Page 21 of Over Her Dead Body

Something only a dead man could answer.

I put both elbows on the table.

“What was the last thing I said to my husband?”

Around us, the bar continues. Glasses meet wood. Someone laughs near the door. The bartender opens a bottle of wine with the bored efficiency of a man who has never had to prove his identity to his widow.

He carries it over, tops off my glass, and sets another whiskey beside Reid’s hand.

Neither of us asked.

I watch him walk away.

“Well?”

“You told him not to be late.”

I reach across the table, then stop short of his hand.

The last thing I said to Reid was I’m not waiting up.

Not Don’t be late.

Same argument. Opposite side of it.

“That isn’t what I said.”

“No?”

“You know it isn’t.”

He turns his glass once between his hands. “Then I suppose I’m not your husband.”

A stranger would ask what I did say.

He doesn’t.

Close enough to know the conversation. Wrong enough to deny knowing anything.

He drains his whiskey.

That is the problem with asking a question only one person can answer. A wrong answer should settle it. A nearly right one only gives you something else to argue with.

I take another drink.

By the time we leave the bar, I am tired of asking questions in public and getting answers that are not answers.

Outside, the street is cool and nearly empty.

Reid starts toward the building without checking whether I follow.

I do.

“You should have gone back to the airport,” he says.

I laugh. It comes out mean. “You should have stayed dead.”

He doesn’t answer.