“She is dead.”
The brutality of it struck me even though I knew what he was.
Mark continued.
“The estate will pass to me. We need to discuss your future.”
“My future?”
“You cannot remain here indefinitely.”
I looked at him.
“I am your wife.”
“Our marriage has not been working for years.”
Less than forty eight hours earlier, he had kissed my forehead and told me he would miss me during his business trip.
Now that he believed Margaret was dead and the evidence was still hidden, he was discarding me.
“Is Celeste moving in?” I asked.
His eyes flashed.
“This is exactly the kind of irrational behavior I have been concerned about.”
He opened a drawer and placed a business card on the counter.
A psychiatrist.
The same doctor whose name appeared on my false medical records.
“I arranged an appointment for you next week,” he said. “You have been confused and emotional lately.”
I picked up the card.
“You arranged it before Margaret died.”
“I have been worried for some time.”
“And if I refuse?”
“Then I may need to make decisions for your safety.”
He was trying to have me declared incompetent.
Even now.
Even while Margaret’s body waited in a hospital.
I placed the card in my pocket.
“I will consider it.”
Mark smiled.
He believed he had won that moment because he still mistook silence for submission.
The funeral took place four days later.
Mark transformed his mother’s death into a performance.
He selected the largest church in the county and invited business partners, politicians, reporters, and people who had not visited Margaret once during her illness.
The obituary described him as a devoted son who had remained constantly involved in her care.
My name appeared near the end.
Margaret’s loving daughter in law.
No mention of the twenty years I had spent beside her.
No mention of Maui.
Mark stood at the church entrance receiving condolences. Celeste was nowhere in sight, but a pale line on Mark’s wrist showed where he had removed a woven resort bracelet.
When it was time for the family to enter, he offered me his arm.
I walked past him.
Margaret’s coffin was covered with white roses. I had chosen them because she once told me they reminded her of the garden outside her childhood home.
Mark had tried to replace them with red roses because red photographed better.
Arthur prevented him.
During the service, Mark delivered a speech about sacrifice.
“My mother taught me that family comes before everything,” he said.
I looked around the church.
Hundreds of people listened.
No one knew that while Margaret fought for breath, her son had been drinking champagne beside the ocean.
No one knew he had tried to poison her.
Not yet.
After the burial, the family and selected guests returned to the estate for the reading of Margaret’s will.
Arthur stood in the library with two witnesses.
Mark sat behind his father’s old desk as though the house already belonged to him.
I chose a chair near the window.
Celeste arrived five minutes before the reading began.
She wore black silk and enormous sunglasses. Her blond hair was pulled into a perfect knot.
Mark’s face drained of color when he saw her.
“What are you doing here?” he hissed.
She removed her glasses.
“Paying my respects.”
“You did not know my mother.”
“I knew enough.”
Then she looked at me.
There was no laughter in her face now.
“You must be Evelyn.”
“The old wife,” I said.
Her cheeks reddened.
Mark gripped her arm.
“Leave.”
Arthur closed the library doors.
“No one leaves once the reading begins.”
Mark released her.
