Read Online A Perfect Husband by Aphrodite Jones - Free Book Online

a suspicious death. They’re blowing this into a big thing.”
    â€œI don’t understand any of this,” Caitlin told him. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
    â€œWell, you know, it’s because I was the last person to see her. Because I was the only one there. So, of course, they’re looking at me.”
    â€œBut why?”
    â€œWho knows? I can’t really tell you. The police have never liked me around here.”
    â€œBut I don’t understand why they would want to do this.”
    â€œYou know, Caitlin, how much I loved your mother.”
    â€œOf course I know that.”
    â€œI would never do anything to hurt her.”
    â€œI know,” Caitlin said, “you and Mom loved each other.”
    â€œIt’s the police,” he said. “They’re trying to make problems.”
    â€œWell, I think it’s just crazy.”
    â€œIt is,” Michael assured her, “but we’ll get through it.”
    Michael and Caitlin had no more time to waste on the subject. They had to think about the others. Everyone was downstairs waiting for them. There was a small cake someone had brought, just to acknowledge Margaret’s birthday, and they felt they should at least go down and talk to her, and just be with the rest of the family.

Eight
    The Petersons were never really a touchy-feely family. As they sat huddled together, some of them crying, it was an awkward time for them. No one was really saying much. There was nothing being discussed about the funeral. The family was just receiving callers, people from the neighborhood, mostly, who were stopping in with goodies, who had come to offer some support.
    The family was overcome with grief, and with the added trouble the police were causing, turning their most solemn time into a public circus, they had nothing to say to anyone. At about 10:00 P.M. , when the police phoned Michael Peterson to say that he could return to his home, everyone felt a sigh of relief. The officials had informed him that the search warrant was completed, that the yellow tape had been removed. The Petersons would be able to grieve in a place of comfort.
    Michael and his sons were anxious to get back over there, but the girls had no desire to enter the house. There was still blood in the stairway. It was too sad, really, for the girls to face. The girls had a lovely hotel room on the Duke campus waiting for them, and they were happy to go straight there, to be in the midst of their aunts and uncles, their cousins, and their lovely grandmother, Veronica.
    As for the adults, they were not allowing the children to see the full extent of their grief. It was already too hard on the girls, who were so fragile, each in their own way. For Caitlin, Kathleen’s baby, there was a sense of complete and utter devastation. For Margaret and Martha, two girls who had long-before suffered the loss of their biological mother, losing their stepmother was all the more dramatic.
    Things were different for Todd and Clayton Peterson. They were older, already finished with college. They still had their biological mother, Patricia Peterson, who was a constant presense in their lives. Patricia lived in Europe, where she had raised her sons until they graduated from high school, and the boys visited with her often, each taking trips back and forth to Germany. Nonetheless, even Patricia’s phone calls could offer little comfort regarding the loss of Kathleen. Sure, Patricia had played a significant role in raising her sons, and she had played a role in raising the Ratliff girls. In her many years of marriage to Michael, Patricia had an impact on the four children. Her boys were close to her, but they still could not be consoled. As for Margaret and Martha, who had left Germany as children, they had formed a bond to Kathleen that Patricia could never replace.
    The Ratliff girls had a special type of relationship with Kathleen. No doubt Margaret and Martha