“Oh hey,” I say breezily, but he doesn’t hear me and is beelining for the front door. I follow him and catch a glimpse of the street through the front window and freeze, a half dozen steps behind him. “Mike,” I say faintly. “It’s the police.”
It’s a waste of breath because he’s already opening the door, and my fears spike when I see the tight looks on the two officers’ faces.
“Mr.Smith?”
Oh my God.Jacob.My beautiful, perfect child. They wouldn’t come here if he was in the hospital. They would come here only if it was worse. I told Mike; I told Mike this was a risk.
I try to grip Mike’s arm but can’t. I try to swing the door open farther, to push beside him so that I can hear, but I can’t.
“I’m sorry to tell you this, but your wife, Lillian Smith, was found this morning in north Malibu ...”
“What?” I try to understand what they are saying about me, and then it clicks, and in one sharp moment, I realize why everything feels so strange.
I’m dead.
CHAPTER 46
MIKE
There will be a time for mourning, but this is not it. I take the news with a curt nod, then shut the door and return to the office. Starting a fresh list, I consider the arrangements that need to be made. Jacob is the first item to be handled. I need to locate him, get him home, and handle the fallout. Unfortunately, this is the area that Lillian always excelled in. I don’t know how to handle grief, and my parenting limits have already been stretched with his embarrassment from the video.
I consider Lillian’s mother for the task, then groan at the realization that I will need to alert her as well. Same with my parents and her friends, what few she had.
Sam could be the one to handle all that.Yes.The idea grows legs. A grief-stricken husband wouldn’t be expected to deal with all that. And once Sam finishes sobbing over Lillian, he’ll probably enjoy it. He’s the one who always prides himself on his insight into and manipulation of human behavior.
The next task is burial and funeral plans. I open the top file drawer and move down the alphabetic tabs toD—Death. There is one folder for Lillian, and one for me. Lillian has never reviewed mine, has always left those details to me. If she ever had grabbed my folder, she would have been surprised at how thin it is. Inside, there is just a business cardfor Frank, my attorney. Frank, who would accept a call from Lillian only if I were dead. At that point, my dear wife would have found out the truth about everything.
Could she have handled it? Now we’ll never know.
Inside Lillian’s death folder is information about her plot and her casket, all prepurchased. She actually has two plots. The first I purchased more than a dozen years ago, in a very respectable cemetery that has low maintenance fees and guaranteed upkeep. I’ve never told her about that plot, and was irritated when, six years ago, she announced that she would be buried in Angelus Rosedale Cemetery and had already put down a deposit on two plots—hers and mine—in the upper section.
I had been gracious and accommodating—oh sure, honey, you know best—but set a quarterly reminder to check on her payments and see when she lost interest in the purchase. Shockingly enough, she never did, and the plots were paid off within three years.
The next pages are her life insurance policies. There are three, two whole-life and one term policy, which total $6 million. Suicide is a disqualifier for one of the policies, and I set that one aside and mentally cross those $2 million off my mental tally.
Four million dollars will be nice. It’s documentable, taxable income that will allow Jacob and me to move into a substantial home, without raising pesky questions about source and documentation.
I line the pages up in a neat, orderly row, then relax back in the chair and put my hands behind my head and stretch out my shoulders.
For a moment, I feel the pain of loss, the dawning understanding that I will never hold her, see her smile, listen to her laugh.
I push past it.
CHAPTER 47
LENNY
I’m sitting in the landscaping hut, at the cramped desk they keep there, when the walkie-talkie on the desk crackles and Abigal’s voice comes through. I’m not asleep, but I do have my eyes closed and I’ve lost track of my thoughts, so it takes me a minute and I miss the first thing that she says.
“Repeat that.” I rub both eyes and try to focus on the face of my watch. My sight is going, and it’s fuzzy, unless I hold it farther away than my arm is long.
“We need a plot prepped. Number 102.”
“Ten-four.” I ease to my feet and grab the place card I’ll put on the stake used to mark the grave for the funeral home. “Name?”
“Got a pen?” Abigal is an annoying mix of helpful and overhelpful, the result of a retired kindergarten teacher not understanding that grown adults can, in fact, do things on their own.
“Yes. Name?”