Page 30 of Over Her Dead Body

Apparently sex has not made him careless.

It has only made me naked.

“Doing what?”

“Trying to prove I’m someone I’m not.”

“I’m not trying to prove anything.”

“No?”

“No. I’m asking why you were in Austin.”

He turns his head toward me.

“Usually role-playing ends when the sex does.”

I feel suddenly sober, which would have been useful twenty minutes ago.

“Well?” he asks.

“Well what?”

The corner of his mouth moves.

“Was your husband always that easy to impersonate?”

CHAPTER 12

EMMA

The sheets are still warm. His side of the bed is empty.

For a few seconds, I don’t know whether I killed him.

In the dream, we were back in Austin.

Reid was standing in our old kitchen, barefoot, holding the coffee mug he used every morning for six years.

He kept telling me his name was Martin.

“You’re making a mistake,” I told him.

He smiled.

So I shoved him.

Not especially hard.

Dreams, apparently, are very generous about cause of death.

He went backward into the counter. I heard the crack before he hit the floor.

Then there was blood.

A lot of it.

It spread across the tile and sank straight into the grout.