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I’m finally dumped in a side room off the main wake, the door slammed and a shove sending me reeling into the empty room. My heels trip in the commotion, one of them tumbling away from me. I kick the other off and jump up from my scattered positon, turning to glare at whoever it was. Grayson Rothburg stands there, his back leaning on the doorframe and his leg casually kicked over the other. I half stop, unsure who the he thinks he is and not giving a damn for his interference.
“I suggest you stop making a show of yourself,” he says, quietly.
I take a split second to re-orientate myself, and then let the anger take over again to propel me at the door he’s barricading. My hands try to push him out of the way, body using as much effort I’ve got against his size to get to the door handle, but he slings me backwards, enough so that I tumble to the floor. “You’re behaving like a mad woman. I assume you’re not. Behave accordingly.”
Am I? I look at the floor, searching it for something to make all this anger and pain and hatred go away. It won’t, though. And I don’t even damn well want it to. I’m in the middle of a crisis, my head waging war with itself. First his death, and now an affair. Rick was sleeping with someone else. Deborah. He was fucking her behind my back.
“Your husband had two affairs. One with the woman out there, and one a few years back with another woman. Don’t let it tear you down,” he says. “You did nothing wrong. He was just a prick. Most of us are.”
My eyes slowly crawl up from looking at the floor, this time taking my time to evaluate the man in front of me rather than cowering like a fool again. He’s taller than I remember. Just as harsh in his features, though. Cruel. I glare, unable to let anything penetrate me other than the thought of an affair. Low, cold eyes stare back at me. No flicker in them. No sway in their marginally callous outlook, regardless of my situation. He even seems slightly amused by my situation, as if the positon I’ve found myself in is entertaining him.
“How do you know about Rick’s affairs?” snaps out of me.
“I know everything about my employees, Mrs Tanner. Especially if they’re fucking each other. It usually makes them less effective, but in this case, your husband was more effective because he was fucking her. They were a good team.”
I don’t know what to say to that. There’s honesty, and then there’s blatant hurtful engagement. For the first time since the opera, a real sense of sadness sweeps over me, eradicating the fog I’ve been in since that night. No alcohol is going to fix it. No holding back the tears. Two affairs. And not only that, but he was better because of one of them. I don’t even know what to do with that thought, let alone find retaliation to it.
I sag and let my gaze drop to the floor again, trembling and finally giving into the thought I’ve been trying to ignore. “He wasn’t happy,” mumbles out of me. “Never was.”
That’s all there is now. He wasn’t happy with me. Never was. It was all a lie, and now I’m left alone with nothing, not even the memory of the happiness I thought we had. It was all just a fiction, a story I must have made up in my own head. I slump further down on the floor at the thought of it, the weight of it all suddenly catching up with me and rendering me as broken as his body was under the truck.
“Put your shoes back on, Mrs Tanner,” he says, less than no emotion in his voice. “You have a wake to finish, and then a life to get back to.”
There is no life. Nothing.
It’s all done and finished.
Chapter 8
Gray
Idon’t know why I’m here at this wake. It isn’t usual for me to turn up at these events, but Richard Tanner had just been promoted to the senior team. It seemed appropriate for me to show some sense of interest in his death. I’m not. I’m not interested in much other than research. Maybe I was interested in the macabre atmosphere here. The sadness and wallowing. Or maybe it was Mrs Tanner and her reddened eyes the other night that brought me out of my normally obscure residency.
I look at her cowering on the floor, and then wonder why her family or friends haven’t come running in yet. Someone must give a damn about her. Or maybe not. Her husband clearly didn’t, and this pathetic attempt at self-pity is probably what sent him elsewhere in the first place. It’s a shame, because that energy she showed out there was enough for me to cut in before she killed Deborah. Not that I would have minded that much. Ms Collier will probably go back to being nothing but a cocktease now she hasn’t got Richard’s brain to help her make me more money.
“Mrs Tanner, I don’t have all day. Get up.” She doesn’t move. No care for trying. She continues trembling instead, the occasional sniff conveying the tears she’s trying to dampen. “You should think of some self-esteem rather than floundering in apathy. As I said,youhave done nothing wrong.”
Another sniff and she pulls her legs up to her chest, curling herself into a ball. I turn back to the door and lock it, walking over to her the moment I’m sure no one else is coming in. I don’t know why I’m bothering, but the sight of her is making me feel the need to intervene like I did out there. Perhaps it’s the sense of nothing she portrays, the inevitability of her life being over. It isn’t, not unless she chooses that option. There are far more portrayals of death than this for her to contend with.
I lift her and walk her over to a couch on the far side of the room, returning to pick her shoes up. “Hannah, isn’t it?” I ask, watching her sweep a curl of blonde hair out of the way. No answer.
I pull her legs straight and drape the dress back to where it should be, covering her knees. “Your apartment is secure for the year, if that’s what’s bothering you.” I crouch and pick up her feet to slip the heels on, fingers making sure they’re secure. Sadly she just hangs like a rag doll rather than finding some resilience. “And Richards’s life insurance will cover you for life. He was on our top tier level. Finance will be dealing with it for you.”
“Don’t care about the money,” she mutters.
“You don’t?”
“No. I cared about fidelity.”
I sit back and look at her, perhaps trying to find a reason why he would have fucked other women, so she can process. “Did you ever say no? Argue? Tell him to go fuck himself occasionally. I doubt it.” She suddenly finds some self-worth and sits herself more upright, her eyes coming back to focus on me rather than nothing. “The shame of it is that had you have shown him some of that out there, he probably would never have screwed around. Dutiful is not intriguing or intimidating.”
The slap that rings off the side of my face comes out of nowhere, and I watch as she stands and shakes herself down. The glare she gives me, as I stand up, matches the venom she threw at Deborah. “Fuck you, Mr Rothburg.” Better.
I half smile and rub the side of my cheek, wondering when the last time a slap was landed.
“I don’t know who the hell you think you are, but I need a fucking drink and I don’t have time for whatever this is,” she snarls. Much better.
I shake a handkerchief out of my pocket and offer it up to her. “Your eyes, Mrs Tanner.”
