Read Online Like Father Like Daughter by Christina Morgan - Free Book Online

sauce and the potato croquets. Mom ordered “Coach Cal’s” Chicken with lobster mac n’ cheese and we both split the very popular Lexingtonian salad with homemade ranch dressing. We ate in silence as we gorged ourselves on the delicious fare.
    “Are you nervous?” Mom asked when we both pushed our plates away.
    “A little, yeah,” I admitted.
    “Maybe you won’t be there for long. Maybe Dave will be able to get you an affordable bail. I’ll certainly pay whatever it takes to get you out of there. I’ll mortgage the house, if I have to.”
    “Mom, no,” I said. “I don’t want you to do that. Let’s just see what they say and go from there. I’ll be okay.”
    We split the World’s Best Dessert, which was a three-layered ice cream cake covered in whipped cream, chocolate, and caramel. By the time we were done, we could barely walk to the minivan.
    Later that night, I lay in my old daybed, staring at the ceiling, too nervous to sleep. Mom’s ceiling was white and textured with patterns that looked like little starbursts from wall to wall. Then I thought of my ceiling and how the peeling paint was the first thing I noticed when I woke up that dreadful morning. What had woken me? I had tried to recall this a million times, but never came up with anything, no matter how hard I strained my mind. Why couldn’t I remember anything at all? Why the headache? Why so dizzy? Was there something I was missing? Obviously I had somehow slept through the sound of a large-caliber gunshot. But how was that even possible? I took antidepressants at night, true. But none of them had a strong sedative effect. I’d been on them for years, and I’d never slept that soundly before.
    I recalled our argument. Recalled my last words to Ryan. It wasn’t true. He didn’t only love himself. I knew he loved me. I just said that hoping he’d take me in his arms and tell me he loved me more than anything, and then we’d make love like we had in the beginning of our relationship. In the beginning, we made love nearly every day. And that lasted for many years. But somehow, gradually, over the past year or so, we’d gotten to where we only had sex once every few weeks. And even then it was me who initiated it. I just couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me. Sure, I’d put on that extra twenty pounds or so, but that had happened over the course of about a year, thanks to that stupid medication. It wasn’t like it just happened all of a sudden. And maybe, if I’m being honest, I didn’t pay quite as much attention to my looks as I used to in the beginning. But that’s normal, right? You get comfortable.
    What made me sad was remembering what I had thought after I’d said those nasty words to him. As I lay there next to him, turned over so I was facing the wall with my back to him just to prove my point, I was actually thinking that, starting the next day, I was going to put an effort into our relationship. I was going to come up with fun things for us to do. Buy some lingerie. Make love in the park. Get the spark back in our humdrum relationship. But now I would never get that chance. Ryan was dead. Murdered right there next to me…or by me.
    I could see where the police would suspect me; I really did. Hell, even I was still unsure what had happened that morning. Number one, I was the wife—always the natural first suspect, no matter what. Number two, I had no memory of anything between the time we went to bed and when I woke up around six a.m. to find Ryan dead beside me. Very suspicious. Number three, Ryan had no other known enemies, so no one else had a motive to murder him. But then again, neither did I.
    So then if I killed him in some strange blackout rage, which I highly doubted, it still didn’t explain why I would do it. True, our relationship was in a rut, but that didn’t mean I would want him dead. Marriages go dull all the time and spouses don’t just randomly kill each other. There’s always a motive of some