Read Online Next Time You See Me by Katia Lief - Free Book Online Page A

him that Mac and I didn’t get together until well after he and Val had separated. He sounded like he didn’t believe me.”
    “I’ll talk to him,” Billy said.
    “It’s like Pawtusky thinks if he can prove Mac was unfaithful, he can prove I didn’t know him as well as I thought, and he can prove they’re a family of liars and cheaters and killers— and Danny is guilty as charged . It’s character assassination.”
    “The detective does seem to be awfully insensitive,” Mom agreed.
    “Like I said, I’ll talk to him.”
    I could have gone on all day like that, railing against everyone, the injustice of all the false accusations against Mac—infidelity, abandonment, suicide—but Ben woke up from his nap. Mom went downstairs and returned with my groggy little boy who had his father’s eyes and smiled just like him, too. I took him on my lap, in my arms, breathed in his sweetness.
    “ Mac isn’t . . . ” I said to Mom and Billy, shaking my head in place of saying the final word, dead , to spare Ben’s innocent ears.
    Mom and Billy traded another one of their awful, knowing glances. And then Billy stood up.
    “I have to get going.”
    “Will you keep looking for him?” I said. “Please?”
    “Sure, Karin. I’ll keep looking for him.”
    He patted my shoulder and then walked away. Mom showed him out. I heard them talking in low voices at the front door and though I couldn’t hear what they were saying, I could imagine it. It’s just a temporary insanity. She’ll come around. Give it time.
    T he next morning the doorbell rang with a delivery from a messenger: a large cardboard box from Mac’s office. Even they had decided he was never coming back and had cleaned out his desk for its next occupant. He had only been senior vice president of Forensic Security at Quest for a week before his parents died, two weeks before he died. Every time I thought that, a lump caught in my throat; no matter how hard I tried to swallow the un-fact of his suicide it wouldn’t quite go down.
    But I was trying. Going through the paces of my second widowhood. This time around was different from when I’d lost Jackson and Cece because I still had Ben. I would devote myself to him, we would live our lives day to day and just take it from there. Meanwhile I would finish school and start my new career; no more Mr. and Mrs. Forensic, as Mac had joked (a thought that made my eyes water) but Ms. Forensic, single mother. It wasn’t exactly what I’d expected but if you think life is going to turn out the way you plan it, you’re a fool. At the ripe age of thirty-seven, I knew that lesson by heart.
    I carried the box to the living room, put it on the floor, sat down near Ben—who was coloring madly with washable markers on newspapers I had spread out for him—and proceeded to unpack Mac’s workaday personal belongings. There weren’t many things.
    An extra charger for his personal cell phone; he had left his employer-supplied BlackBerry on his desk and presumably they had reassigned it.
    A brand-new white shirt still in its packaging, a pair of clean black socks, and a small toiletry kit; he was prepared for the occasional unanticipated business trip.
    A gym bag with sweatpants, an old T-shirt, white athletic socks, and battered once-white now-gray sneakers; he was ready for a lunchtime visit to the midtown branch of his gym. He had stuck by that pair of sneakers like an old school friend who no longer fit into his life, refusing to replace them. I had planned to surprise him with a new state-of-the-art pair for Christmas this year.
    A worn paperback of Emile Zola’s Germinal ; someone must have loaned it to him, knowing how much he liked to read classic novels. I hadn’t learned this about him until after we became lovers and I got to know him well: Mostly he used the library, which was why his bookshelf at home wasn’t crammed with the detritus of his reading life. Mac had not worn his true self on his sleeve; he was