Free Once Upon a Lie by Maggie Barbieri Page A

How was the wake? The funeral?” The questions kept flying, so fast that Maeve had a hard time keeping up.
    Maeve could dig a hole.
    “Is his wife set financially?”
    And push Julie in.
    “And the kids? Will they be able to go to college?”
    And then shoot her in the head.
    “Did anyone see who did it?”
    Nobody would be the wiser.
    She was enjoying the fantasy so much that she didn’t hear the soft voice of Tamara, the yoga instructor, bid everyone “namaste.” Namaste, my ass, Maeve thought. Get me the hell out of here. How did you translate that into Hindi?
    Maeve rolled up her mat and stood. Julie grabbed her in an embrace and pulled her close.
    “I don’t think there is anything worse than losing someone you love so violently,” she whispered into Maeve’s ear, Maeve’s diminutive frame looking as if it were being swallowed whole by the almost six-footer.
    Yes, there is, Maeve thought, but she remained silent. And she had never said she loved him.
    “Such a violent, violent death,” Julie cooed. If Maeve didn’t know better, she would think that Julie was actually getting turned on.
    As she got into her car, the unseasonable October heat enveloping her like a wet blanket, she thought about the new one she was going to rip Jo. It’s not that her relationship to Sean Donovan was a secret, but Julie Morelli? Not telling her was a given. She thought Jo understood that the fastest way to keep the gossip moving in town was to tell Julie. Maeve had certainly kept her mouth shut during Jo’s very public, and very painful, divorce from Eric, but everyone had found out the gory details regardless. How? Maeve had given Jo one guess when her friend had come to her in tears. Julie Morelli knew it all and had told everyone.
    Cal knew. So did Gabriela. Maeve was sure, though, that neither would say a word. Cal was discreet and Gabriela couldn’t give a damn about anybody but herself. She had probably already forgotten that Sean had been Maeve’s cousin; she was like that.
    She pulled in behind the store. Once inside, she peeked through the porthole in the kitchen door, seeing that Jo was perched on a stool, reading the local paper. Maeve knocked on the glass and beckoned Jo back into the kitchen area.
    The paper tucked under her arm, Jo greeted her warmly. “How was yoga?”
    “How was yoga?” Maeve asked, pulling a knife from the magnetic strip above the sink. “Julie Morelli couldn’t wait to ask me everything there was to know about Sean’s death.”
    Jo tried to hide the fact that she knew where Maeve was going with the conversation. “Really?” she asked, playing it cool.
    “Really,” she said, opening the refrigerator, taking out a carton of eggs, and slamming them down on the counter. When she opened the container, three were broken.
    Jo flinched. “I’m sorry.”
    “It may be hard for you to understand this, but I really don’t want to be associated with the man who was murdered, with his pants down, in Van Cortlandt Park. What don’t you understand about that?” she asked, feeling a momentary flicker of remorse when she saw tears well up in Jo’s eyes. If she had learned anything about herself over the years, it was that it took a while for her anger to dissipate, and until it did, she had to let it out, one way or another.
    “His pants were down?” Jo asked, her eyes wide.
    Maeve shot her a look that let her know they weren’t going down that path.
    “I made a mistake,” Jo said. “That’s all I can say.”
    Maeve put down the knife and gripped the sides of the counter. She breathed in the scent of the cupcakes that Jo had baking in the oven, a scent that brought her back to the first kitchen she had ever baked in in the semidetached house on Independence Avenue, right off the main drag and around the corner from the park. She thought about Jack tasting her first homemade cupcake and bragging about it and her to his brother in the living room. She remembered being in the kitchen