Chapter 1 - What They Left in the Rain
The first thing Beatrice Sullivan did after burying her only son was order two men to pull his wedding ring off my finger.
The second was tell me I should be grateful they were letting me leave alive.
Now I stood beneath the portico of the Sullivan estate, staring at a black garbage bag.
“My things?”
Arthur Sullivan adjusted his cuff.
“Everything that belongs to you.”
Rain battered the stone steps. Behind him, the chandelier illuminated a hallway crowded with sympathy flowers. Somewhere inside, a pianist was rehearsing for the memorial reception his wife intended to host that weekend.
They had arranged the flowers before they had finished taking my home.
“My phone is upstairs.”
Arthur reached into his pocket and dropped it onto the bag.
The screen shattered against the buckle of a shoe inside.
“Now it’s downstairs.”
I looked at his closed hand. My wedding band was still inside it.
“Leo bought that himself.”
“My son bought many things he regretted.”
I stepped toward him, and the security contractor tightened his grip on my elbow.
Arthur watched me understand.
He wasn’t going to argue. He wasn’t going to pretend this was temporary. His son had been dead six days, and he had already decided how little of our life I was allowed to keep.
The front door closed.
I stood there until the contractor said, almost apologetically, “You need to move.”
Then he pushed me into the rain.
The bag split halfway down the driveway.
My nursing scrubs spilled across wet gravel. A framed photograph landed facedown in a puddle. When I bent to pick it up, pain shot through my left hand.
There was blood around the bare place on my finger.
In the photograph, Leo was wearing a ridiculous paper crown at my twenty-ninth birthday dinner. He had cooked spaghetti, burned the garlic bread, and insisted the smoke alarm was singing to me.
I pressed the picture against my chest.
For six days, everyone had told me I was strong.
They meant I had answered questions without screaming. I had selected a casket. I had found the clean blue shirt Leo liked because hospital gowns made him feel less like himself.
Now I couldn’t remember how to take another step.
Headlights appeared beyond the gate.
A dented red hatchback stopped beside me. The driver’s door flew open, and my friend Tessa Brooks ran into the rain without a coat.
“Oh, Lana.”
I had managed one message before Arthur took my phone that afternoon.
Please come if I don’t call by seven.
Tessa looked at my hand, then at the house.
“What did they do?”
“Can we leave?”
She helped me gather the clothes. She picked up the broken frame. She didn’t tell me to calm down when I started shaking so hard I couldn’t buckle my seat belt.
We drove straight to an urgent care clinic.
The nurse photographed my injuries with my permission. Tessa sat beside me while I described the men, the folder, and the will Arthur claimed Leo had signed eleven days before he died.
When the nurse left, Tessa said, “You should report this.”
“I know.”
“Tonight?”
I looked at my bandaged hand.
“Yes.”
At the police station, saying it aloud made it real in a different way.
They held me down.
They took my rings.
They threatened me.
An officer gave me a case number. He couldn’t promise what would happen next, but he listened without asking what I had done to upset them.
That alone almost made me cry.
It was after midnight when we reached Tessa’s apartment.
She made tea. I sat at her kitchen table in borrowed sweatpants while she emptied my belongings onto towels.
“They put a cookbook in here,” she said quietly.
“Leo’s.”
Something slipped from its cracked spine.
A dry-cleaning receipt.
Across the back, in handwriting I knew better than my own, were seven words.
If she’s wearing my ring, trust her.
Below them was an address.
Before I could speak, someone knocked.
Tessa froze.
The man outside was elderly, rainwater darkening the shoulders of his coat. He held a flat brown envelope and a small photograph.
“I’m looking for Mrs. Sullivan.”
“Who are you?” Tessa asked through the security chain.
“Walter Finch. I looked after Leo’s first apartment building.”
He raised the photograph to the peephole.
It showed Leo and me outside the courthouse on our wedding day.
Walter’s voice softened.
“He told me you might not have the ring when I found you.”
My chair scraped backward.
“How did you find me?”
“Your husband gave me three addresses. This was the second.”
Tessa opened the door but stayed between us.
Walter held out the envelope.
“He asked me to deliver this if anything happened to him.”
Inside was a brass key, a business card, and a letter.
May you like
I unfolded the letter with my uninjured hand.
Lana, if my father has told you I changed my mind about you, he is lying.
