Rose might not be. Not yet.
But the clock is ticking.
And nobody’s helping her.
David knew, when he saw the police car in the rearview mirror, that they were coming after him. He also knew that it would be futile—even deadly—to try to outrun them on the slick roads.
Thus, his own fate—and Rose Larrabee’s—were sealed.
He lifts his resigned gaze to meet Leslie’s tormented one. The wind gusts, sifting grainy snow into his face.
David is powerless to manage more than two futile words.
“I’m sorry.”
Shrouded in silence, jaw clenched, she turns away.
With a curse and a blast of arctic air, Ben bursts in the door, looking like the abominable snowman.
He stops short, catching sight of Christine on the couch with the children on her lap. “What’s going on? Babysitting again?”
“Yes,” Christine says simply.
“You’re sick. You shouldn’t be—” He breaks off, shaking his head, and silently drapes his coat over the doorknob.
“Why is that man so mad at us, Cwistine?” Leo whispers loudly.
“He’s not mad at you, sweetie.”
“He’s mad at Christine,” Jenna explains.
Yes. Yes, he’s mad at Christine.
Pointedly ignoring the comment, Ben holds up a bag. “I got your medicine. I had to drive all the way over to Patchogue to find a pharmacy that was open, but I knew you really needed it.”
“Thanks.”
She wants to tell him that it’s too little, too late.
She wants to tell him what’s going on with Rose, and Leslie.
She wants to tell him a lot of things.
But that will have to wait.
For now, she just holds Rose’s children close and prays harder than she ever has before as her husband, oblivious, walks up the stairs.
Framed in the shattered storm door, his hair and lashes fringed in white, Scott Hitchcock breathlessly asks, “Rose, are you all right?”
She opens her mouth to reply, but all that escapes is a strangled sob. She looks down in time to see Bill’s eyes roll grotesquely upward as he emits one last rattling breath.
Then Hitch is opening the door, pulling her out into the snow, clasping her tightly against his strong chest with the hand that isn’t holding the gun.
“Hitch . . . where did you get the gun?”
“It’s mine. I keep it in my truck so that—”
“But the roads are so bad. You don’t drive the truck in bad weather.”
“I drove it in to the Bronx this morning. I thought I’d be back long before the snow started. I called my voice mail from the road and got Leslie’s message about the pipes, so I came straight here, and when I came up the walk I saw— Oh, hell, Rose, if I hadn’t shown up when I did . . .” His voice is gruff, his cheek resting on her hair. “Who is he?”
“I worked with him. At the bookstore.” She closes her eyes, not wanting to glimpse the bloodied body at their feet. “He thought I was Angela.”
“Who?”
“Somebody named Angela,” she murmurs, pressing a trembling hand over her heart. There it is, the familiar, rhythmic beat, faster than usual, but reassuring all the same.
Rose tilts her face skyward. She can see nothing but fat, swirling snowflakes drifting down from a black sky.
She closes her eyes, whispers softly to the heavens, “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Hitch replies, right here on earth.
Epilogue
“Mommy? I’m hung-wee.”
Feeling a tug on her satin bridesmaid’s gown, Rose glances down to see Leo, looking like a miniature version of Sam in his black tuxedo.
“I’m not surprised—you didn’t eat your meal.” She wets her thumb and wipes a lipstick smudge off his cheek. Who knew it would be so challenging to keep the ring bearer presentable until the photographer leaves the reception?
“I don’t wike wob-sto.”
“Everyone likes lobster, lion-boy.”
“Not me,” he says, scowling up at Hitch. “And my name isn’t wion-boy. That’s a dumb name.”
“Leo,” Rose says in a warning tone.
“I’m going to go see if the wedding cake is choco-wat,” Leo says, and scurries across the dance floor.
Rose looks up at Hitch. “Sorry about that.”
“No big deal. Someday he’ll love me again. He’s just jealous. He thinks I’m trying to steal his mommy away. And maybe he’s right,” Hitch says, and pulls her closer, whirling her around the dance floor as the orchestra plays “The Way You Look Tonight.”
It’s been six months now since the man Rose knew as Bill Michaels tried to murder her.
His true identity was Justin Everhard III, the scion of a West Coast billionaire who drowned when he fell from his yacht off the coast of Catalina Island. The irony is that Rose vaguely remembers reading the account in the newspapers back when she was in college, and feeling sorry for the man’s teenaged son, who was the sole other passenger on board the yacht when the accident happened. The father’s body was never found, but after a few years he was officially declared dead . . . just in time for Justin Everhard III to inherit a vast trust fund.
Nobody will ever know whether Justin Everhard II was murdered by his son . . . or whether a similar fate befell Angela Brookman.
David Brookman is convinced that the jet-setting drifter was behind his wife’s so-called hit-and-run accident. Given his confession to killing Sam, Rose believes David is right. There just isn’t enough evidence for the police to reopen either investigation as a homicide. Nor is there a reason to.
Justin Everhard III currently resides in his family’s mausoleum. Apparently, they don’t believe he killed anyone. Or, as David explained it, they probably believe it . . . but he’s still one of them. For the Everhards, like the Brookmans, appearances are everything.
