The Widow and the Will (16 page)

“Obviously he gave Jack all the financial paperwork, otherwise Jack wouldn’t have contacted me.”

Tess caught Hudson’s comment as she and Ford got to the edge of the living room. She put her arm out to stop Ford from entering and she held a finger to her lips.

“That doesn’t mean he didn’t take Jack out,” Lilly argued.

“I’m not going to get into this with you. We can’t assume facts not in evidence.”

“Oh please.” Lilly sniffed and rolled her eyes. “You sound like Sam Waterston.”

Hudson chuckled. “Well, maybe I do, but it’s true. We can’t make any assumptions until we find out what really happened to Jack.”

“Can’t you get his body exhumed?”

“No!” Hudson gave her a disgusted look. “Well, yes, we could. But that’s a whole other mess to contend with. I’d rather not even think about it unless we absolutely have to.”

“You better make sure nothing happens to my sister, Hudson Marks,” Lilly hissed. “I will hold you personally responsible.”

Tess grinned at the sparring lawyer and sibling and then looked at Ford. He was clearly as amused as she was. “Now, now, sis. Settle down,” she said. Lilly looked up, her face pinking with guilt at being caught.

“I’m just sayin’.”

“Yeah, I hear you. And so did my lawyer. And my lawyer’s investigator.”

“I think I’ll take a beer now.” Hudson went to the kitchen and helped himself, but was a gentleman and brought a round back for everyone.

The foursome sat in silence with their own thoughts as they sipped their beers. While she was still angry and confused about everything going on, Tess felt better knowing she was surrounded by people who either loved her or cared enough about her case that they would do whatever they could to help and protect her. She didn’t know what she was going to do or what was in store, but she knew she would get through it eventually. She felt the familiar twinge of heartache at the thought of Jack in pain during his last moments and was so grateful he’d never suspected she was having doubts. The emails proved it. While there was a lot of snarky stuff from her father-in-law, Jack’s support for her had never wavered. He had been constant in his belief that she loved him and wanted to get married. Tess wasn’t sure she could have lived with herself if she thought Jack knew about her doubts. Her own guilt was difficult enough to handle.

“Well, as much as I’d like to sit and get silly with you girls, I think we should get going.” Hudson stood up and pulled his keys from his pocket. Ford stood up, too, and shoved his hands into his pockets.

“Okay,” Tess replied, unsure if she was ready to let them both go. She felt safe with all of them there.

“You sure you’ll be all right?”

Tess was surprised that Ford was the one to ask her. He always managed to keep his face even, but his eyes gave him away every time. She could see the concern for her there.
Yep, he got the eyes for sure
.

“I mean, we could stay, if you want us to,” Hudson said, sounding exactly like it was the last thing he wanted to do. Then he looked at Lilly and his expression softened.

“No, I’ll be okay.” Tess let him off the hook with a wave of her hand.

Ford ignored her words and began to move around the apartment, checking all the locks on the windows. He didn’t wait for her permission to go into the bedrooms and do the same. Last, he checked the window in the kitchen above the sink and then closed and locked the French doors. “Turn on the AC if you get hot,” he told her when he was back in the living room, standing over her.

Tess wanted to say thank you, but her voice didn’t seem to want to come out of her mouth so she just smiled and nodded. She started to get up, but Lilly pushed her back down on to the couch. Her big sister got up instead and walked them to the door.

“I’m going to stay with her tonight.”

“Good.” Ford gave her a nod, then glanced back at Tess. She got that same warm feeling throughout her limbs and hid the tremor moving across her shoulders by giving him a wave. He smirked and dipped his chin at her before crossing the threshold into the night.

Hudson smiled down at Lilly, noticing flecks of gold in her green eyes. “If you need anything, just call.”

Lilly lowered her chin and a soft smile teased the corners of her mouth. “Don’t worry. I’ve got this.”

“Good.”

Lilly closed the door behind them, locked it and hooked the chain.

“I say we order pizza.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

* * * * *

“That Ford is pretty hot,” Lilly whispered.

Hours and many beers later, she and Tess lay on the couch, their heads in the middle and their legs hanging over separate ends. Each had a cat on her stomach to pet and scratch. A half-finished pizza from Hungry Howie’s lay in the open box on the coffee table along with several empty beer bottles.

“You think so?” Tess flinched and was glad Lilly couldn’t see.

“Yeah. But Hudson’s hotter.”

Tess laughed out loud, disturbing Spencer enough to make him leap off and scamper to the cat tree. “Maybe you should see if he’s on Tinder.”

Lilly snorted. “No way. Besides, I think he’s got a thing for you.”

“What?” Tess sat up and stared at her sister. “No he doesn’t. He’s my lawyer!”

