Marcia Talley - In Death's Shadow

A huge tear rolled down Brian's cheek.

"Oh, damn! I didn't mean to upset you." I snatched three tissues out of a nearby box and handed them to Brian, who used all three to blow his nose.

"I wasn't there," he said, crumpling the tissues into a ball. He turned to his wife, lying motionless in her casket, and in a voice that was barely audible managed to choke out, "I wasn't there for you, darling. I wasn't there when you needed me."

Under the circumstances, there was no way I could avoid looking at Valerie, too.

Even in death Valerie was beautiful. She was dressed all in white: in satins, seed pearls, and lace. I cringed. It must have been her wedding gown. Her hands, as beautifully manicured as they had been in life, were folded at her waist, and between her fingers was twined a long golden chain with an engraved, heart-shaped locket on the end of it. I knew, without opening it, that the locket held pictures of Brian and Miranda, face-to-face, unaging, for all eternity.

I stared at Valerie's cheeks: plump, flushed, warm. Logically, I knew they weren't. Logically, I knew that if I worked up the nerve to touch her-as some of the other mourners had done-Valerie would feel cold as stone. Stone. I swallowed hard. This was hardly the time for puns.

Still, I couldn't persuade myself that Valerie was dead. She looked peacefully asleep, eyes closed, cheeks flushed, just as she had during our hospital stay.

Awake, Valerie had always been vibrant, bouncy… so, so… there was no other word for it, so alive . I found myself staring at Valerie's chest, willing it to rise and fall and feeling astonished when it didn't.

I was standing with Brian, praying silently, when I became aware of the music, wafting in from speakers carefully camouflaged within the decorative hexagonals of the wainscoting. Mozart, I thought, then a jarring segue into "You Light Up My Life." After a bit, electronic violins swooped and soared into "On Eagle's Wings." How Valerie and I would have laughed over that!

I reached out and took Brian's hand, squeezed it. "What killed her, Brian?"

"Her heart just stopped," he whispered.

"Her heart?" I couldn't believe it. "But Brian," I said, turning to look at him, "she trained. She could run a mile in nothing flat. How could a heart as healthy as that simply stop?"

"It was the chemo," he said, simply. "All those drugs, most of them experimental. They said it could weaken her heart. It was a known risk."

I remembered the consent form the hospital made me sign before starting my own chemotherapy, the catalog of warnings about side effects that ranged from aggravated hangnails to death. I nodded. "Oh. Yes. I see."

But I didn't see. How many people did I know of who were actually killed by their chemotherapy? Not very many.

And if chemo didn't kill her, who did?

Not Brian, surely. He was no longer the beneficiary of Valerie's life insurance policy, I reminded myself. Whoever bought it was.

Whoever bought it . A frisson spawned of pure, cold evil shuddered up my spine.

"Brian, can I ask you something?"

Next to me, I thought I felt Brian stiffen, but his answer was disarmingly casual. "Sure. Shoot."

"Losing Valerie so suddenly like that reminds me that time is precious. I want to make the most of every minute I've got." I paused, waiting for Brian to finish shaking hands with a tweedy couple in their mid-seventies. "I've been thinking," I said after the couple had moved on. "I've got a life insurance policy. Not as much as Valerie's, I suppose, but it's gotta be worth something. Maybe I should do what you and Valerie did? Cash it in? Take a cruise?"

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. With that… what did you call it, viatical thing?"

"Viatical. That's right."

"Who did you work with on that, Brian?"

Brian patted his breast pocket. "I've got his card… whoops, wrong suit." He flashed me a crooked grin. "The guy's Jablonsky. First name, Gilbert. Has an office up in Glen Burnie."

"Thanks," I said. "Maybe I'll look him up."

"You do that," said Brian. "The man's a prince."

I strongly doubted that any princes lived in Glen Burnie, Maryland, a five-mile-long corridor of chain stores, fast food restaurants, and car dealerships, punctuated by traffic lights at every single intersection.

"It was really worth it," Brian added thoughtfully.

"Cashing in her policy?"

"No, I mean the chemo. It was hard on Valerie, for sure, but it gave us another year together. Didn't it?"

"I'm sure Valerie never regretted it," I said, thinking of Miranda. I was one hundred percent sure about Miranda. Although the Stone marriage seemed strong, at least on the surface, Valerie had never discussed her relationship with Brian, so how she might have felt about her husband in the privacy of her own home was another thing altogether.

I squeezed his hand. "Where's Miranda now?"

"Kat is bringing her."

"Kat?"

"Katherine. Valerie's mom."

"From New Jersey? I read that in the paper."

Brian nodded. "Valerie's father is a judge up there." He dropped my hand and turned to face the others. "What am I going to say to all these people, Hannah? Tell me, what am I going to say?"

I touched his shoulder with the palm of my hand, letting it rest there for several seconds, feeling the soft, damp wool. "Let them do the talking. You just nod and say, 'Thank you.' Nobody expects any eloquent speeches from you, Brian."

Brian nodded. "Kat's been a godsend. She wants Miranda to stay with them for a few weeks. They've got ponies-" Brian paused, looking puzzled, as if trying to remember who he was and what he was doing there.

"I think that's a fine idea," I said. I'd never met Valerie's parents, of course, but unless they had just been let out on parole or were dabbling in satanic cults, Miranda might feel more secure with them than batting around a big empty house with a father who was, to put it mildly, distracted.

"There they are now," Brian said.

Valerie's parents-a handsome couple of the "I'm running for political office and you're not" persuasion-swept into the room and were immediately surrounded by a gaggle of sympathizers. The Honorable Judge was a handshaker. Mrs. Padgett nodded and smiled, nodded and smiled, like a bobble-head doll. A professional multi-tasker, she somehow managed to control a purse strap that wanted to slip off her shoulder, a wayward strand of auburn hair that, in spite of all the hair spray, tumbled over an eyebrow, as well as a squirming Miranda, whose right hand she kept firmly clamped in her own.

"But I have to go !" Miranda wailed.

Valerie's mother bent down and without disturbing her perma-grin, warned, in a hoarse whisper that somehow carried clear across the room, "Not now , Miranda."

Miranda's legs turned to cooked spaghetti. She hung, suspended, an uncooperative lump on the end of her grandmother's silk-clad arm.

I smiled, almost feeling sorry for the woman. "Looks like your mother-in-law has her hands full."

"Yeah," said Brian. "Guess I better go bail her out. Excuse me, will you?"

I laid a hand on his arm. "No. I'll go. You have other things to do."

Brian flashed a grateful smile and tipped an imaginary hat. "Thanks, Hannah. Later." He turned to trade a low-five with a middle-aged hunk who'd been hovering nervously at his elbow for a minute or two. The guy bulged uncomfortably in his churchgoing suit as if he couldn't wait to get home and trade it in for jeans and a T-shirt. I left Brian and the bodybuilder to trade fitness tips, and went to introduce myself to Valerie's mother.

Physically, Catherine Padgett was a hard-edged, more shop-worn version of her daughter, but there the resemblance ended. Mrs. Padgett, as it turned out, was more than willing to allow me, a perfect stranger, to take Miranda off her hands. With a vague, distracted smile she probably reserved for loyal retainers, she passed the little girl over to me, then immediately resumed the conversation I'd so rudely interrupted. I'd never met Ellen Moyer, the mayor of Annapolis, but I recognized her from pictures in the paper.