“I just don’t understand that,” Rose told David.
“You can’t possibly, Rose. You’re from a different world. You’re lucky.”
She might be from a different world, but she and David Brookman have been on the same path these last six months. It has taken Rose a long time to come to terms with the fact that Sam’s death wasn’t accidental. Learning to accept the same thing about Angela, David was there to support her every step of the way.
One day, not long ago, he showed up on her doorstep with a gift-wrapped box, saying, “It’s something I thought you should have.”
Inside, Rose found a snow globe.
As she shook it, watching the fluffy white flakes whirl around the angel behind the glass, David told her, “It was Angela’s. I know she’d want you to have it.”
“Whenever I look at it, I’ll think of her. And of you,” Rose told David, touched by his warmth.
But it’s Scott Hitchcock whose friendship has gradually, tentatively transformed into something deeper.
Leaning her head on his shoulder, Rose gazes over the crowded dance floor, smiling when she spots her new brother-in-law spinning a giggling Jenna. The layers of tulle in her pink organza flower-girl dress twirl prettily around her legs, and she looks astonishingly tall.
She’s growing up, Sam, Rose silently tells her husband. She’s growing up, so is Leo, and I’m . . .
Well, I’m growing up, too. And I’m going to be okay.
“Hi, Mommy! “Jenna cries out as Peter spins her past.
Rose has to admit, he cleans up nicely, dashing in his black tails. And he’s obviously madly in love with Leslie. Rose will never forget the look on her sister-in-law’s face when the Triple A tow truck deposited Peter on Shorewood Lane, holding a bouquet of limp, frostbitten flowers and a black velvet box.
“I told you I had a surprise for you,” he said, and he sank down on one knee right there in the snow.
He’d had the emerald-cut diamond ring on lay-away since Christmas. It was the reason he had been working so much overtime. When Leslie
didn’t come home the night before, he decided to dash over to the mall to pick it up and surprise her.
“Mommy! Look at me dancing!”
Rose laughs and waves at Jenna, noticing that Peter is keeping a watchful eye on his bride as she waltzes by with David, laughing at something he’s saying.
Lithe, lovely Leslie could have stepped out of a fairy tale in a white silk gown and illusion veil. She was able to afford the dress of her dreams, thanks to David. He insisted on paying for the entire reception, insisted on lobster over chicken, and roses over daisies in the bouquets and centerpieces.
“It’s the least I can do,” he kept saying, brandishing his checkbook, a gesture that wasn’t lost on Christine Kirkmayer.
Searching the room for her neighbor, Rose spots Christine chatting amiably with Sam’s parents. Newly slender and newly single, Christine has been a godsend for Rose and the children—and claims that they’re the same for her, as she adjusts to life without Ben.
Christine doesn’t like to talk about what went wrong in their marriage, confiding only that they didn’t want the same things. She’s become quite fond of saying life is short, and I don’t want to waste a minute of it.
Neither do I, Rose thinks, content in Hitch’s arms as the orchestra finishes the song and the bandleader takes the mike to call all the single women out to the dance floor.
“Go on,” Leslie says, pushing Rose to join them, waving her bouquet above her head.
Rose groans, looks to Hitch for a reprieve, but he merely laughs and raises his palms helplessly, shaking his head.
“Come on, Mommy!” Jenna pulls her out onto the floor to stand beside a giggling Christine.
There’s a drum roll from the orchestra.
A grand flourish from Leslie, with her back to the crowd.
And then the bouquet sails over her head . . . right into Rose’s reluctant hands.
Leslie turns, laughing, pointing at a mirror as she calls, “I cheated, Rose. I saw your reflection and I aimed right at you.”
“Mommy!” Jenna squeals. “You won! If you’re a bride, can I wear this dress again?”
“That’s a healthy sign,” Christine says low in Rose’s ear, before David materializes at her side to ask, “How about a dance as a consolation prize?”
Rose watches them glide away. It would be wonderful if David and Christine wound up together. They’re both lonely, and David would make such a wonderful father . . .
She feels a tug on her hem.
She looks down to see Leo standing there, accompanied by Hitch. His face is smeared with brown goo.
“I was wight,” he says solemnly. “The cake was choco-wat, just like Aunt Wes-wee pwomised.”
“Oh, Leo, let me take you and clean that off,” Sam’s mother says, hurrying over to take his hand. She smiles at Rose and Hitch. “Don’t forget, the children are staying overnight with Poppy and Grandma, so you two can stay at the reception as late as you want.”
Rose gives her a little hug, grateful they’re back in town for the summer.
They couldn’t bring themselves to go back to their house, after what happened. So they sold it and bought a small cottage right around the corner from 48 Shorewood Lane.
These days, Rose is never lonely, and rarely alone, unless she wants to be . . .
With Hitch.
She smiles as he lifts the bouquet she’s holding, inhaling deeply. “Mmm. Roses always were my favorite.”
“Is that so?”
He nods, grinning. “You know, Rose, they say if a person saves your life, you owe them the rest of it.”
