"What?" Her voice had changed. The fear had curdled into something sharp and defensive. "I’m just?—"
"He's dead," I said flatly. "A week ago. Car accident on Route 9."
I heard a small, wet sound, like air being punched out of a lung.
"You're lying," she whispered.
"I'm not."
"No. He would have... someone would have told me. He wouldn't just—" Her voice fractured, climbing an octave. "You're lying to me."
"I buried him." My hand was shaking, but my voice was iron. "Ridgewood Cemetery. Plot 247, Section C. You can go check the dirt if you want. It’s still fresh."
Another silence, but it was longer this time. I heard movement on her end—a chair scraping, a rustle of fabric—like she had sat down hard.
"How?" The word was barely a breath.
"Black ice. Just past the reservoir. Friday night, around seven." I gripped the phone tighter. "Where was he going, Lucia?"
I heard her breath hitch at the sound of her name.
"You know who I am," she said.
"I know your name, and that you're a real estate developer. I know my husband was sleeping with you." My voice hardened, vibrating in the quiet kitchen. "What I don't know is why he was driving toward the middle of nowhere on the night he died."
"I don't..." She hesitated. "We were supposed to meet. He said we needed to talk."
"About what?"
"I don't know," she cried. "He wouldn't tell me. He just said it was important. That he couldn't do it over the phone."
"What did you think he wanted to talk about?"
Silence. Then: "I don't know."
"You have to have thought of something."
"I thought..." Her voice wavered. "I thought maybe he was finally going to—" She stopped again.
"Finally going to what? Leave me?"
"I didn't—I don't know what I thought, okay?" The defensiveness was sharp now.
"He was married," I said, the words like acid. "He had a wife at home who didn't know you existed."
She let out a sound—half laugh, half sob. "You think I didn't know that? You think I didn't feel that every single day?"
I waited, my heart drumming hard.
"How long?" I asked.
"Does it matter?"
"Yes."
She was quiet for a long moment. "A year. Maybe longer. Things got... blurry."
A year.
