The Widow and the Will

The Widow

a n d   t h e

Will

J. THOMAS-LIKE

Dedication

To Ethan,

As always, you were the backbone of our little family when I was too consumed with my fictional one. I love you and thank you from the bottom of my heart.

To Molly,

I was afraid that “one” would have to be enough. But your encouragement, support and
belief
in me was all the confidence I needed to go for it again.

Acknowledgments

A heartfelt thanks to the following:

As always, my mom, sister and brother. You guys helped out in so many little ways that might have gone unnoticed by you, but were immeasurable to me.

Write Club, as
usual
, was the fuel to my fire throughout the entire process. Powerhouse: you’re about the most inspirational, encouraging peeps I could have ever hoped to find. What would I do without you?

Jason Dandy, thank you for answering all the lawyer questions and pointing out when the questions asked were
not
lawyerly (and answering them anyway). You’re hired!

Ret. Detective Howard “Butch” Isham and Detective Kevin Kimm of the St. Clair Shores Police Department, your advice and information were invaluable to the accuracy of this story. Also, Officer Jeremy Scicluna answered S.W.A.T. questions I would not have thought to ask and I am grateful for his knowledge and expertise.

Gale Deloney, RN, you were instrumental with all your research and advice. Thanks for helping me to get things right.

Special
gold stars on the forehead to Bailey K. Perkins and Natalie Rhymer for their stellar proofreading and editing. You guys were the extra brains behind the scenes. Thank you for being the ones to know and care where the commas go (and oh, so much more), so that I didn’t have to think about it.

Chapter 1

The wedding march boomed from the organ and the doors at the back of the church swung open as if pushed by the explosion of air from the pipes.

Jack Kingston’s breath caught in his throat as his beautiful bride slowly floated toward him. He’d never imagined Tess could be so stunning. Her bright blue eyes stood out against the white of her veil. Her usually flowing and wavy honey blonde hair was tamed into a high bun surrounded by glittering crystals. Maybe it was the whole bride phenomenon, but Jack didn’t care. He would treasure the image for the rest of his life.
That’s my girl
.

Prior to Tess’s epic entrance, Jack had been nervously chatting with his best man and brother, David. He’d waved to people as they entered and took their seats in the hard-backed pews of the Congregational church. He’d asked David a dozen times if he had the ring. But Jack had mostly been drawn back, over and over, to his mother’s stricken and pale face. She looked ill, instead of happy, and he hadn’t been able to understand it.

“What’s with Mom?” he whispered to David.

David turned and looked at the first row on their left, squinting to see what his younger brother was referring to. “Dunno. Don’t sweat it. You’re her baby, she’s just bummed to be losing you.”

As Tess’s father lifted her veil and kissed her cheek, Jack forgot all about his mother and every other thing in the world. His nervousness disappeared with one look into Tess’s eyes. Taking her hand and turning to the minister, Jack was filled with a calming sense of peace, knowing he was marrying his best friend and the person he trusted most in the world.

* * * * *

“Jack, Tess, by virtue of your pledges to each other of fidelity and trust, you may now call yourselves by these two old and respected names, husband and wife.” The minister threw out her arms in triumph.

Tess leaned into Jack’s arms, splaying her hands across his back as his lips met hers for their very first “married” kiss. It was gentle and brief, just enough to satisfy those watching, but still sent chills down her spine, causing the hair on her arms to lift. The crowd of family and friends behind them clapped and cheered and Tess felt a satisfaction she hadn’t expected. For days, she’d had cold feet about going through with the wedding. But now, she thought she might squeal like a kid at Christmas. Maybe it had been pre-wedding jitters. She sure hoped so.

Pulling away from Jack and staring into his eyes, Tess grinned like a fool. He chuckled at her and pressed his forehead to hers.

“Hello, Mrs. Kingston.”

“Hello, Mr. Kingston.”

Taking Tess’s hand firmly in his, Jack turned them toward the congregation. The shouts and applause were steady and strong, then rose to a gentle roar as he raised their clasped hands in the air. They shared another quick peck of a kiss and then the happy couple scampered down the aisle. When they reached the vestibule of the church, they hugged again, their happiness at its zenith. Then they each reached for a door to close, leaving them secluded.