“That doesn’t mean anything. I see the way he looks at you.”

“Well, I don’t.” Tess leaned back down until her head thunked against Lilly’s. “Besides, even if he did, he’s not my type. Not to mention, I’m a widow.”

“Pffft! You don’t have a type.” Lilly flung a hand back and whopped Tess on the forehead. “You can’t fool me. I know you loved Jack, but I can see the way you look at Ford and
not
Hudson. ‘Sides, I’ve known you all your life, little sis.”

Tess froze. She knew she needed to protest vehemently, but the words stuck in her throat. Finally, she found her voice. “Okay, so Ford’s damn fine to look at, but I do
not
give him any looks.” Tess picked at the cuticles on her left hand, staring at her wedding rings, conjuring Jack’s face in her mind. His smile, his laugh, the way his eyes brightened when he looked at her. All of those things always brought joy and happiness to her when he was alive, and agonizing torment since his death. But now, she just felt sad. Regular sad. Man-this-sucks, kind of sad. It was as if all the drama surrounding her had caused her heart to go numb to either loving Jack or mourning him.

“How bad do you miss him?” Lilly whispered.

Tess shrugged. “Depends. When I feel guilty. Or when I don’t feel guilty. Basically all the time.” She groaned realizing the words coming out of her mouth weren’t matching the sentences she was forming in her head. Her brain was quoting the script she wrote for everyone else, but it got lost in translation by the time it came out of her mouth.

Lilly sat up and turned to stare at her. “What do you mean guilty? What on earth do you have to feel guilty about?”

Cat’s outta the bag now
. “Oh nothing, never mind me, I’m drunk.”

But Lilly wouldn’t leave it alone. She literally poked Tess in the head and shoulders and cheeks until she was forced to sit up as well.

“Out with it. Now’s the best time to come clean, when we’re both drunk and won’t remember it in the morning. You can vent and I can give comfort. We’ll both feel better.”

Tess tried to giggle, thinking it was the correct response, but she couldn’t muster the energy. She was so tired. The grief and the guilt and the anxiety were weighing her down. It felt like someone had put a fat suit on her body and tightened a vice around her brain.

“Okay,” she sighed. “Here goes.” Breathing deep, she confessed her deepest worry in one long breath. “Before the wedding, I thought about calling it off.”

Lilly gave her a long blink. Then another. Then a third before she burst out laughing. “Is that all?”

Tess glared at her and pursed her lips. “What do you mean, is that all? I had doubts, L, real doubts. I wanted to walk away from the wedding.”

“Pffft!” Spittle flew of Lilly’s lips. “Sorry, my lips are numb.” She apologized as she wiped her mouth on the hem of her t-shirt. “Baby sis, everyone goes through that. You had cold feet.”

“I’m not so sure,” Tess whispered. She wrapped her arms around herself and scrunched up in a ball. “It started right after we got engaged. It’s not that I wanted to go out with anyone else, but I started to wonder why we needed to get married at all.”

Lilly nodded, wobbling a little while she did. “Kinda like, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it?”

“Yeah!” Tess shouted, then clapped a hand over her mouth. “Sorry, that was loud. But yeah, I mean, why change what was working? I wanted to talk to Jack, but I felt so bad about it. It woulda broken his heart.”

“Nah, he woulda understood.” Lilly patted her leg. “That was Jack. He was so fuckin’ perfect.”

“Don’t I know it?” Tess snorted. “He was
too
perfect. I couldn’t even get mad at him. We never even fought. Do you know any couple that doesn’t ever argue?”

“Hell no!” Lilly’s mouth dropped open in disbelief. “You guys had fights, you told me about ’em all the time.”

“Well we didn’t. Never once. Every time I bitched to you, it was made up!” Tess figured it didn’t matter anymore. If she was going to come clean, she might as well use an extra bucket of Clorox and wipe everything away.

“What the hell do you mean?” Lilly blinked hard.

“I lied. You always made me feel so bad when you’d snark about how perfect we were. So I made up stories about fights that never happened.”

Lilly just stared at her, and Tess wondered if she had suddenly stopped speaking English or something.

“Any time I wanted anything, Jack gave it to me. Any time I wanted to do something, Jack went along with it. I even tried to start fights with him, and he would just laugh and laugh. ‘It’s not important, T. I’m not gonna fight with you. You’re what’s important to me.’ Can you believe that shit?”

Lilly held her stomach as she laughed and Tess railed on about how absolutely perfect Jack had been. Not one single flaw. The epitome of everything good and kind and prince charming like.

Soon, though, she was sobbing as she ranted. Lilly held her and listened, and Tess kept talking until the flow of words trickled to a stop. Snuffling and dabbing at her nose with a greasy napkin, Tess pulled away. “Oh Lilly. I’m the most horrible person in the whole world.”

