Dealing With Tomorrow

By Lynn McMahon Anstead

Finding the body of her ex-husband in the trunk of her car is a little shocking. Finding out that she is the number one suspect for his murder is disturbing.
It's almost more than a middle-aged, mother of two can cope with. Carly soon decides that she owes it to her kids to figure out who deprived them of a father. Finding love along the way, well that's just an added bonus.

Enjoy the first book in the Carly Kitchings mysteries.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lynn McMahon Anstead
• Release date: Feb 21, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311225207

Book preview

DEALING WITH TOMORROW

Lynn McMahon Anstead

Copyright 2012 Lynn McMahon Anstead

Smashwords Edition

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

for Leslie McMahon Edwards

We miss you.

A Nod of Appreciation

No book is ever written in isolation. This one could not have been written without the support, advice, encouragement and organizational skills of my husband, Chris Anstead.

Thanks also need be extended to my friend Lisa Porch. A large part of my inspiration came from the desire to write a book that she would enjoy reading!

CHAPTER ONE

Do you ever get the feeling that some cosmic force is tap dancing on your head…that somewhere out there, some malevolent being is deliberately throwing catastrophes at you in an attempt to see just how much you can take before snapping? At times like that I often wonder what would happen if I agreed to break down, complete with screams, gut-wrenching sobs and self-flagellation. Would whoever (or whatever) was testing my mettle back off and finally leave me alone? I’ve never figured that one out, but I came awfully close to testing out that theory today.

When I finally closed my eyes and sank my head down into the unfamiliar pillow, I knew that sleep, if it were coming at all, would still be hours away. Despite the lateness of the hour, and the exhaustion that stopped my brain from accomplishing anything but the simplest of connections, my mind was obviously not going to cut me any slack. As pointless as it seemed, it looked like I was going to spend the next few hours trying to figure out just when everything got so badly screwed up.

As I tossed about for a more comfortable spot on the hard, plastic-sheathed pillow, I racked my brain for some earlier premonition, some uneasy feeling that might have warned of impending disaster. But there was nothing. Nothing that could possibly have prepared me for opening the trunk of my car and therein finding the body of my ex-husband, with stiffened fingers clutched around the knife that was protruding from his belly.

I felt myself start to tremble, and fought to push the visual away. As long as I didn’t think about how he looked I could hold it together, but the minute I let any images in, I started losing it all over again. Okay, so I obviously wasn’t ready to deal with finding Kevin’s body yet. Maybe if I started earlier and worked my way up to it I might be able to handle it better. And maybe if I replayed the day I could find some clue as to who might have done this to him…to us.

Seeing as it was summer holidays, I had no reason to set my alarm clock. But as habit dictated, I woke at 6:59 a.m. on the dot; just as I’d done every weekday for the last…God knew how many years. It was amazing really, how the slumbering psyche could differentiate between weekends and weekdays. Habit had dragged me out of bed at that ungodly hour, unfailingly, every Monday to Friday for as long as I wanted to think about…but weekends, well that was indeed another story. I haven’t hauled my butt out of bed before noon on a weekend since I had to get up for skating lessons, back when my childhood dreams of becoming an Olympic medallist deprived my mother of her chance to sleep in.

Even when my own children had been young I’d managed to keep my weekly appointment with my pillow. My husband and I had easily arrived at an arrangement that suited both of our sleeping needs; I dealt with any middle of the night emergencies and he got up in the morning with the kids. This suited both of us nicely, as he slept the sleep of the dead, waking for nothing short of nuclear explosion, but rose in the morning, fully rested and yes, even cheery. Thus he was quite happy to repay my nightly vigilance by being the one who got up with the children every weekend, right from when they were tiny little babies. Which was just as well since I have never done a good job of mornings.

It seemed natural then, for him to continue this routine throughout their young lives, which of course meant that it was he who helped them pursue their own dreams of greatness, by taking our daughter to her skating lessons and our son to his hockey practices. This arrangement never failed to draw a snide remark from my mother, who resented the fact that I’d never had to repay the hours that she’d spent nursing bad coffee and numbing her toes in the arena, when she would have preferred to be in bed.

I have to admit that I wasn’t above a bit of bragging, whenever she groused about life’s injustices. I did enjoy gloating about the fact that I’d managed to choose a better mate than she had;one who was happy to spend weekend mornings at the arena with his kids, unlike her husband, my father, had been. The only time that he’d been interested in hauling ass out of bed at the crack of dawn was in the summer, when it got too hot to play golf any later in the day.

