Things We Do in the Dark

by Jennifer Hillier

She can kill with a smile, she can wound with her eyes —BILLY JOEL

Paris should have known it would end like this, because there’s no such thing as happily ever after when you run away from one life to start a whole new one.

While the age difference was never a problem for Jimmy—why would it be?—it makes Paris look like a gold-digging bitch who was just waiting for her husband to die. And now he’s dead.

And yet, all anyone could see—the press, Jimmy’s friends, and especially Elsie—was the twenty-nine-year age difference.

Except, of course, to sign that airtight, nonnegotiable prenup. Whatever the police are thinking she did, at least they can’t say she did it for the money.

Some people wear their hearts on their sleeve. Joey wore her trauma around her neck.

It was also the day she realized that her bad mother also had a bad mother.