“No you aren’t!” Lilly protested. “You’re young! You were scared and confused just like most of us. It was all natural. You only feel guilty now because Jack died. Once the wedding was over and you guys got back to everyday life you woulda known you did the right thing.”

“But,” Tess whispered, “as much as I miss him, I feel a little bit relieved.” The conversation and the crying had sobered her up considerably. There was no turning back, though. Now that she had her sister’s attention and compassion, Tess couldn’t hold anything in.

“How so?” Lilly’s eyes were clearer and she wasn’t slurring as badly as before.

“Well, Jack died. Now I don’t have to ever find out if I actually did make a mistake.” Tears welled up in Tess’s eyes with the admission. “Now
that
makes me an
awful
person.
I know it does
!”

Lilly grabbed her hands and held them tightly. “No, Tess, it doesn’t. Everything in this life happens for a reason, you know I believe that. Whatever lessons there are to be learned from this experience, forgiving yourself is probably going to be the hardest one.”

Tess turned away to reach for a cold slice of pizza. She considered it, turning it this way and that, before tossing it back into the box. She grabbed the nearest beer bottle next and shook it a little. To her disappointment, it was empty. “I need to get redrunk.”

Lilly snickered. “No you don’t. You need to get some sleep now.” She stood up from the couch, and pulled Tess up beside her. “Let’s go to bed. We can talk more in the morning.”

“I thought we weren’t going to remember any of this.” Tess yawned as they hobbled off to bed, their arms around one another’s shoulders.

“Now that I know what’s been eating at you,” Lilly said softly, “I’m not going to give up until you work through it. That’s what sisters are for, you dolt.”

Tess smiled and nodded, knowing it was true.

Chapter 25

Tess opened her eyes and groaned. Warm sunshine filled the bedroom, sending daggers of pain into her head. “L?” she croaked, but there was no answer. Flopping over, she saw a note on the bedside table. “Had to work, I’ll text you later.”

Wanting nothing more than to staple the covers to the sides of the bed so she couldn’t get out, and no one else could get in, Tess grunted. Even though she had a cat curled up against either side of her and her head was fuzzy with a hangover, Tess didn’t think she could fall back to sleep now that she was awake. She had no idea what time it was, but it had to be late judging by the amount of light in the room. Sucking it up, she yanked herself into a sitting position and rubbed her eyes until they stayed open with less effort. “God, I shouldn’t drink like that,” she muttered. Timothy meowed at her, but it ended up turning into a wide, feline yawn.

“Oh, how would you know?” she asked, while scratching his head.

Spencer lifted his chin about a millimeter from his paws and gave her a second’s notice before closing his eyes again. “Yeah, I can tell you’re real sympathetic, Spence.”

Giving each feline another pet, she crawled out of bed and shuffled off to the bathroom. One followed her, but the other stayed in the warm bed to snooze. When she was finished, Tess washed her hands and then rinsed the bowl clean of any soap residue. Then she left the cold water tap running in a fast drip so that the cats could have their morning drink. It had driven Jack crazy when she did that, but Tess always figured it was one of the perks of being a spoiled housecat.

Staring into the mirror, she frowned. The worry lines in her forehead looked like they were drawn on with a pencil and the bags under her eyes might as well have been a flashing neon sign saying she was hungover. “No more drinking for me for a while. So not worth it.”

At that point, both cats were hanging out on the countertop, leaning into the sink to lap at the drops of water splatting down toward the drain. She stroked their backs, one in each hand, and smiled. If it wasn’t for Timmy and Spencer, she knew her life would be a lot lonelier than it was without Jack. At least they kept her company and “talked” with her so she didn’t feel like her home was empty. She took a few aspirin from the medicine cabinet and swallowed them with a sip of water cupped in her hands, praying they’d work their magic fast.

Tess wandered out to the kitchen to make coffee and then stopped to stare out the French doors at the beautiful day. The weather app on her phone said it was already past noon and that the day would be sunny and hot. It was the kind of day she and Jack would have spent outside riding bikes or hiking, then throwing dinner on the grill, saving their client work for later. Thinking about that, it made her smile.

When the machine finished brewing, she decided to take her coffee outside onto the small stone patio. The weather was too nice to stay inside and she really wanted to spend some time thinking, hoping it would help to get the fuzziness out of her brain. Knowing the cats would love a foray in the grass, she trapped each one and put on their harnesses so they could join her. Tess grabbed her notebook and coffee and headed outside, leaving the door open so the cats could come along when they wanted to.