My father’s devotion to the links was legendary. The siren call of the elusive hole-in-one was more important to him than anything else in the world…including his family. So much so that when he died on his beloved golf course, when I was still a teenager, not too many people mourned his passing, except maybe the guys who had to look around to fill the hole in their regular foursome. We, his alleged family, didn’t really notice his absence in our lives. Sadly enough, even his life insurance money did a better job of providing for the family than he’d ever done. So it didn’t seem at all unreasonable for me to feel that I’d done much better in the ‘Mate for Life’ lottery than my mother had and, as I believe I’ve already mentioned, I wasn’t above crowing about the fact.

But pride always comes before a fall, as my mother was all too fond of pointing out, and those sweet, coveted hours of dreams exacted their own form of repayment, one which even my mother found to be a bit on the steep side. While I spent hours dreaming of Harrison Ford, Kevin spent his time chatting up someone a little more attainable. To say that I was shocked when he ran off with Tabitha (doesn’t the name just say it all?), our daughter’s teenaged skating coach, would have been the understatement of the year…stunned wouldn’t even begin to describe my reaction… I was absolutely flabbergasted.

I had no idea that we’d been unhappy for years, as he was quick to tell anyone who would listen, or that we’d spent hours fighting about everything from how he didn’t clean his ears, to the way he made love. I didn’t remember abandoning my maternal responsibilities the moment I finished pushing out my kids on the delivery table (that must have been some pretty powerful Tylenol they gave me). Nor do I remember spending every Saturday morning in the arms of a Latin lover while he dutifully shouted encouragement to our fledgling NHL star, selflessly trying to compensate our children for the lack of their mother’s involvement. I don’t even know when all these alleged fights and misdemeanors occurred; it must have been while I was sleeping. The first I learned about my many transgressions was when people started whispering about me behind their copies of ‘The National Enquirer’, while I stood in line at the grocery store, which is definitely not the best thing in the world to have happen when you’re a kindergarten teacher.

No, that’s certainly not the way I would have described our 15 years of marriage. In fact, if asked to pick one single word to describe the state of our union, the word would probably have been easy…not turbulent as he claimed, not even exciting, just…easy. We’d settled into a routine that seemed to work comfortably for everybody concerned, maybe too comfortably. There obviously hadn’t been enough stimulation in our relationship to keep him still interested when the mid-life crisis bug bit, so off he went looking for someone else to offer what he so desperately seemed to crave.

But being maligned in the supermarket wasn’t really even the most shocking part of the whole sordid affair (although I have to admit that it seriously pissed me off). What I couldn’t understand, no matter how hard I tried, was what on earth that pretty, perky nineteen-year-old saw in my thirty-nine-year-old, balding, middle-aged-crazy husband. I’m sure Freud could have come up with a half a dozen reasons for this sweet, young thing’s decision to bed my husband, each of them more twisted than the one before, but I can’t bring myself to believe that it was that perverted.

Whatever the attraction, it soon wore thin of course (as thin as the hair on the top of his head), and their interlude lasted a whole three months, until some football jock invited her to the spring prom. Now this might have been her cue to make a quick comparison of abdominals, or maybe she realized how ridiculous she would look being escorted into the ball by a man not too much younger than her own absent father. Whatever her rational, poor old Kevin soon found himself tossed by the wayside, in much the same manner that he had abandoned me.

Of course the new, pathetic, repentant Kevin came crawling back to me with his tail between his legs, protesting that he’d gotten that horrible mid-life itch out of his system and promising me eternal devotion. I considered trying to make things work again, for the children’s sake, as he so selflessly suggested, for about 15 seconds. Then I laughed in his face and made my best counter offer; if he would make busy and repair the damage to my reputation that his lies had done, then I would not try to destitute him in the divorce proceedings. And more importantly, I’d even try to refrain from gloating over his plight. I’ve often wondered if things might have been different if he’d managed to have his fling a little more quietly. I mean it was bad enough having the whole town know that he’d dumped me for someone nearly 20 years my junior, but to know that almost everyone believed I actually had it coming to me was just pushing things a little too far. Talk about rubbing salt into the wound!

