Read Online Cheated By Death by L.L. Bartlett - Free Book Online

wanted and left. And she warned
me not to go looking for her. I paid two hundred and fifty bucks to
get the locks changed that night. I didn’t know the check would
bounce.”
    “What did you do?” Richard asked.
    “I couldn’t afford to hire someone, so I took
a few days of vacation and found her myself. But I didn’t trust
myself to see her. I was afraid I’d beat the shit out of her. She
was staying with one of her friends from work—the job she’d gotten
fired from. I called. At first she hung up on me, but after a few
days she told me we were through—that she had a new life. It turned
out her new life was selling drugs.”
    “What did you do?” Brenda asked.
    My anger drained. “Nothing. You can’t make
someone love you. So, I worked. Sometimes eighteen-hour days. I put
my heart and soul into that job. That’s why I was lost when I got
laid off. It kept me from thinking about her and what she’d done.
It kept me sane.”
    “Jeff, I had no idea,” Richard said.
    “I almost believed I was over her when the
cops called me to identify her body.” I took a breath to steady
myself. The memories were still like acid eating at my soul—like it
had happened yesterday. The lump in my throat grew. “The place
smelled. Not of formaldehyde or anything, but like . . . death. You
could almost taste it.”
    Brenda inched closer, frowning.
    “The cop stood there, watching me as they
flashed her picture on the video screen. It was unreal, like
something out of a bad movie. There was my beautiful Shelley lying
on a gurney.” I took a breath, forced myself to continue. “Because
the top of her head was gone, they’d positioned her at an odd
angle. They’d cleaned her up, but I was familiar with crime-scene
pictures. I could tell it was bone and brains matted in her hair .
. . .”
    I stared unseeing at the beer bottle’s label
in front of me, remembering that dreadful scene. “Cops always
suspect the husband first. I mean, I did own a gun. But she was
shot with a nine millimeter and I owned a thirty-eight. It didn’t
take them long to figure out what really happened. Technically, I
was still her husband—I’d never done anything about a legal
separation. I guess part of me hoped she’d come back.” I swallowed,
trying to quell the anguish mounting inside. “Guess who got to pay
for the funeral?” My voice cracked as I thought back to that awful
day. The empty chapel—my empty life.
    “She had no family that I knew of. I was too
ashamed to tell my friends at work. Just me and a priest, and that
damned casket—”
    I lost it then—hunched over, fighting the
tears that prickled my eyes. I couldn’t bear to look at them.
    Suddenly Brenda was hugging me, bathing me in
the warmth of her concern. Richard stood behind me, his hand on my
shoulder.
    “Why didn’t you call us?” he asked. “You
didn’t have to go through it all alone.”
    Hindsight. I should’ve done a lot of things
different.
    The ticking quartz clock on the wall was the
only sound in that silent kitchen. I straightened, cleared my
throat, and wiped my face with my sleeve. Brenda squeezed my hand.
I still couldn’t look at either of them.
    “That’s why Patty got to me this afternoon.
She’s just about Shelley’s age. She does her hair the way Shelley
did. And when she asked me if my medication got me high—” I took a
breath, forced myself to continue. “I can’t deal with her.”
    Richard sat down again, looked me straight in
the eye. “First of all, she’s not Shelley. Maybe she was
nervous. People say and do dumb things when they’re nervous. She’s
reaching out to you. Isn’t there the slightest possibility she
could feel something genuine for you? Look at the years we wasted.”
    What he said was true.
    Okay, Patty had made a bad first impression.
Suppose it was just a case of nerves.
    “She invited me to some family thing on
Saturday.”
    “Would it hurt to go for an hour or so?”
Richard said.
    “I’ll bet