Let Me Call You Sweetheart

6

After they got home from dinner with Jonathan and Grace, and long after Robin was asleep, Kerry continued to work. Her office was in the study of the house she had moved to after Bob had left them and she sold the house they had bought together. She had been able to get the new place at a good price, when the real estate market was low, and she was grateful she had-she loved it. Fifty years old, it was a roomy Cape Cod with double dormers, set on a heavily treed two-acre lot. The only time she didn’t love it was when the leaves began to fall, tons and tons of them. That would begin soon, she thought with a sigh. Tomorrow she would be cross-examining the defendant in a murder case she was prosecuting. He was a good actor. On the stand, his version of the events that led up to the death of his supervisor had seemed entirely plausible. He claimed his superior had constantly belittled him, so much so that one day he had snapped and killed her. His attorney was going for a manslaughter verdict.

It was Kerry’s job to take the defendant’s story apart, to show that this was a carefully planned and executed vendetta against a boss who for good reasons had passed him over for promotion. It had cost her her life. Now he has to pay, Kerry thought.

It was one o’clock before she was satisfied that she had laid out all the questions she wanted to ask, all the points she wanted to make.

Wearily she climbed the stairs to the second floor. She glanced in on a peacefully sleeping Robin, pulled the covers tighter around her, then went across the hallway to her own room.

Five minutes later, her face washed, teeth brushed, clad in her favorite nightshirt, she snuggled down into the queen-sized brass bed that she had bought in a tag sale after Bob left. She had changed all the furniture in the master bedroom. It had been impossible to live with the old things, to look at his dresser, his night table, to see the empty pillow on his side of the bed.

The shade was only partially drawn, and by the faint light from the lamp on the post by the driveway, she could see that a steady rain had begun to fall.

Well, the great weather couldn’t last forever, she thought, grateful that at least it was not as cold as predicted, that the rain would not change to sleet. She closed her eyes willing her mind to stop churning, wondering why she felt so uneasy.

She woke at five, then managed to doze off until six. It was in that hour the dream came to her for the first time.

She saw herself in the waiting room of a doctor’s office. There was a woman lying on the floor, her large, unfocused eyes staring into nothingness. A cloud of dark hair framed the petulant beauty of her face. A knotted cord was twisted around her neck.

Then as Kerry watched, the woman got up, removed the cord from her neck and went over to the receptionist to make an appointment.