Sitting at the table, Tess opened to a clean page but she couldn’t really find the words she wanted to write. Instead, memories of Jack flitted in her mind. The day he gave her the promise ring. Their senior class trip to Washington, D.C. The first time he ever beat up the little boy who lived down the street for calling her a name and pushing her down. The day he proposed. They were all good memories, happy ones that made her heart feel light instead of like a stone pressing on the inside of her chest.

Tess wondered why some days she would feel okay and on others, she wanted to go and jump out a window. What was it about her that kept her from just being normal every day? Was this how grief worked for everyone? Maybe she would take some of the insurance money and get herself a therapist. She knew there wasn’t any shame in needing someone objective to talk to. With all the crazy shit going on, it might make more sense than unloading on Lilly and her parents all the time. All they wanted to do was reassure her that she was a good person and loved. That was fine, but who would tell her the truth when she was being an idiot? That had been Jack’s job. He’d been her very best friend and sounding board. No decision had ever been made without consulting him, no path taken without knowing how he felt first. Tess hadn’t always followed his advice or did what he thought she should do, but her bond with him had been complete.

“I miss him, Timmy,” she whispered, as the tabby forced his way into her lap. Stroking his soft fur, she sighed. “I know none of this would be happening if he were here, but still. He was always the voice of reason.”

The cat meowed as if to answer her, but Tess didn’t feel all that comforted. “Yeah, I know. What do you think he’d say if he was standing right here, Tim? Hmm?”

The only sound Tess could hear was the cat’s voracious purring.

Jealousy getting the better of him, Spencer stood with his two front paws on her leg, sniffing at Timothy’s butt. Without any warning, he nipped at the flanks in his face and Timothy growled. In order to avoid a full out cat fight on her lap, Tess tossed Timothy to the ground and he ran off, Spencer hot on his heels.

Closing her eyes, she let the sun warm her face. Images of the box full of money came to her mind, which then brought on thoughts of the night before. She said a silent prayer that the toxicology report would come back showing no signs of foul play. Tess didn’t know what she would do if it turned out Jack was killed. It might just break her spirit for good. Knowing that if she had followed her gut and postponed the wedding Jack might still be alive might be more than she could handle.

Don’t be stupid
. Tess opened her eyes and looked around. Jack’s voice had been so loud in her head, it was as if he was sitting at the table speaking to her. Wrinkling her eyebrows, she concentrated hard, listening for anything else Jack might have to say. The voice didn’t sound like it was real, but she heard it in her heart. He would think she was a complete dumbass for sitting around and feeling sorry for herself. He’d also think she was a wuss if she let something like his murder break her. He’d want her to pick herself up, dust off her butt, and get going on figuring out who did it and why. There was no way he would want his death to be in vain. And the only person who would be able to make sure that didn’t happen was Tess. She was responsible for making sure that if justice needed to be served for him, it would happen.

“It’s time to grow up, Tess.”

She said the words out loud to no one, but it might as well have been Jack sitting next to her saying it.

“It’s all about positive self-talk, right?” She looked around to make sure there weren’t any neighbors around on their patios to overhear her. “I’m smart. I’m capable. I’m
going
to be okay.”

Tess stood up and started pacing back and forth. “I did
not
do anything wrong. It’s okay to have doubts before you get married. Lilly was right. It was just cold feet.” As she walked the short length of the patio back and forth, the cats appeared at the sound of her voice to sit and observe, like an audience to her motivational speech.

“It’s been more than six months now and it’s okay to feel better. It’s okay to want to heal. Whether or not Jack is watching is beside the point. I’m here and alive and I need to get on with my life. No matter how much I wish he were here, I can’t bring him back.”

Tess slammed her fist into her palm. “I owe it to Jack to go on and live a good life. And I owe it to him to figure out what the hell happened. I can’t just sit back and wait for shit.”

The more she talked, the better she felt. Her natural optimism and effervescence seem to be returning and Tess could feel the hope building inside her chest, filling her heart. “I have money now. I can do some good things with it. I’m an adult and I will stand on my own two feet. It will be an honor to Jack and his memory to build something he would be proud of.”

The stream of consciousness she blurted out was all over the map and Tess didn’t care. She wanted to keep saying positive things to build her self-confidence, but she also wanted to be honest with herself. “I’m not always going to feel this good. I’m going to have good days and bad days and that’s okay!” She shouted this last bit, causing the cats to cock their heads. “I might still have days when I don’t want to get out of bed or cry my eyes out, but those will just be moments in time. They won’t define the rest of my life. I won’t let them.”

Tess tilted her head to the sky and closed her eyes, letting the hot sun soak into her skin. She threw hear arms wide and laughed out loud. “I know there are some more hard times coming, Jack, but I promise not to let them break me. I promise I will do everything I can to do the right thing.”