Free Die Before I Wake by Laurie Breton Page B

you, baby doll?”
    “I’m wonderful! When are you coming to visit?”
    “I don’t know, hon. I’m pretty busy. But I’ll call your Gram one of these days soon and we’ll make plans.”
    I maneuvered my cart to a stop. “Hi,” I said. “I’m Julie Larkin.”
    The look she gave me was glacial. Crouching down, she hugged both girls and said, “Why don’t you girls run over to the bakery and see what Yvette has for you? I’m pretty sure she just baked a new batch of chocolate-chip cookies. Tell her I sent you.” The girls hugged her and disappeared, their hom-ing instinct infallible when it came to cookies. I propped a foot on the undercarriage of my shopping cart and said, “Tom doesn’t allow the girls to eat sugar.”
    Almost-Julia stood up to her full five-foot-zero.
    “Yes,” she said, her expression challenging me to do something about it. “I know.”
    Ah. A fellow subversive. We had something in common. “And who are you?” I asked, since she’d failed to provide me with a name, rank, or serial number.
    “Melanie Ambrose. My sister used to be married to your husband. Before he killed her.”
    “Come again?”
    “You heard me. Tom Larkin murdered my sister.” She was obviously deranged. While I gaped at her, an elderly man who smelled of sweat and pipe tobacco took an inordinate amount of time picking out a box of breakfast cereal. When he’d finally moved on, I said, “I don’t understand what you mean.
    Beth died in an accident.”
    Melanie cocked her head to one side and looked at me with a sad, knowing smile. “Really? So that’s what he told you?”
    “Well, I, uh—” I struggled to remember whether he’d used those exact words or whether I’d simply inferred them. For the first time, I wasn’t sure. “I think.”
    “That lying sack of shit. Beth didn’t die in any accident. That’s just his guilt talking. He doesn’t have the cojones to speak the truth.” My fingers tightened on the handle of the shopping cart. “Oh? And just what is the truth?”
    “You want to know the truth? I’ll tell you.” Her pretty face twisted into a skeletal grimace of a smile.
    “Congratulations on your marriage. I hope you survive it.”
     

Four
I slid the meat loaf into the oven and set the timer.
    The girls, still on a sugar high, were in the living room watching SpongeBob SquarePants. I turned on the burner under the potatoes, opened the bakery box, and took out a jelly doughnut. If I kept this up, pretty soon the box would be empty. Nibbling, I mentally wandered back to what Melanie Ambrose had told me. Two years ago, on a lovely moonlit summer night, Beth Larkin had driven her Land Rover—the same Land Rover I was now driving—
    up onto the Swift River Bridge, where she’d proceeded to remove her shoes and her glasses, leaving them on the front seat to weigh down the suicide note she’d written before she left the house. Then she’d climbed barefoot and half-blind onto the bridge railing, leaned forward, and taken a header off the side.
    Jesus Christ. How was I supposed to respond to that?
    Like a mother grizzly with her cub, I’d stead-fastly defended my husband. In part because he’s the love of my life, and in part because I firmly believe that each of us is responsible for our own happiness, or lack thereof, and have no right to blame our failings on other people. Anybody who chooses to deal with their problems by jumping off a bridge surely has mental health issues that are not the result of anything another person may have done—or not done—to them. After mounting a defense of Tom so brilliant it would have made F. Lee Bailey proud, I grilled Melanie for more details. Of course, she couldn’t pinpoint a single concrete reason that would have led Beth’s unhappiness back to Tom. No, she admitted, he wasn’t an alcoholic or a drug addict.
    No, he didn’t beat his wife. Nor, as far as Mel knew, did he run around behind her sister’s back. All she really had to go