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January 26, 2019 - December 18, 2021
I sat down, glanced at her collection of cat figurines displayed in a corner bookcase. Trips-without-sex gifts from the older men she’d dated.
Pam had dated more men in the last year than other thirty-three-year-old women had in a lifetime.
Use them, then lose them. And believe me, I’m enjoying every moment of it.”
The man I’d loved for the past five years, I now hated with an equal dose of intensity.
I’d been helping her by giving her a few hundred dollars every month. I didn’t tell Tom because I respected her desire to appear self-sufficient.
Lesson learned. I’d have my head examined before I’d ever trust another man again.
It wasn’t right to sleep in the same sheets I’d shared with a man who had married me for better or for worse and had chosen to give me worse.
I had enough problems without worrying about what kind of mischief Emily was getting herself into this time.
“If it is determined to be murder, everyone is a suspect.” He fixed his gaze on us.
What sick, demented person would use cyanide to kill someone?”
Ever since 1643 when its original wood version was mounted, locals have acknowledged it as a symbol of hope. Hope. How apropos.
We humans were so naive about the danger around us. How often had we brushed against its borders as we wandered through the rituals of our lives, not paying attention to strangers who crossed our paths?
How did that saying go again? Ah, yes. The wife is always the last to know.
Predictability of routine gave me a sense of control.
“It’s so quiet here. Apart from Lucie, is anyone else on vacation?”
He’d had sex with other women, then had the nerve to come home and sleep with me! He’d put my health, if not my life, at risk!
I blamed my strict Catholic upbringing for laying another guilt trip on me.
What betrayed her woodenness was the scent of her perfume. A blend of lavender and vanilla, it alluded to a lighter, more carefree side of her personality and was more in line with her age group.
“Nothing’s going to change the fact that someone wants me out of the way, and I don’t know who or why.” 14
Maybe the murderer had a motive to kill Tom and Pam but wanted to put the blame on Michael and me for some obscure reason. A double retribution, so to speak.
If there was anything pleasant about him, I couldn’t see it. Maybe because I chose not to.
I envisioned a jealous lover or a sensitive male that Pam had dumped in her “use them and lose them” fashion. Maybe she’d pushed one too many men over the edge.
Intellectual adultery, one would call it.