“Is that what they say?” She lets her eyes twinkle up at him.
“Something like that.”
As he pulls her into his arms, she thinks of Sam, knowing this is what he’d want for her . . .
And of Angela, remembering a promise she made long ago, in her letter to David.
I said I’d take good care of this heart of ours. But there was a time when I thought it was irrevocably broken . . .
Rose sighs contentedly, knowing that a little piece of her heart will always belong to Sam . . . and that the rest of it is whole again at last.
Enter the thrilling world of
WENDY CORSI STAUB
Keep reading for an excerpt from
The Good Sister
The first book in her latest trilogy
On sale September 24, 2013
Chapter One
That it had all been a lie shouldn’t come as any surprise, really.
And yet, the truth—a terrible, indisputable truth that unfolds line by blue ballpoint line, filling the pages of the black marble notebook—is somehow astonishing.
How did you never suspect it back then?
Or, at least, in the years since?
Looking back at the childhood decade spent in this house—an ornate, faded Second Empire Victorian mansion in one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city—it’s so easy to see how it might have happened this way.
How it did happen this way.
There is no mistaking the evidence. No mistaking the distinct handwriting: a cramped, backhand scrawl so drastically different from the loopy, oversized penmanship so typical of other girls that age.
Different . . .
Of course it was different.
She was different from the other girls; tragically, dangerously different.
I remember so well.
I remember her, remember so many things about her: both how she lived and how she—
Footsteps approach, tapping up the wooden stairway to this cupola perched high above the third-story mansard roofline, topped by wrought-iron cresting that prongs the sky like a king’s squared-off crown.
“Hellooo-oo. Are you still up there?” calls Sandra Lutz, the Realtor.
“Yes.”
Where else would I be? Did you think I jumped out the window while you were gone?
Sandra had excused herself ten minutes ago after finally answering her cell phone. It had buzzed incessantly with incoming calls and texts as their footsteps echoed in one empty room after another on this final walk-through before the listing goes up this week.
The entire contents of the house are now in storage—with the exception of the rocker where Mother went undiscovered for weeks.
“I don’t think that chair is something you’d want to keep,” Sandra said in one of their many long-distance telephone conversations when the storage arrangements were being made.
Of course not. The corpse would have been crawling with maggots and oozing bodily fluids, staining the brocade upholstery and permeating it with the terrible stench of death.
Presumably, someone—surely not the lovely Sandra—tossed the desecrated rocking chair into a Dumpster.
Everything else was transported to the storage facility somewhere in the suburbs.
As for Mother herself . . .
I’d just as soon someone tossed her into a Dumpster, too.
But of course, the proper thing to do was arrange, also long distance, for a cremation.
“We have a number of packages,” Glenn Cicero, the undertaker, said over the phone, after remarking that he remembered Mother from all the years she worked part-time at Russo’s Drugstore as a pharmacy clerk.
“Packages? She’s not just in one . . . urn? How many are there?”
“No, that’s not what I meant. I was talking about funeral packages. It just depends on how you want to set up visitation hours and—”
“No visitation. I live almost five hundred miles away, and I can’t get up there just yet, and . . . there’s no one else.”
Pause. “There are no other family and friends here in the Buffalo area who might want to—”
“No one else.”
“All right, then.” He went over the details, mentioning that there would be an additional seventy-five-dollar charge for shipment of the ashes.
“Can you just hold on to—” It? Her? What was the proper terminology, aside from the p
rofane terms so often used to refer to Mother—though never to her face—back when she was alive?
“The remains?” Cicero supplied delicately.
“Yes . . . can you hold on to the remains until I can come in person?”
“When would that be?”
“Sometime this summer. I’m selling the house, so I’ll be there to make the final arrangements for that.”
The undertaker dutifully provided instructions on how to go about retrieving what was left of the Dearly Departed when the time came.
The time is now here, but of course there will be no trip to Cicero and Son Funeral Home. Mother’s ashes can sit on a dusty shelf there for all eternity.
As for the contents of this old house . . .
“I’m sure you won’t want to go through it all just yet,” Sandra Lutz said earlier, handing over the rental agreement, with the monthly payments automatically deducted from Mother’s checking account, and a set of keys to the storage unit. “Not when the loss is so fresh. But empty houses are much more appealing to buyers, and this way, at least, we can get the home on the market.”
Yes. The sooner this old place is sold, the better. As for the padlocked compartment filled with a lifetime of family furniture and mementos . . .
Good riddance to all of it.
Well . . . not quite all.
Right before she answered her phone, Sandra took a Ziploc bag from her pebbled black leather Dooney & Bourke satchel.
“These are some odds and ends I came across after the moving company and cleaning service had finished in here. I didn’t want to just throw anything away, so . . . here you go.”
The bag contained just a few small items. A stray key that had been hanging on a high nail just inside the cellar stairway door, most likely fitting the lock on a long-gone trunk or tool chest. A dusty Mass card from a forgotten cousin’s funeral, found tucked behind a cast-iron radiator in the front parlor. A tarnished, bent silver fork that had been wedged in the space behind the silverware drawer.
And then there was . . .
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