There was no way to hold up my chin. No way to straighten my shoulders for one more cruel word. One more beautiful touch.
“Come on,” he said, helping me into the bed, pulling out the quilt from under my body and tucking me in. His fingers—perhaps by accident, I couldn’t be sure, I couldn’t be sure of anything with this man—brushed my cheek.
“How am I supposed to survive you?” I asked.
“You’re not,” he said.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Iwoke upto a dark sky. The day gone. Feeling stoned—not that I’d ever been stoned, which actually at this moment in my life seemed criminal. I was a twenty-two-year-old. How had I never gotten high?
I’d learned how to drive; maybe smoking a joint would be next.
Starving, wrapped in the pink silk robe, I wandered downstairs looking for a cup of coffee and my cell phone.
Instead, I found Caroline in the kitchen’s breakfast nook, a glass of wine and an open manila folder in front of her. Behind her the sky was indigo. The dark shadow of trees taking bites out of the slightly lighter blue. The lamp over the table was glass and gold fixtures, and cast angular shadows over Caroline’s face.
She wore a pair of yoga pants and a cashmere sweater. Her feet were bare. I’d never seen her so... undone. She looked somehow even younger. More beautiful.
“Hey,” I said.
“You’re awake,” she said with the kind of smile that always felt motherly to me.
“Finally.”
“You want a glass of wine?”
“No, but could I get some coffee?”
“I can get Denise to make it.”
“I got it—”
I turned to find Ronan leaning against the counter, blending into the shadows. His feet crossed at the ankles. His white shirt pulled taut over his shoulders. I realized I had not ever seen his body. He’d seen me naked and crying. And he’d only been dressed and distant.
“Oh,” I said, my face suddenly hot. My nipples beneath the robe, hard. “I don’t mean to interrupt. I can leave.”
“No. You’re not interrupting anything,” Caroline said. “Well, you are, but... it concerns you.”
“Me?” I turned, coffee forgotten.
“Come sit,” she said, patting the spot at the wooden table across from her. I slid across the bench seat, and she handed me the folder.
“What is this?”
“Something I wasn’t going to talk to you about. But, after last night and the fire, I think... I think we need to talk about it.”
I opened the folder.
“Oh my god,” I breathed, looking out the window, trying to blink away the image of my husband, bone white with a black and red hole in the middle of his head.
“Sorry,” Caroline said. “I should have warned you.”
“What is this?” I asked, still not looking at the image.
“I hired a private coroner,” Caroline said.
“It was suicide, why would you hire a coroner?”