The collective morality of this little town was one that has always amazed me. It was, and probably still is, fairly common practice to find the ‘favourite sons’ playing ball three nights a week and ending up at the hotel afterwards. There they would park themselves until closing, drinking away the weekly grocery money and hitting on anything that looked remotely female. This kind of behaviour was sanctioned, if not actually encouraged by the dowagers who took it upon themselves to define the moral tone of the community. But God help the feckless mother who found herself out drinking while poor hubby was home with the kids. And this infraction, although serious enough to earn you a cold shoulder for a few weeks, was nothing compared to the ultimate sin of actually cheating on your husband, no matter how many times he may have cheated on you. Yes siree, be stupid enough to have committed that kind of sin, and an Amish shunning might seem friendly by comparison. I’m not exaggerating, I know what it feels like and I’d rather go through root canal, without freezing, before facing it again.

Even having Kevin admit that he’d lied about my alleged transgressions wasn’t enough to totally remove the stain from my good name. Although publicly exonerated, I continued to suffer from the old smoke and fire adage, with many people wondering just which one of Kevin’s public positions was the actual lie. It still pushes my buttons that he was never sanctioned as extremely as I was, either for having the affair, or for lying about me so that he looked less of a scoundrel, when I had done nothing wrong. I suppose it was because he was a local son, while I, despite having lived here for 10 years at the time of the scandal, was still an outsider. That, coupled with the equipment that he stuffed into his Levis, made all the difference in the world to those old battleaxes.

Somehow we managed to work our way through it all and ended up as friends, even good friends. It’s strange how much easier it’s been to talk to him since we split up. I even rediscovered what it was about him that I found so attractive in the first place. In fact, if I was totally honest with myself, there’s been more than one Friday night, when we’ve passed the evening companionably by sharing a jigsaw puzzle and a bottle of wine, that I’ve wondered whether or not we might indeed make another try at things. I mean it’s not as if either of us had any other, more attractive offers. And there’s a lot to be said for companionship as middle age approaches (oh all right, it’s already here).

So you can probably imagine my shock when I opened the trunk of my car this morning to load the weekly groceries, and found poor Kevin unceremoniously shoved in there. I have to admit, to my discredit, that the realization that I would finally have to take my turn in those cold, damp arenas was the last thought to cross my mind before my head connected with the bumper of the car on my way down. Which just goes to show you how confused I really was, since it’s been a few years since our kids had hung up their skates.

I’m embarrassed to admit that my next thought wasn’t all that charitable either. Apparently some Good Samaritan (I still haven’t found out who), seeing me fall, came running to offer assistance. Unfortunately she too caught sight of the body in my trunk, and her very loud and continuing scream was what roused me out of my faint. So I found myself groggily surfacing, momentarily forgetting what had happened and mumbling the words, ‘Would somebody please shut that bitch up?’…which is probably not the smartest thing to be caught saying when you earn your living by being a role model to five and six-year-olds. Fortunately she was making so much noise that I’m fairly certain she never even heard me.

Which is probably the only good thing that happened today, since now I don’t have to track her down and apologize, and I won’t have added yet another black mark beside my name. You know you can only erase so many of those black marks before they leave a permanent dark smudge on your ledger. And in a small town like this, a blotted ledger usually means that you might as well pack up and move on…especially when you expect people to entrust their children to you.

I know, I know, that’s another uncharitable thought…a whole bouquet of them actually. I’m really not all that nasty a person…honest. It’s just that all of my life I have hated screaming, really, really, really, really hated it. Even when I was a teenage girl, a group notoriously fond of screaming and shrieking at the slightest provocation, I had little tolerance for the activity. I remember looking at my shrieking friends with disdain written clearly on my face. I never could figure out the point.

Age and supposed wisdom has not given me any further clarity on the issue either, although Lord knows I’ve been exposed to enough of it over the years, especially in the schoolyard at recess. But I still cannot understand what kids find so attractive about the noise. Do they think it proves that they’re better than their friends, just because they can scream louder? Or maybe they think that it appeals to some macho need to protect in the standard, immature teenaged boy? Do they really believe that that group has anywhere near enough maturity to even begin to understand what protectiveness feels like?

I have to watch myself here, and not unfairly malign my own gender. Yes, in my experience teenaged girls are the demographic from which the largest percentage of screamers is drawn. But that doesn’t mean that other groups are excluded from the ranks. I’ve raised one boy and one girl, and each of them has had numerous sleepover parties in my basement. Sadly, I cannot remember one single party, at any age, where I’ve not had to march downstairs and, using my very best teacher’s voice, read them the riot act about screaming. A warning that has had to be repeated numerous times before the party was over, I’m afraid. Although I am proud to say that neither of my kids became screamers…although it’s not like they were given much of a chance.