“It’s done and no one objected,” Jack teased, swinging Tess around in his arms, lifting her feet in the air.

“Nope. Who would? It’s not like we had any exes that would show up.” Tess giggled and kissed him a little more passionately in their moment of privacy.

Jack and Tess had given express instructions to their families to let them have a couple of minutes alone after the ceremony. There would be hours and hours for partying, pictures, handshakes and hugs. They wanted to enjoy the first moments of married life by themselves to let it soak in. They even incorporated the signing of their marriage license into the ceremony so they could have this time alone.

Jack danced her around to a tune only he could hear. His warm, chocolate eyes reflected all the love they both felt in the moment. Tess could hardly believe how handsome he looked in his tuxedo. It was a far cry from the usual jeans and t-shirts she knew he preferred. She glanced down at his feet and smiled at the bright red Converse Chuck Taylors. He’d gotten no argument from her when he insisted that he and the groomsmen wear comfortable shoes.

“Oh!” Tess gasped, momentarily interrupting their waltz. “I forgot to show you!” She stepped backward and lifted the hem of her wedding dress. As a surprise, she’d worn her own pair of Converse in her favorite style. They were customized, of course, white with black polka dots and red laces to coordinate with Jack.

Jack’s familiar barrel laugh filled the small area and he put out his fist for a bump. “Awesome, babe!”

As she extended her own fist toward his, Jack abruptly stopped laughing. The puzzled look that crossed his face made Tess freeze. “Honey? What’s wrong?” She reached for him, her small hand grasping for his arm while she watched the color drain from his face.

“Uh.” Jack’s eyes scrunched shut and he swallowed hard. When his eyes reopened, they were glazed over. He pitched forward, landing flat on the floor.

All Tess could do was scream.

* * * * *

Tender fingers helped Tess out of her wedding gown. Those same kindly hands of her mother and sister had been by her side all day long. Muffled words from someone made their way to her ears and then a nightgown went over her head. She felt the sides being smoothed down across her body. Tess knew that physically she was in her childhood bedroom at her parents’ home, but her brain was still at the church, enjoying a soft kiss. Her mind was still waltzing in the vestibule. Her head echoed with the sounds of her own screams.

“Tess.”

That was her mother’s voice. Tess swung her head in the direction of the sound and blinked several times, trying to focus.

“Honey, take this.”

Ruth Langford stood with a glass of water in one hand and a small pink and white capsule in the palm of the other.

Tess stared at her dumbly for another few seconds before reaching for the proffered items. Reluctance filled her, but then Jack’s voice popped into her mind.
It’s okay this time, T. You can take it
.

“Go on, honey,” Ruth urged. “You need to sleep.”

Years of parental obedience overruled Tess’s hesitation and she placed the pill on her tongue. Sipping a bit of water, she jerked her chin back, making the medication slip down her throat. Ruth took the glass from her and set it on the milk crate nightstand beside the bed.

Tess didn’t move. She continued to sit on the edge, staring at her hands. Her diamond engagement ring twinkled from her right hand and the diamond baguette band sparkled from her left. Tears began to blur her vision, causing the twinkles and sparkles to create a prism surrounding the gems.
I forgot to move the engagement ring to my other hand
.

Ruth waited a minute or so before finally grasping Tess by the shoulders and pushing her gently back onto the bed. Tess pulled her own legs up off the floor and curled into the fetal position. Her mother covered her with a familiar quilt and then softly crept from the room.

“A heart attack,” Tess whispered to the emptiness around her.
A fucking heart attack
.

Tess tried to close her eyes, but they were sore from the crying and burning from having rubbed them raw. Drugs or not, the grisly images seared into her brain following Jack’s collapse would never have allowed her to sleep. The rush of people who poured into the vestibule when they heard her screaming. Being torn away from Jack’s body as someone tried doing CPR. The multitude of phone calls made to 911 for an ambulance and then the endless wait for paramedics to arrive. The nasty things she had said to someone when they tried to stop her from climbing into the ambulance to be with Jack. The guilt she carried because only hours before she had wanted to postpone the wedding.

