The Other Widow (36 page)

“She kind of did,” Brennan says. “She had the pieces; she just didn't know exactly how they fit together.”

Karen looks up. “Well, then . . .” she says, but that's all. After a few seconds, she leans over to grab their cups. “So who pushed Dorrie out of the way? At the train station?” She stands up, starts out to the kitchen with the empty coffee cups.

“Who
pushed
her? I didn't see anyone.”

“No?” Karen says. “
Really?
'Cause I saw someone there, a small woman, dark hair like Dorrie's?”

“Nope.” Brennan shakes her head. “Just Dorrie.”

“Huh.” Karen sets the cups down in the kitchen. “Maybe it was a reflection in the train window.”

“Yeah,” Brennan says. “Must've been.” She gets up, too. She thanks Karen for the coffee and stoops down to pat Antoine, who sits resolutely at the front door as if to bar her way.

“He wants you to stay.” Karen leans over to pick him up and he snaps at her fingers. “If you're ever in the neighborhood, give me a call. Or maybe we could get a coffee sometime when I'm in Boston—a dog-friendly place, of course. Antoine would never forgive me otherwise.”

Maggie nods. “Sure,” she says. “Just let me know.”

“Will do. Thanks for . . . God. Thanks for everything.” She waits for Brennan's car to back out to the street. “Bye, Maggie!” She waves Antoine's paw in the air. He struggles in her arms, embarrassed, and Karen sets him on the porch, where he takes up his deputy stance. Together they watch Brennan's car until it turns and disappears.

Edward. Incredible. He could have ruined the company. Possibly already has. And Joe— Still, Karen knows that they all had a part in what happened. She brought Tomas into their lives, let him love her. And she knew he loved her. She always knew. And then there's Dorrie. If she hadn't been with Joe that night, sliding around on icy roads, who knows what might have happened? Who knows if things might have turned out differently?

In the end, though, Tomas is the one with blood on his hands, the one who murdered Joe and, nearly, Dorrie. And he had stalked Karen as well, making her life a total nightmare for months, even if he did think he was protecting her. He was there, at the edge of her life, at the corner of her eye, watching as Joe ordered her a Chocolate Café Noir with strawberries—ready with his note as she parked in front of Chips on Charles, lurking. She shivers. And he'd lied about his job at Mass General. If she hadn't just happened to spot him working that day at his friend's shop, she'd never have known he was back at Hoods. She grabs Antoine and opens the front door. Clearly, Tomas lied to impress her. Or maybe he did work at the hospital. Maybe he was just moonlighting at the shop in Waltham. Still . . . Karen shivers. He made her trust him. She can't forgive him for that.

Some nights, when she wakes up after only two or three hours, knowing she won't get back to sleep, wishing she had a few more Xanax in the kitchen cabinet, Karen tells herself she only wanted to be rescued. Saved. She almost makes herself believe she wrote those notes for Tomas so that he could be the white knight she'd expected Joe to be, so he could liberate her, set her free. It's so much better than the truth—that from the moment she first saw those e-mails on her husband's laptop, she'd been dancing toward this precipice, that a dark, and unforgiving part of her had wanted things to play out just exactly as they had.

XLV

MAGGIE

M
aggie drives back to Boston in the midday traffic. You can't be totally covered all the time. But if you're smart, if you plan well, if you can step outside a situation and see it objectively, keep your emotions from clouding your judgment and clogging up your strategy, you might just get away with murder. If you can play on someone's passions, plant an idea he'll embrace as his own, an idea that propels him to do things he would not ordinarily do—valiant and barbaric things, done in the name of heroism, done in the name of
love
—if you can do this, you've planned things well.

Dorrie just happened to be with Joseph Lindsay when he died. She could easily have been killed in the same accident, simplifying Edward's life enormously. The strangest thing to Maggie, although she'll never say it, is that both these women were right there on Newbury that night—the widow and the other widow—and still Joe Lindsay died alone.

Shit.

It's getting late. Maggie looks at her watch, switches lanes.
Come on!
She feels anger sweeping through her, annoyance at the drivers around her. It's okay, though. She doesn't hyperventilate; she doesn't overreact. She merely feels the irritation, allows herself to feel it. She's learning how to do this day by day, moment by moment, meeting by meeting. She goes with Lucas and she listens. Sometimes she talks about herself, about Iraq, about that day, the Humvee, the snipers. She doesn't tell them she has PTSD. She's learning to adjust, she says. She's learning to accept what happened. She doesn't like labels.

XLVI

DORRIE

W
hen Dorrie opens her eyes, Samuel is already up, rummaging for his jeans in a bottom drawer. He's starting on the bathroom project he's been planning for several weeks—the renovation that he's had to put off every Saturday on account of iffy weather. Today, though, is the perfect day—blue sky and not so much as a snowflake in the forecast.

“Gonna start while the girls are still sleeping so they won't be in my way all morning,” he says, pulling on a sweatshirt and stepping into an old grubby pair of jeans. “I'll pick up some of that odorless paint. The low-VOC. Not sure I'll get that far this weekend anyway.”

