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“Come on,” he said, helping me into the bed, pulling out the quilt from under my body and tucking me in. His fingers – perhaps by accident, I couldn’t be sure, I couldn’t be sure of anything with this man – brushed my cheek.
“How am I supposed to survive you?” I asked.
“You’re not,” he said.
16
I woke up to a dark sky. The day gone. Feeling stoned – not that I’d ever been stoned, which actually at this moment in my life seemed criminal. I was a twenty-two-year-old. How had I never gotten high?
I’d learned how to drive; maybe smoking a joint would be next.
Starving, wrapped in the pink silk robe, I wandered downstairs looking for a cup of coffee and my cell phone.
Instead, I found Caroline in the kitchen’s breakfast nook, a glass of wine and an open manila folder in front of her. Behind her the sky was indigo. The dark shadow of trees taking bites out of the slightly lighter blue. The lamp over the table was glass and gold fixtures, and cast angular shadows over Caroline’s face.
She wore a pair of yoga pants and a cashmere sweater. Her feet were bare. I’d never seen her so . . . undone. She looked somehow even younger. More beautiful.
“Hey,” I said.
“You’re awake,” she said with the kind of smile that always felt motherly to me.
“Finally.”
“You want a glass of wine?”
“No, but could I get some coffee?”
“I can get Denise to make it.”
“I got it—”
I turned to find Ronan leaning against the counter, blending into the shadows. His feet crossed at the ankles. His white shirt pulled taut over his shoulders. I realized I had not ever seen his body. He’d seen me naked and crying. And he’d only been dressed and distant.
“Oh,” I said, my face suddenly hot. My nipples beneath the robe, hard. “I don’t mean to interrupt. I can leave.”
“No. You’re not interrupting anything,” Caroline said. “Well, you are, but . . . it concerns you.”
“Me?” I turned, coffee forgotten.
“Come sit,” she said, patting the spot at the wooden table across from her. I slid across the bench seat, and she handed me the folder.
“What is this?”
“Something I wasn’t going to talk to you about. But, after last night and the fire, I think . . . I think we need to talk about it.”
I opened the folder.
“Oh my god,” I breathed, looking out the window, trying to blink away the image of my husband, bone white with a black and red hole in the middle of his head.
“Sorry,” Caroline said. “I should have warned you.”
“What is this?” I asked, still not looking at the image.
“I hired a private coroner,” Caroline said.
“It was suicide, why would you hire a coroner?”
“Because the Bishop’s Landing coroner has ties to the Morelli family. Ulrich – he’s our private investigator, you know – suggested it after getting wind of possible Morelli involvement.”
“The Morellis?” It was like she was speaking French. And she had a private investigator and coroner on call? “What . . . what do they have to do with anything?”
“Your husband and I were working together on several issues,” Caroline said. “And many of those issues worked in opposition to the Morellis’ plans.”
“Plans for what?”
“Listen to me, Poppy.” Caroline was talking to me like I was a kindergartner which I resented but also probably needed. My brain was on fire. “Your husband had plenty of enemies. But I didn’t trust the coroner’s report, because of the Morelli connection. That’s why I hired a private coroner.”
Ronan set a cup of coffee at my elbow, and I jumped so high I nearly smacked it out of his hand.
Caroline reached over and opened the file again. I closed my eyes.
“Poppy. You can’t close your eyes against this. Jim’s gunshot wasn’t self-inflicted.”
I gaped at her. Laughed, incredulously. I was still dreaming. I had to be. “You’re saying someone else shot him?”
“That’s what the coroner report says. Someone shot him and tried to make it look like a suicide.”
“He’s a US senator,” I cried. “That’s . . . that’s an outrageous cover up.”
“I know.”
Ronan faded back into the shadows, but I was aware of him there. In the room. A magnet I could not ignore and felt myself bending towards, despite knowing I would get hurt. Despite knowing he did not want me bending towards him.
“How?” I cried. “How could someone cover that up?”
“The Morellis have a lot of power,” Caroline said. “And it all starts with the crime scene and with the original falsified coroner report. And with your statement.”
“My statement?”
“You told the police he’d been acting strange. Not sleeping. Home more than in the office. Combined with a falsified doctor’s report—”
“The doctor lied?” I asked.
“People will do anything for the right amount of money.”
“But why?”
“That’s not what’s important right now, Poppy,” she said.