Sitting in the waiting room at the hospital for news, any news, that would change the course of events and then not getting that reprieve. Many people had surrounded her, as she wept piteously, unable to believe such a tragedy could happen today of all days. Tess remembered her mother and father, her sister, and her newly minted in-laws.

Tess tried to cry quietly but gave it up when the tears came faster and her breathing grew heavier, turning into moans and then outright wails. She pressed her face against her pillow to muffle the sound. Somewhere in her heart she knew she was frightening her parents, but couldn’t bring herself to stop the hideous sounds. Exhaustion finally overcame her and she circled downward, drowning in a pool of nightmares.

Chapter 2

It took more than a year to plan the wedding and less than a week to bury Jack.

Chapter 3

A little over six months after burying her husband, Tess stood in the tiny dining room of their two-bedroom apartment, surveying the mountain of prettily wrapped wedding presents in the early morning sunshine. A thin layer of dust covered them, along with cat hair shed from the two resident felines. Tess’s stomach clenched, knowing she should have sent them all back before now. No matter how many times her mom and Lilly assured her that she could take all the time she needed, Tess couldn’t help the guilt she felt. What if people thought she kept the gifts and spent the money? Yet that fear hadn’t motivated her to deal with the job, either. Timothy the tabby appeared beside her, winding his way around her legs.

“Meow.”

Looking down, Tess sighed. “I know. I have to deal with all this.”

“Meow!”

“If you had thumbs, I’d make you do it,” she muttered, lifting a foot to rub his side. With a heavy heart, she turned away, trying to focus on something that wouldn’t remind her of the horror of those months. She shuffled to the couch in the living room and slumped down into the soft cushions.

The truth was, everything reminded her. Jack’s absence was the biggest one of all. He was a freelance graphic designer and she was a medical transcriptionist, both working from home. From the day they declared their love for one another at the age of sixteen, they had not spent more than a few hours apart. Theirs was the hokiest of romances, meeting when they were eight years old, and it was love at first sight for Tess. He was the prince from all the storybooks her mother read to her, and she knew she would marry him some day. Jack wasn’t as convinced. It took him about five years before he noticed Tess as a girl instead of one of his buddies. Oh, but when he did notice her for the first time, she was infused with a confidence and power she’d been waiting for since Mrs. Grabowski’s third grade class.

At sixteen, Jack gave Tess a promise ring and she gladly accepted it. Stereotypical high school sweethearts, they attended every dance and function as a couple. After graduation, they went to the same college and graduated together four years later. When they got back home to St. Clair Shores, they moved in together immediately. They settled down with jobs and the joy of living life, getting engaged when they were twenty-three. They wanted to be married by the time they were twenty-five. They planned on starting a family at thirty.

All gone. Every bit of it. All from a freak heart attack because Jack couldn’t give up the energy drinks. A faulty heart tore him away from Tess, leaving her with a broken one.

Tess’s mind wandered back to the days before the funeral, but they were all a blur. The only thing that had gotten her through them was denial. Cloaking, heavy, thick, non-acceptance. It wasn’t until she was confronted with the open casket containing Jack’s body that her veneer cracked wide open. The memory of that moment still made Tess’s stomach ache and her head pound. Even now, waves of nausea washed over her like the ocean at high tide.

Without her mother and Lilly, she might have had a total nervous breakdown. They had held her hands and whispered in her ear that everything would be okay. Over and over, they repeated their platitudes until Tess was able to keep herself from screaming and bolting from the church. The same church where the same minister conducting the funeral had married them not six days before.

Weeks of tears, not eating, not sleeping followed. Then the tables turned and Tess began sleeping all the time and eating everything she could get her hands on. Only the crying remained constant. Her family let her be for the first couple of months, hoping she would bounce back on her own, but when it didn’t happen, Lilly was the one to step in. Big sister took control and forced Tess to get out of bed, shower, leave her apartment, go back to work. Slowly, things improved until Tess was finally able to put her happy mask back on. She faked feeling better until she did. She pretended that she didn’t feel lonely until she didn’t. She acted like her life was back on track until it was.