Good grief my mind is wandering. After everything else that’s happened today I don’t need to be babbling on about teenaged screaming habits. Suffice it to say that I have no patience for the sound and all the baggage it brings with it. I mean why was she screaming anyway? It wasn’t her car or her ex-husband lying there dead, so if I didn’t feel the need to scream, why on Earth should she? Let me tell you, being roused from a dead faint by that obnoxious noise did little to help me clarify my thinking. And little did I know how soon my thoughts would need to be clear.

Someone, I don’t know who and neither do I care, called the police from their cell phone. Now calling the police when you find a dead body is the logical thing to do…I’d probably even have done it myself if I’d been in any condition to, but I can’t help wondering exactly what was said. Whatever it was was sufficient to light a small fire, because the arrival of the first patrol car was quickly followed by the arrival of the Chief of Police himself. I suppose I should be flattered that he found the situation serious enough to merit his personal inspection, goodness knows, he didn’t stir his lazy butt out of his office very often at all. But I have to admit that I’ve never cared much for the man…I’ve never cared for him at all actually. I could easily elaborate on the depth of my dislike, using all kinds of big and colourful words, but I can’t be bothered. Let’s just say there are obvious reasons that his ambitions have never managed to get him out of our little burg, and he sure didn’t do anything today to make me think any better of him.

But arrive he did, with siren wailing, another one of my least favourite noises, and lights flashing, striving for that look of professional importance that his meanness of spirit would never let him obtain. Don’t ask me why I despise the man so much, because I don’t think I could come up with an answer. He’d never done anything to me or mine before this. In fact I can’t say as I’d ever had much interaction with him, thankfully, although like everyone else I’ve certainly heard enough stories. It might be his ineptitude that sets my teeth on edge, or his pompous attitude, or maybe it’s the fact that he’s more like a caricature of a cartoon cop than a real one.

Or maybe I’d inherited some of my old granny’s psychic prowess and had been building up my hostility in anticipation of the way he handled me today. Whichever the case, his behaviour this afternoon earned him every single one of the unkind thoughts I’d thrown his way in the fifteen years that I’ve lived in this bizarre little town.

By the time he arrived in the Sobey's parking lot, some kind soul had seen to my distress and had laid me down in the bench seat of their van. It might indeed be summertime, with one of the warmest Julys we’ve seen in years, but I was still shaking, despite the blanket that someone found to cover me. So there I lay, trembling, listening to the ever growing crowd discuss whether I had been injured myself, or was just in shock. The crowd had just reached the decision to call an ambulance, when dear old Sheriff Buford Pusser arrived. Alright, so that’s not really his name or his title, but that certainly fits with his distorted self- image.

Not wanting to appear weak or informed, our beloved Chief of Police took one quick look at the body in the trunk of my car and immediately solved the case. He whipped out his handcuffs and snapped them on my wrists. Then he hauled me roughly out of the van, causing my already throbbing head to connect with the edge of the doorframe. For the second time that day, and only the third time in my life I might add, my knees collapsed beneath me and I went down for the count. Unfortunately the Chief was unprepared for my collapse and fell on top of me, face first.

I was later told that he looked a lot like a teeter-totter, pivoting on the fulcrum of his large beer gut, an image that drew more than a few snickers from the surrounding crowd. Thus enraged, our fearless leader assumed that not only was I guilty of murder, but I was also part of a conspiracy to embarrass him and heaved me to my feet once more, yelling all the while for me to stand up properly. It took a second tumble, which he was able to side step this time, with yet another bang on my head, for him to realize that I was indeed not faking anything. Fortunately for all of us, I’m told, it was at this point that the ambulance arrived and the Chief was talked into removing the handcuffs so that I could be strapped onto a body board and whisked away.

I’ve never been in an ambulance before, and I’m grateful to say that as far as conscious memory is concerned, I still haven’t been. Had I been awake, I might have seriously objected to being taken to the hospital. Not that I have any great phobias about hospitals in general, not at all. I’d had very positive experiences in them when my children were born, but that hadn’t been in this town. The hospital that we are blessed with has developed such a bad reputation over the years, I was afraid that I’d get better care at our vet’s office. I could regale you with stories about strychnine and its accidental administration, or about enemas being given to someone with abdominal pains that later turned out to be appendicitis (peritonitis is so much fun)…but that might scare me into never falling asleep.

