“You didn’t cry,” he says. “I watched you at the funeral and you never cried.”
Definitely a journalist.
She folds her lips tight. He will not get a single quote from her.
“I’m not a journalist,” he says. “It’s me. Honey, it’s me.”
“I don’tknowyou,” she says, but there is something so familiar about the cadence of his voice and the way he is looking at her, and she can feel her heart beating rapidly and she is overwhelmed by a desire to get out of there and home to her baby.
“Why didn’t you bring River?” He takes hold of her arm.
“Don’t touch me,” she says sharply.
“You did it, didn’t you?” It’s Rita. Barney’s first wife unpeels the man’s fingers from Honey’s arm and contemptuously tosses his hand away.
“Rita,” he says. He smiles broadly. “You look tired.”
“Oh, fuck off,” says Rita. Arms folded.
“How did you work it out?” asks the man.
“The smirk, the swagger, the way you eat with your little finger out because you think it’s sophisticated, the look on Mac’s face when I asked him who you were.”
“You know each other?” asks Honey.
“She’s my first wife,” says the man. “The OG.”
“Honey, it’shim,” says Rita at the same time.
Honey’s head spins. Champagne on an empty stomach. “It’s who?”
“It’s Barney! He did it. He hacked death. Behold Barney Beckett enjoying his own funeral.” Rita gestures impatiently. “Getting a kick out of seeing his children grieve.”
“I don’t understand what you’re saying,” says Honey, except part of her does. She just needs her brain to catch up.
“Mind uploading, electronic transcendence, whatever you want to call it,” says Rita. “Barney and Mac always believed they could do it. The next frontier. Congratulations, I guess.”
Honey looks at the man. Brown eyes instead of blue. No scatter of freckles beneath the eyes. But yes, there is something about the way he holds himself. The lift of his jaw.
“Barney?” Her hand moves toward him without her permission, and then she snatches it back. “It’s a joke. A trick. I don’t believe you.”
He speaks confidently, quickly. “Our first kiss was underwater. We think River was conceived that morning in Rome. You’re only ticklish behind your left knee. You hate the smell of lavender. Your cleavage is one of the natural wonders of the world. River preferred to feed from your left breast. I like them both.”
It’s not so much the things he has right but the things he has wrong. He’s made that first kiss mistake before.
“Our first kiss was on a mountaintop in Japan, you idiot. You first kissedMeredithunderwater when you were snorkeling in the Seychelles.”
He slaps his forehead. “I know that! You had snowflakes in your hair!”
Rita snorts.
“Barney’s body was in that casket?” says Honey slowly.
“My old body, baby,” says the man.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were doing this?” she asks.
“We can’t risk going public too early,” says the man. “Luisa Long and Mac didn’t even want me to come today.” Hiseyes scan the room. “They don’t want me talking to you, but I couldn’t resist.”
