Tilly is a toddler, oh, he can eat a whole one himself. Her child will love it.”
Oliver pauses as Julia says something, then sighs, closing his eyes. “It’s a long story.” A moment later, his eyes fly open and he sits up straight. “Really? Okay. We’ll be right over.” He hangs up with a look of disbelief.
Vera doesn’t even bother trying to hide her smug smile. “See? What I tell you? Nobody can resist Chinese barbecued pork.”
Yes, her investigation is going very well indeed. She should have known she would be a natural at this.
TWELVE
JULIA
They never tell you these things about motherhood. Things like your toddler having the ability to literally wrap herself around your leg and cling on like a little octopus as you hobble around the house, grabbing trash bags stuffed full of your dead husband’s things and shoving them in the home office. Okay, maybe that last part has more to do with marriage than it does with toddlers.
“Sweetie, can you let go of Mommy, please?” Julia says for the fourth time as she lifts an excruciatingly heavy bag. It has a pair of dumbbells inside, she realizes, and a part of her knows that she should take out the dumbbells, but it’s also the same part of her brain that’s currently preoccupied with (1) Emma’s limbs resolutely suctioned around her left leg; (2) Oliver dropping by with a couple of friends; and (3) one of his friends having mentioned Chinese barbecued pork, and despite everything, Julia could really do with a slice of the sticky-sweet, savory pork. So she doesn’t take out the dumbbells and instead gives the bag a hard yank, after which, of course, the bottom rips and out fall dumbbells and adult Lego sets and ski jackets and all sorts of other stuff. “Shit,” she cries, and immediately feels terrible for swearing in front of Emma. “I mean shoot.”
“You said ‘shit,’ ” Emma says into Julia’s leg.
“No, no. I said ‘shoot,’ you just heard wrong because you’ve got an ear pressed into my leg.” Oh god, now she’s gaslighting her daughter, and she hates herself even more. “No, you’re right. Mommy did say ‘shit.’ ”
“Shit! Shit!” Emma shouts, laughing.
Maybe she should’ve continued gaslighting Emma? What’s the right thing to do here? Well, the right thing is obviously to not say “shit” in the first place. And now Julia wants to cry, because she isn’t just a terrible wife whose husband left her right before dying, she’s also a shitty mom who, whenever Emma nurses, scrolls through Instagram nonstop and wonders how the other moms have everything so put together. How do they have the time and energy and brain space to dress their kids up in color-coordinated outfits when Julia can barely find a single pair of matching socks for Emma? How do they have the time to braid their daughters’ hair into such intricate hairstyles when Julia can barely even brush Emma’s hair?
And what about the fact that Emma seems so very unaffected by Marshall’s absence? Julia hasn’t told her that Marshall is dead because she has no idea how to explain the concept of death, and Emma only asked once where Daddy was, and when Julia said Daddy wouldn’t be coming home, Emma only nodded and went back to playing with her Duplo. Is that a normal reaction to have to the news that your dad wouldn’t be coming home? Maybe it’s normal for her because even when he was alive, Marshall was hardly ever around anyway, and when he was, he was always criticizing Emma. Or maybe Marshall was right and there’s something wrong with Emma. Julia can’t remember a time when her life did not revolve around worrying about Emma, or worrying about what Marshall might think.
The doorbell rings then, and Julia freezes. She’s nowhere near ready. Emma is still shouting “Shit!” and now there’s a pile of Marshall’s stuff right here behind the front door and—Julia glances down at her clothes—yep, she’s still in her pajamas. Well, they’re not technically pajamas—she’s wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt stained with egg yolk and mushed-up broccoli—but she did sleep in these clothes, so maybe they count as pajamas? The point is, she’s a mess, and she’s about to see Oliver for the first time in years. And his friends. She can’t possibly let them see her like this, she—