Jeff Abbott - No Rest for the Dead

Belle had recently read that the death rows in U.S. prisons were known as cemeteries for the living. It was true. Rosemary had been dead for all of those months with the lethal-injection sentence hanging over her, as each of her appeals fell over, in turn.

Tony Olsen started making his way back to where the rest of the guests were assembled; Belle closed the notebook and followed. She couldn’t stop the pictures in her mind. Seeing Rosemary strapped down, wrists and ankles and chest, and how they had opened the curtains so that the witnesses to the execution could watch the deadly injection being administered. All of it came back to Belle now in hideous detail, the botched first attempt, those curtains being opened and closed, opened and closed, and the look on Rosemary’s face.

She could remember every moment of the long night before: Rosemary’s last night.

Rosemary had always been composed, almost regal in her bearing, but the stress had lined her face and stooped her shoulders. She’d sat in her orange prison tunic and white sneakers in the small cell, with no window and the CCTV camera ever watching her, and despite it all maintained her dignity to the very end. Belle could see Rosemary now, working away in a frenzy on the diary, writing that last entry.

When she had finished, they spoke for a while and she had held Belle’s hand, and finally she said, “Belle, let’s not talk anymore. Just sit with me.” And then: “Just make me one last promise. I want you to keep the diary. Those I’ve written about will know what it means. But I don’t want any of it coming out until after Leila and Ben are old enough. Do you understand? In my will, I’ve asked for a memorial service on the tenth anniversary of my death. That’s when I want you to read it, at the service, not before. Will you promise me that?”

Belle had promised.

Now she glanced at the diary, rubbed a finger over the leather cover and the pages as if to make sure it was real. She looked down again at the pages of that last entry. She remembered Rosemary cursing when her ballpoint pen ran out of ink and how Belle had to rummage in her purse to find another for her. Belle could see that place where it had happened, that change in color in the ink, from blue to black, now.

When she reached the reception area, she saw Tony Olsen going around the room, whispering into the ears of some of the guests. Silence took hold of the room as the chatter slowly died away. Eventually it seemed as if someone had hit a freeze-frame button on the event. Every single person in the room had stopped talking and was looking at her. Or, more accurately, at the object she was holding in her hand.

Belle looked over at her husband, Don, who was suddenly chewing the inside of his mouth, something he did only when something bothered him that he needed to think about.

Then she looked at Peter Heusen, Rosemary’s brother. According to Rosemary, he’d been on the verge of bankruptcy before her death but would benefit handsomely from her estate. Why was he looking as if he’d just bitten into a lemon? Belle wondered.

Stan Ballard, Rosemary’s lawyer and estate manager, had the face of a man who might not make it to the bathroom in time. He kept switching his weight from one leg to another, tugging his ear, dragging a hand through his hair, adjusting his tie.

Haile Patchett and Justine Olegard had taken up positions on opposite sides of the room. Olegard had her arms folded across her chest, face stern, a mask hiding any and all emotion. But Patchett’s face seemed to have crumbled a bit, a weariness overtaking her features, mouth droopy, eyes sad, as if something inside her had let go and given up.

Belle looked from one person to another. It was like a painting, she thought, a group portrait.

Now she realized she was going to enjoy this. She felt a sudden surge of confidence. With a nod and a nervous smile she opened the diary to the pages Rosemary had written on the last night of her life.

Belle could feel her heart thumping hard. What secrets lay inside? What Pandora’s box was she about to open? “The last entry is from August twenty-second, 2000.” She paused, looked up. “The day before she was executed.”

“Read it,” Olsen said.

Belle swallowed hard. And began to read.

I have become the invisible woman .

I don’t know the precise moment when it happened, when I began to fade from view like the Cheshire cat, my face dimming until only the ghost of my smile remains. I think it must have started soon after Leila was born. That’s when I first noticed that Christopher no longer seemed to look at me, but instead looked through me, as if I had turned transparent. Once your husband stops looking at you, you begin to feel that the rest of the world has stopped looking as well .

There was a time when I could catch a man’s eye just by wearing a short skirt and high heels. I could walk into a gathering of staid historians and see the startled looks on their faces when they realized that the Arms and Armor curator was an attractive young woman. And I was attractive. The Rosemary who once was: confident and serene. Ready to love and be loved .

That woman is gone now. In her place is a woman whom no one seems to see, a woman who walks into rooms unnoticed and unacknowledged. In this, I am not alone. This is what the passage of time does to all women. It thickens our waists, streaks our hair with gray, crinkles the skin around our eyes .

But invisibility also has its uses .

I certainly found it useful that summer .

On this, my final evening on earth, I don’t know why I should be focused on that particular memory. Over the past weeks I have been reviewing my life, remembering all my bad choices, all the points in time when a wiser decision could have sent me on a path toward a different and happier fate. But this is the fate I am now locked into. And I can’t help thinking about one of those crucial points in time-that day in June when I walked into the lobby of the Coronado Hotel .

That was the day my future was sealed .

It was not my first visit to that grand old hotel. Years before, as a newlywed, I had strolled through the lobby in a sundress and had seen a bellman stare admiringly at my legs. But this time, when I walked in, no one looked at me. I was just a mousy, brown-haired matron in a shapeless shirt and slacks, scarcely worth a glance when there were other females to stare at, young females who still had the glow of youth. They hadn’t lost their figures to motherhood. Their shoulders weren’t bowed from the humiliations of marriage to Christopher Thomas .

It’s as if I am there now. I watch one of those magnificent specimens walk past me in the lobby. She has shiny hair and perfect skin and the stride of a woman who knows she is beautiful. Enjoy it while you can, honey, I think. Because someday you’ll be where I am. Exactly where I am. I hunch deep in a chair and the woman doesn’t see me as she walks past, into the cocktail lounge. But I can see her perfectly. I see her glide across to the bar counter. I see her tap the shoulder of a man seated there. He turns, smiles at her, and reaches an arm around her waist to pat her ass. It is a gesture of easy familiarity, the way a man might greet his wife .

The problem is that man’s wife is me .

I watch as the shiny-haired woman and Christopher leave the cocktail lounge and stroll hand in hand to the grand stairway. They are too wrapped up in their lust; they don’t notice me follow them up the two flights of stairs into the historic section of the hotel. They head down a charming but creaky hallway and disappear into a guest room. The door closes, and I hear the privacy lock click shut .