Wish You Were Gone(31)

“Fine,” he said. “But if we’re going to do it, we may as well do it right. Spare no expense. Let’s give that asshole the send-off he doesn’t remotely deserve.”

“We’re definitely on the same page.” She glanced over at him and found herself unable to hold his gaze. This was new, and she wasn’t having it. She forced herself to meet his eyes and stay there. “Are you okay?” she asked. “Is there anything you want to talk to me about? You know you can tell me anything, right?”

Darnell clicked the button on his seat belt and turned away from her. “I’m just under a lot of pressure right now, you know that,” he said tersely. “Let’s just get through this sham of a memorial. After that, things’ll get back to normal.” He gave her a perfunctory kiss on the cheek, his lips barely touching her skin, got out of the car, and walked off without another word.

Gray stared after her husband. Never had he blown her off like that. Not once in their whole marriage. Didn’t he see she was trying here? Darnell had always had the utmost respect for her feelings, no matter what. She didn’t like the way he was shutting her out. It made her feel like he was hiding something.

What if he hadn’t gone to the party that night like he said he did? What if he’d driven back to Jersey, too?

Gray gripped her steering wheel as the train horn sounded in the near distance. Darnell was on the platform now, a hulking form, nearly twice the size of any of the other passengers. His trench coat could have acted as a pup tent for the woman standing closest to him. Gray had a sudden flash—Darnell reaching over and shoving the petite woman in front of the oncoming train. The squeal of the brakes. The screams of the crowd. But then the train had stopped and the people were boarding and there was no blood, no carnage. It was just her heart pumping as if there was.

She picked up her phone and called Derek.

“Hey, Mom. What’s up?”

She loved that he didn’t point out the early hour. If she’d called Dante she would have had to try three times before she woke him up, but Derek, she knew, was either out for a run or on his treadmill. He was a morning person, like her.

“Hey, baby. How are you this fine morning?” she asked.

“I’m on mile nine.” She could hear the slight hitch in his voice from the exertion. “What about you?”

“On my way to work.” The bells on the train clanged as it slowly began to roll out of the station. “How’s the training going? Are you getting enough protein? Enough sleep? Did you read that article I sent you from Men’s Health?”

Derek was running his first marathon in the spring, a goal he’d set for himself over the summer. That boy decided to do something and did it. Just like his mother.

“Yes, Mom,” he said. “I’m working with the firm’s nutritionist, remember? I’m doing it right.”

“That’s my boy. Listen, baby, can you do me a favor and keep an eye on your dad today?”

“Keep an eye on him? What does that even mean?”

“Just… let me know if he does anything out of the ordinary,” she said, already regretting making this call. Derek was the more sensitive of her two boys, and she realized now that this was only going to worry him. Maybe it should have been Dante she enlisted. All she would have had to do was promise him a meatloaf dinner next weekend and he’d be in.

Gray heard a few beeps on Derek’s end and knew he was turning off the treadmill. She could hear the whir of the belts now as it slowed down.

“Is everything okay?” he asked.

“Yes, honey. He just hasn’t been sleeping very well since James died,” she told him, which was a lie. She was the one with insomnia. Darnell had been sleeping the sleep of the dead. “It would just make me feel better if you had his back this week. Even more so than usual,” she added.

“Sure. Cool. I’m on it.”

“Great. Thanks, baby,” she said.

There. She’d done something. She’d taken action. Her pulse stopped thrumming and her shoulders relaxed a bit. There was nothing more she could do short of holding her husband’s hand all day like a preschool teacher. Darnell was a grown-ass man, and she had to get to work. Maybe if she acted as if everything was normal, that would make it so. But as Gray turned her car onto the parkway, she thought of Emma and wondered… what must it feel like to know she’d never see her husband again?





EMMA


Emma was brushing her teeth—and trying to recall when the last time was that she’d brushed her teeth—when her cell lit up with Zoe’s 113th call.

She spit into the sink and hit the green button. Progress. But progress she instantly regretted.

“Emma! Oh my God! You picked up?! Oh my God!”

Emma closed her eyes. Was that the voice? The one she’d heard when she called James’s cell? It was always the assistant, wasn’t it? But no. Zoe’s voice was sweeter, more upspeaking, more nasal. Thank God. She wasn’t sure she could handle it if she found out James had been screwing sweet little Zoe.

She had told her husband not to hire the girl straight out of college because kids today needed a couple of years to learn how to be professional before they started representing one of the partners. She’d known Zoe would undoubtedly show her age—probably at a vital moment like when the president of Major League Baseball called, or some reporter with a scandalous scoop on one of James’s clients decided to try the grill-the-assistant approach—and here Zoe was, showing her age. Not that James had ever listened to Emma. At least not recently.