PART I: THE LETTER

CHAPTER ONE

Brielle stood beside the coffin, which hovered over the open grave. The burial service had been quick, the chubby priest going through the motions and thankfully not inviting Bri to offer any words, and now everyone headed back to the line of parked cars that snaked through the cemetery.

Fingers tugged at Bri’s elbow. “Time to go,” her sister said.

Bri pulled her arm free and stared at her big sister—Over forty now, sis, how’s that feel?—and Shelly stared back a moment, maybe thinking that if they were teenagers again they’d be cursing and yanking each other’s hair, perhaps even rolling around in the grave dirt.

“I’m fine,” Bri said.

Shelly’s expression said they would, no doubt, discuss this later. Shelly walked away.

Big sis could be as perplexed and annoyed as she wanted: it wasn’t Shelly’s husband in that cherry casket.

Sarcophagus, Bri thought.

Down the hill, a man stood beside a barren tree. The naked branches swayed in the November breeze. The tall man’s long coat gleamed like an oily shadow. He was watching her. That wasn’t surprising, of course, her being the widow, but something about him bothered her. Not only was he a stranger, at least to her (her husband had many associates), but his skin was pale, almost ghostly, sickly even, and stretched across wedging cheekbones like tissue paper about to tear. He might be a few months shy of his own burial.

Bri stepped around the coffin—the red roses on top startlingly bright—to get a better view, thinking she’d seen this guy before, he had definitely been at the funeral, but Harold Gurlop snagged her arm.

“Brielle,” he said. “I’m so very sorry.”

To her husband, Harold was The Money Man.

Nearing sixty, Gurlop had a long and haggard face like aged leather and with the way his mouth arched in sympathy and his eyes burned just slightly red, he had the perfect demeanor for funerals. Those eyes were extra rheumy today and more gray hairs seemed to have sprouted along his temples.

“Thank you, Harold,” Bri said even though she never called him anything other than Mr. Gurlop.

He took her hand in both of his, a puffy glove of warmth. Gurlop was a CPA at some firm in New York. He was in charge of all the finances (stock investments, retirement accounts, whatever) for both Ward’s business and her and Ward’s money. But that really amounted to the same thing, didn’t it? She had no specific grasp on how much money there was, only a vague idea. She didn’t want for cash or credit, especially credit, which could get her thousands of dollars of stuff spread out among her collection of cards.

“Ward was such a wonderful man,” Gurlop said. He gently squeezed her hand. “More than a client, he was a dear friend. We’re all going to miss him so very dearly.”

“Thank you.”

A woman stood behind him in a long black dress, her hair done up like she was in a wedding. She was younger than Gurlop, younger than Bri (not too tough to pull that off these days when she was creeping toward forty), and she most definitely was not Gurlop’s wife. Bri had met Bernice a handful of times; she was in her fifties, a sweet woman, a bit inclined toward downing one too many martinis, but she baked a decent apple pie and at Thanksgiving drove around giving them out from the trunk of her Benz.

Bri’s eyes met the blonde’s and the woman quickly looked away.

Gurlop released Bri’s hand and reached inside his dress coat. “I have something for you.”

Now that Ward was dead, and not just dead but killed in a car accident, let’s not forget, he was killed, Bri was in charge of all those finances, all the damn money. She didn’t want anything Gurlop had to give her. She trusted him. Ward always said Gurlop had done right by him, though he never explained how Gurlop had done that or what it exactly meant, but it was good enough for Bri. For now anyway. God knew Shelly would be asking about Bri’s financial situation in a day or two—Big Sister out to protect, or bitch, depending on her mood.

He removed an envelope and held it close to his chest.

“Really, Mr. Gurlop, I can’t look at anything right now.”

“It’s Harold,” he said. “You just said it, so I know you know it.”

She smiled weakly. The blonde was looking at Bri again and held the gaze a second longer before turning away, a little child curious what the adults were up to.