Dorrie sits up against the headboard, rubs her eyes with the backs of her hands. “You sure you've got the right swatch?”

“Yeah,” he says. “The lightest one. The one you left on the window seat, right?”

She nods. She can hear Lily up the hall in her bedroom. Mia's in there, too, and another friend who slept over. Dorrie smiles. Probably they stayed up all night talking, so the last thing they'll want to do is get involved with Samuel's DIY project. He'll pretend to be relieved, but really he'll be disappointed that his little girl's outgrowing him.

She shuffles over to the window and tugs on the shade. It flies open, winds around itself, out of reach, flooding the bedroom with sun. Blinding, dazzling, it sparkles off the white snow in the tiny yard.

She never actually told Samuel about her affair. Clearly, he knows. Clearly he
knew
. And if he should ever ask her, Dorrie is prepared to admit to what she's done, at least a part of it. She won't tell him everything—she'll keep some things to herself, carry them with her to her grave. Their anniversary has come and gone, without a word about trial periods. He bought her a bouquet of roses, took her to dinner up the street, a little Latin restaurant with the music up too loud. They'd even danced.

She slogs downstairs in her slippers and grabs the morning paper from the counter, peruses a small article about Everett Lansing on page two. He's come forward to shed light on Edward's wheelings and dealings—admitted to accepting money for turning a blind eye to substandard wiring, even to not inspecting it at all. Because of his confessions, Lansing's sentence will be a little lighter, but he'll never work again, at least not as a city inspector. Paulo Androtti got a slap on the hand—two years' probation and community service, teaching at-risk kids to weld, which Dorrie thinks is fitting.

She thumbs through the want ads. These days she tries to keep an eye on what's out there, just in case something interesting comes up. Edward's gone and Francine's gone and, for the next few weeks, Jeananne is gone. Who knows how permanent or stable her own position really is? She's still there, at least for now, doing Francine's old job and, sometimes, designs, although these days, she's hearing far more from old clients than she is from new ones.

All the wiring installed within the past two years is being replaced. After that, when all the dust settles, who knows what will happen? Maybe the company can never live this down, or maybe the old clients will be forgiving. Bostonians are tough, but fiercely loyal. Maybe Karen will decide to pack it in, close Home Runs altogether, open a book store up the coast, the way Joe once said she wanted to. Maybe she'll reopen the company under a new name or maybe she'll come back and run things on her own. For now, Dorrie takes things day by day, minute by minute. She's working with a woman Karen hired from Connecticut to get the company back on its feet.

She misses Joe. In her heart, she grieves for him. A part of her will always grieve for him. A certain song, a certain place, a scent, will bring her back to him, to their time together, and when it does, she'll leave the room or turn away, bury her nose in a book, until the feeling passes.

She glances through the kitchen window at the barren yard, glimpses a few buds sprouting on the spindly branches near the compost pile, thinks about her tête-à-tête with Brennan a few days before when they met for a quick coffee at Mug Me. She was near the office, Brennan phoned to say. Could Dorrie get away for a few minutes? She was in her uniform. She looked happy—she kept glancing at her watch. Punctual. Organized. Brennan.

“I'm in a play this spring,” Dorrie told her. “You should come. You can bring your friend.” Brennan nodded, blushed a little. Dorrie hopes she does come, hopes she'll bring her friend. Any guy who can make Maggie Brennan blush is definitely worth meeting.

And Dorrie has landed a great part, the lead in an experimental play. She's looking forward to the challenge, looking forward to starting over. Spring is just around the corner. Redemption is in the air.

For now, she's fine with the world being wrapped in snow and ice, with the naked trees, with everything stripped bare for the cold instead of the opposite, which would make more sense. Dorrie thinks it might be the same way with love. Maybe the only way to really feel it is to strip away the outsides, the layers that bounce us through our lives, to feel the tip of someone's finger running down the bones beneath your skin.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

SUSAN CRAWFORD grew up in Miami, Florida, and graduated from the University of Miami with a BA in English and a minor in psychology. She later moved to New York City and then to Boston before settling in Atlanta to raise three daughters and to work in the field of adult education. A member of the Atlanta Writers Club and the Village Writers, Susan dabbles in local politics when she isn't writing. She lives with her husband and a trio of rescue cats in Atlanta, where she enjoys reading books, writing books, rainy days, and spending time with the people she loves.

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BY SUSAN CRAWFORD

The Pocket Wife

CREDITS

Cover design by Emin Mancheril

Cover photographs: © Michalina Wozniak / Trevillion Images (woman);

© LiuSol / Shutterstock (flower)

COPYRIGHT

This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real.

THE OTHER WIDOW
. Copyright © 2016 by Susan Crawford. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST EDITION

ISBN 978-0-06-236288-9 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-0-06-245868-1 (international edition)

EPub Edition APRIL 2016 ISBN: 9780062362919

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