Ah. The mystery of why Mike hadn’t reached out to me was solved. I should have known that Sam had reported in—he and Mike were bosom buddies when it came to taking care of me. “You should have just taken me home.”
He chuckled and pulled forward. “Yeah, you werenotdown with that idea, and you know I always follow drunk Lillian’s instructions.”
“Drunk Lillian has not made an appearance in quite some time,” I defended myself. When I did used to get drunk—and there had been a period, a few years ago, when I had gone through a bit of a phase—my personality had certainly harshened under the influence of alcohol. I didn’t believe it until Jacob filmed me, sputtering and bossy in the kitchen one night, insisting that brownies must—from that point on—be made with miniature M&M’S, an opinion I was pushing as if it would change the course of our lives.I’m serious!I kept saying.Stop agreeing with me as if you aren’t taking this seriously! Someone needs to write this down!The video was mortifying. I’d watched thirty seconds of it and then retreated to my room, where I decided to never come out, and to stop drinking.
My self-imposed isolation had lasted for a few hours at best—and within a couple of weeks, I resumed my regular schedule of wine and cocktails. But I’d avoided getting too drunk. At least, until last night. And blacking out—well. That was a first for me.
As Sam’s SUV hummed down the road, I refreshed my email, hoping to see a “haha, I’m just kidding” email from Fran. Instead, I got an error message, stating that my email login credentials were wrong.
Already, I was out in the cold.
Sam pulled into our front drive and parked in front of the Tudor-style garage doors. He handed me his copy of our house key, and I let myself in, then ran the spare back to him. Jacob was at school, so I stripped in the laundry room, then jogged up the carpeted stairs and straight into our master bathroom. Using extra apple-scented shampoo, I washed my hair, conditioned, and rinsed well, squeezing out the excess water before I wrapped myself in a fluffy yellow towel and stepped out.
As I dried off, I reassessed and solidified my decision to keep my job loss from Mike. I worked from home already, so he wouldn’t miss me heading into an office, and I could fill the time normally spent in interviews and obituary creation in other ways—like figuring out what to do with the rest of my life.
Thumbing through the hangers, I pulled out a lilac pantsuit normally reserved for weddings and the occasional church event. This seemed like a worthy occasion to dress up for; I just wished I knew if there was something I was going to be apologizing for.
I put on a pair of pearl earrings and pulled my wet hair into a low bun. Maybe I should write a novel. Something about a scorned wife who hunted down her husband’s mistress. Research would be required, of course. I grinned in the mirror, then watched my smile crumble as a wave of emotion hit me. God, whatwasI going to do for work? Newspapers and magazines were laying off writers right and left as internet blogs took over, subscribers opting to read their news for free and online. Paper newspapers were, as one millennial had told me (while sipping from a paper cup), like ... the most wasteful thing ever. She predicted they would be outlawed within five years, and I wasn’t entirely sure she was wrong.
I considered heels but didn’t want to tower over Fran, who could be a little sensitive about her height. Pulling on a pair of gold-and-tan flats, I headed downstairs. The spare key to my Fiat was in the kitchen drawer, next to ones for Mike’s and Jacob’s cars. I pocketed it and flipped through the rest of the drawer, seeing what other replacements I couldpilfer. There wasn’t anything else of use, so I shut the drawer and then scheduled a ride pickup.Four minutes away.
Going out front, I brushed the dust off one of the rocking chairs on our shallow front porch. Pulling it to a spot in the sun, I opened my Twitter account and stared at the @themysteryofdeath account.
There was a riddle still outstanding. A mother, her son, and her husband were all at home on a quiet night, and one of them had died. In last night’s eventful evening, I had neglected to leave a clue, and the thread had exploded with theories and opinions. I should give them something, some subtle hint that the mother is the one who dies, but it seemed too fitting, with my termination email fresh in mind, to give the hint I had originally planned, which was that the wife had recently been fired.
Still, my creative energy was too low for deviation, so I typed out the clue, then posted it.
Maybe it was time for @themysteryofdeath to die. I couldn’t see continuing it, without my job, which sparked the ideas and gave me access to theTimesdatabase of obituaries and news. And after all, keeping it up would be like clinging to my old career in that way, which was a little pathetic, right?
Maybe. I watched the car service pull up to the curb.
I wasn’t sure I was ready to kill that part of me also.
CHAPTER 20
LILLIAN
My large and crowded key ring sat in the middle of Fran’s neatly organized desk. I stared at it in shock, momentarily forgetting why I was there.
“Surprised at something?” she asked dryly, her New York accent perking its head.
“Those are my keys.” I pointed at one of the attachments, an outdated plastic photo of Jacob when he was starting kindergarten.
“Oh good,” she said warmly, in a sort of cat-who-ate-the-canary way. “So you admit it.”
Admit it?That didn’t sound like something that I wanted to do. “Admit what?”
“That you keyed my car last night.”
A protest both rose and fell on my lips, the result some sort of garbled scoff. I clasped my hands together. “I didnotkey your car.” Was it a lie? I wasn’t sure. “I didn’t.”
“Well, your keys were in the street near my car, and the blade on that knife was out, with bits of my paint still clinging to it.”
I looked at my keys, the pink Swiss Army knife one of the many attachments on its ring. “I don’t—”
“Stop,” Fran interrupted. “I told you yesterday that you needed to step up your performance. You didn’t want to hear it then, and I don’t want to hear your excuses now. The ice ...” She paused for dramatic effect and planted her fingertips on the desk like spiders. “The ice has broken.”
“Please, Fran—”