“This has nothing to do with money, at least I don’t think so. After things calm down, a few weeks from now, whenever, I’ll come by and we’ll go through everything. There’s nothing for you to worry about.”

He paused, glanced at the envelope, and held it out to her.

“Ward gave this to me a few months ago. It was sealed. I have not opened it. I have no idea what’s in it. He instructed me that if anything should happen to him, I was to deliver it to you. I waited until today because I didn’t want whatever is in here to upset you in the days after the accident. But he made me swear to give it to you. Actually, he made me sign a declaration of promise and intent. Even had his lawyer there, Jacob Moore. If I failed to give this to you, I could go to jail.” He chuckled in a sad way. “Ward believed in covering his bases.”

“Yes, he did,” Bri said and accepted the envelope. “Thank you.”

He waited, watching her with those red-tinted eyes. “If you need anything . . .”

She nodded, invited them back to the house. “It’s a little messy. Ward always wanted to get a maid but I could never do it. Seemed so silly with me not working.”

Gurlop nodded, said something about being sorry he couldn’t attend, and took Bri’s hand again. His eyes flitted to the envelope and then he turned and walked away, skinny blonde linked to his hip.

The sickly man beside the tree was gone, and now she was certain he’d been at the funeral as well. When she’d taken the podium and stumbled through her eulogy, something about how she and Ward had met and how he’d played Billie Holiday and slow danced her around his dorm room and she’d fallen in love, that pale-faced man in the slick coat had been watching from the back of the church. She’d paused at one point—laughing to herself about the snowy night Ward changed the tire on her car while butchering some lame country song about riding in a flatbed with his cowgirl—and when Bri came back to the church and all the sour-faced mourners, the stranger had slipped out.

Who was he?

The branches of the tree scratched the sky with knotted claws. Like the gnarled hands of a witch. Or a crone, perhaps, as Ward called her when she bemoaned how sad it was to get old, to get grey hair and wrinkles. You sound like an old crone, he’d said. Then she’d hooked her hands as if suffering severe arthritis, contorted her face and croaked, What a world, what a world.

The envelope was a white business number ten, which was what Ward called it specifically when he needed one. Her name had been written across it in Ward’s fine block print. Always so meticulous. Staring at her name in his handwriting smacked her as so terribly cruel that she almost hugged the envelope against her and flung back her head to cry out his name. That would give people something to talk about.

The envelope had been folded once directly in the middle, splitting the r and i in her name. She traced the creased bump with her thumb and thought maybe she should wait until later to open this. Wait for a quiet moment. Just her and a bottle of wine. The very existence of this envelope, and whatever message it held, meant Ward knew he was going to die. Knew he was in trouble. Normal people didn’t write Final Comments to spouses when life was beautiful and death several decades hence.

If anything should happen to him . . .

Days after they married, Ward purchased a couple life-insurance policies. Gotta cover those bases. What if he had cancer? What if he wanted to die? What if he’d purposely crashed into that tractor-trailer on the highway? If this was a suicide note, Bri would need at least a bottle of wine, if not two or three.

That was ridiculous. Ward had not been suicidal. Besides, it had been a car accident. The big rig driver was drunk. Goddamn fluke. Early-morning alkie. Ward in the wrong place at the wrong time. This envelope was just a morbid coincidence. Another example of Ward’s meticulousness.

Gotta cover those bases.

Ward’s signature across the seal proved the letter had not been disturbed. Bri opened the envelope before she could think about it any longer. There was a single piece of paper inside, tri-folded. She opened it and stared at Ward’s perfectly aligned and crisp handwritten note.

She read it over and over in a matter of seconds without really processing. It was not a suicide note. Not a tear-inducing letter of gratitude and love. Not a pleasant whisper from an angel in the night.

              Dear Bri,

              It wasn’t an accident. Be careful.

             Ovule Yo,

             Ward

The breeze kicked up and her coat flapped around her legs.

Next Chapter: Chapter Two: Grief Ritual, Part I