Still and all, the only thing she couldn’t seem to conquer was the guilt. That was what was really killing Tess. For several weeks before the wedding, she had been filled with self-doubt and fear, wondering if she was making a mistake. Even though she knew she loved him, Tess couldn’t help feeling they were getting married only because it was the next logical step. It was something they’d dreamed about for so long that marriage was a foregone conclusion instead of the culmination. More than once, Tess had considered postponing the wedding. As the date got closer, the embarrassment over canceling outweighed her fear of going through with it, but even as she sat in the hairdresser’s chair, Tess considered not showing up at all.

It had nothing to do with wanting to see other people. She wasn’t filled with doubt because she thought she might be missing something better. Tess knew Jack was about as special and wonderful as she could hope for. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t pinpoint why she felt so unsure of the future.

But who could she share all these feelings with? No one. Not even her sister. Lilly had always taken every opportunity she could to remind Tess of how lucky she was. How grateful she should be to have found her prince charming. Tess took Lilly’s words to heart because her sister was about the unluckiest woman in the world when it came to love. Lilly’s track record contained a divorce from one husband, then emotional and mental abuse from her next boyfriend. For every perfect moment she had, Lilly’s experience was the polar opposite.

Tess carried the guilt and shame around in her heart like a shackle around her neck. Everyone thought she was mourning and grieving for a dead husband, and she was. Even more so, she lamented the fact that she hadn’t changed courses. If she had canceled the wedding, would Jack still be alive? Had the stress of a big fancy affair caused the heart attack that killed him?

Questions that would never be answered, even though she asked them constantly from the night she left the hospital. When would she be able to stop asking them? When would she finally feel normal again? Tess felt sick and tired of taking one day at a time. She wanted to imagine a future for herself again. She loved and missed Jack, but she wanted to feel happy again, hopeful again. Anything
but
sad and grief stricken.

It was the noisy meow of an ignored and hungry cat that brought Tess back to the present, as Spencer called to her from the doorway into the kitchen. His bright yellow eyes stood out against his black fur, imploring her to pay attention. She glanced over and could see the food dish was nearly empty. She wearily hauled herself up to go put more food into their bowl. Timothy appeared from out of nowhere to add his voice to Spencer’s chorus of displeasure. “Yeah, yeah, I’m gettin’ there.” Howling as though they hadn’t been fed in days, Tess scooped the pebbles of kitty chow into the dish until it was almost overflowing. They attacked it, heads side by side as she stepped backward. After a couple of bites, they both turned and looked at her as if to say,
Thanks, Mom
.

“You’re welcome, boys,” she whispered as she watched them crunch and munch their way through the top layer of cat chow.

Tess took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She was so very tired, literally exhausted from going over the scenes and scenarios in her head, asking the same questions every minute of every hour of every day. She wanted to tell herself to stop. Just be done with it, but she didn’t know how. As she continued to stare at Timothy and Spencer as they ate, she noticed how Spencer took a piece of food into his mouth, sat up and then spit it out. He stood up and walked away from the bowl to sit in a patch of sunshine where he began to lick his paws. Within a moment or two, Timothy did the same thing: took a bite, spit it out and then left the food behind to begin his own bath.

As she considered what she saw, Tess smiled a little bit. The cats were full and decided they would stop eating. It didn’t seem like they thought about it all that much, they just did it, following their instincts.

Closing her eyes, Tess conjured a picture of Jack. His tousled brown hair, laughing eyes and handsome smile. The twinge she felt in her heart wasn’t the same stabbing sensation she was used to whenever she pictured him in her mind. It was more of a dull ache.
Just do it
.
Just let it all go
, she thought.
Just decide once and for all
.

Opening her eyes, Tess blinked at the bright sunlight pouring in from the outside, making the silver and gold bows on the piled-up gifts shimmer and shine. It was time. Grabbing her cell phone from the kitchen counter, she shot off a quick text to Lilly to head over if she could. It was time to face this one final task. Tess decided that by dealing with the wedding presents, she would finally close the chapter on her marriage and widowhood.