I stare at him. The words in his sentence swim around, forming in different combinations, but their meaning is not coming through.
“There are two daughters and a son by Jolene Fulker, who lives in Minneapolis. The estate, with some minor provisions excepted, is to be shared equally amongst the five: Ms. Fulker, her three children, and you. As far as what that means to you right now—you will have to decide whether to sell this apartment or buy out the others’ shares. You may want to consult your financial advisor, and I do understand this is a difficult time to make such decisions, but nevertheless, they must be made.”
I am utterly numb. The flow of words stops dead.
80
“Bring me that bottle of scotch,” Franks says to Joe.
Joe doesn’t move. “Ready for another Sprite?”
“Don’t be an ass. Bring me the bottle. I didn’t say I was going to drink it.”
Joe reaches under the bar and pulls out an unopened bottle of Glenfiddich. He puts it in front of Franks, within easy reach. “Want to talk about it?”
“No.”
Joe goes to the other end of the bar and busies himself drying glasses and putting them in the rack overhead.
When he got back from New York, Franks had marched into Oates’s office, but when he got there, he was about eighty-seven percent positive it hadn’t been Oates talking to Crowe. Franks has no idea how Crowe found out about Carney.
There used to be a solidarity with men on the force. Even among officers you didn’t know.
You can’t count on anything anymore.
Franks eyes the bottle of Glenfiddich. He runs a finger around the rather plain label.
Could be that Crowe forced the information out of somebody, same way he forced me to back off the case. He was like a one-man extortion racket, had something on everybody, didn’t matter who you were.
Franks had been so close he could taste it. One tap with the hammer, and Caroline Crowe would have spilled it all. He had the recorder in his pocket, waiting.
One fucking tap.
81
For two weeks after Stratmeyer’s visit, Caroline does not leave the apartment. Amory stops by twice but is rebuffed by Ricardo, who does a brilliant job keeping out the press, which does not yet have the story of Gordon’s second family in Minneapolis, responsible for shrinking Caroline’s inheritance from virtually one hundred percent of Gordon’s holdings to twenty.
Marecita continues to bring coffee every morning, and sometimes sits on the edge of Caroline’s bed, hoping to see her cry and be able to comfort her. Caroline does not cry. Instead she spends these days sitting in the slipper chair looking out the window or shopping on the internet, and Ricardo brings the packages up himself so he can check on her.
She does not contest the will, and Irving Stratmeyer has made sure she has access to funds while probate drags on. Caroline does not ask anything about her half-siblings—not their names, where they live, nothing. She directs Stratmeyer to handle all correspondence with the Fulker family, and leave her out of it as much as possible.
Finally everything has arrived. Becoming Kayley Ann Barker is out of the question, given the unforgivable things Kayley Ann has done. So Caroline invents someone else, someone fresh and unsullied. Her new driver’s license says Frances Miller. She has shoulder-length chestnut hair, with soft curls. She is not yet showing but her body is softening into curves, which Frances encourages.
On a gray day in late February, under a light drizzle, she sets off with only a small suitcase. Frances Miller has her own credit card now, and she’s catching a plane (coach, no amenities) to Charleston, a random city Caroline has never visited. She breezes out the door of 744, Ricardo holding the door but not recognizing her.
Maybe she was meant to be Frances Miller—or someone else, anyone else—all along, maybe her incarnation as Caroline Crowe was a terrible mistake. But whatever, she thinks as she climbs into a cab. She knows the little bean won’t have a normal life, not really, but Frances plans to give it her best shot.
She will never escape, never really be free, but still, it is time for her to live on her own, or at least it is time for her to gather up the splinters of herself, and carry on somewhere else.
Afterword
I hope you enjoyed You Made Your Bed, and that I succeeded in stirring a tiny bit of sympathy for some of the terrible characters. (Just a tiny bit!)
Would you consider leaving a short review? I’d be really grateful. We independent writers really depend on our readers—and I’d like to hear your thoughts. Thank you!
I’m working on another psychological suspense at the moment, called The Hermit, set in a small town in New Hampshire. If you’d like to hear when it goes live, click HERE.
—CG
Acknowledgments
Getting this book written was the equivalent of a breech birth of twins (with no drugs) and I got a lot of very excellent help during the process.
Tommy Glass and Nancy Kelley, I would be lost without you.
Deana Greenberg, Michelle Damiani, Mariflo Stephens, Ivy Cramer—big thanks for your honesty and sharp insights.
Cover design by Adly Elewa.
Editing assessment by Anna Hogarty.
Proofreading by 4eyesediting.com.
Thank you! I am lucky and grateful to work with all of you very talented people.
About the Author
Cornelia Goddin studied writing at Dartmouth College and has an MFA from Columbia University. She’s published short fiction in various literary magazines, along with seventeen books under different names, from cozy mysteries to an SAT math guide to vampire romance.
She is the Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling writer of the Molly Sutton Mysteries, written under the name Nell Goddin. If you’d like to check out the first in the series, click HERE.
Psychological suspense is one of her favorite genres as a reader, thanks to the unbeatable Patricia Highsmith and an early love of Hitchcock.
www.corneliagoddin.com
If you’d like to hear about new releases, click HERE.
You Made Your Bed: A Novel Page 29