It seemed that no serious mistakes had been made today, because hours later, after being poked and prodded and x-rayed, I found myself being wheeled into a private room where my very distraught daughter was waiting, with our friend Kareena. A few minutes later a vaguely familiar doctor arrived to inform me that although concussed and badly bruised, nothing seemed to be fractured. My head did bear multiple bandages from its numerous contacts with cars and pavement. My wrists were wrapped in gauze from the injuries they received where dear old Buford’s (I know I should really stop calling him that) handcuffs had cut me when he hauled me to my feet in his temper. There was also a tender bruise on my side where he’d landed on me when we fell.

We’d like to get you in for a CAT scan, the distinguished looking man announced. "Just to make sure that there’s no clotting or hemorrhaging that isn’t showing up on the x-ray. But we’ll have to send you into London for that, and that’s going to take a little while.

In the meantime, we’d like to keep you overnight, because of the concussion.

Thank-you doctor… I let my voice trail off to indicate that I lacked a name.

Oh, I’m sorry; I thought you might remember me. I’m Dr. Lawrence…Brian Lawrence. He smiled slightly.

Of course, I’m sorry, I do recognize you now. It must be the concussion. The smile was what I remembered. He’d been one of Kevin’s high school chums, one who’d done a whole lot better for himself than Kevin had managed. He used to come to our annual Christmas open houses a few years back, when we’d still been married.

I can’t tell you how sorry I am about your husband… his voice trailed off awkwardly.

Ex. I answered reflexively, before I saw the disapproval flicker across his face. I guess I was going to have to get used to hearing both the title and the tone of voice. Apparently death had a way of wiping clean the separation papers. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to speak ill of the dead. I cringed as I heard myself drag up that worn out old adage. It’s just a habit…calling him my ex I mean, not speaking ill of the dead. Actually I can’t really bring myself to believe that he’s dead.

Of course. Dr. Lawrence murmured soothingly while over in the corner my daughter started to weep.

What an insensitive cow I was, I’d completely forgotten that Shelby was still in the room. How callous of me, reminding her of her father’s death so casually like that. Well it was a safe bet that no one was going to be calling me up anytime soon and offering me the Mother of the Year Award. I felt like a shit. My guilt took on enormous proportions as I realized, from what was being said in the corner, that no one had bothered telling her about her father’s death yet. She’d been brought here from Camp Manakita, where she had a summer job as a counselor, because she’d been told that I’d had an accident. Nothing at all had been mentioned about her father. I listened to her crying intensify and knew that there was no way I could stay here and send her home all alone. So I said as much. She needed me and I needed to be there for her. This was clearly one of those middle of the night emergencies that fell into my area of responsibility.

I struggled to get up out of bed, intending to put my arms around my daughter and hold her, maybe even until she’d cried herself to sleep, but the room spun every time I moved. However my daughter needed me, more than she’d needed me in years, and I was not going to be deterred by a little bit of dizziness. I actually managed to sit up and swing my feet over the edge of the bed before collapsing this time, a sure sign that things were improving.

I think it was the I.V. that dripped glucose solution into my hand that actually prevented me from getting to my feet. It’s not that I got tangled up in the tubing or anything like that; it’s just that the unfamiliar tug on my hand startled me, making me aware, for the first time, that the I.V. was there. This awareness was enough to further confuse and distract me, which meant that I was still sitting in bed when the next bout of unconsciousness grabbed me. Now this is probably a good thing, since I didn’t have as far to fall as I would have done if I’d managed to make it to my feet. And my poor old head was probably better off without yet another collision with a hard object.

Poor Dr. Lawrence, I’m sure he had his hands full for the next few minutes, with me unconscious and my daughter building up to hysterics, but he seems to have managed just fine. Because the next time I regained consciousness, I found that someone had dragged another bed into my single room, where my daughter lay sleeping the sleep of the heavily sedated. I had some vague recollection of my friend Kareena, who also doubles as our family lawyer, being there, but vague was the defining word. If she had actually been there, and I hadn’t imagined it, then she obviously wasn’t there anymore. At some point I would have to try to figure out just how she had gotten there and where she had gone, but for the moment, all that really mattered was Shelby.

I lay there, holding my breath for a few moments, until I was quite certain that I could hear her breathe. Then I turned and burrowed my head into the hard, uncomfortable pillow, and tried to find that place of real sleep, a sleep not inspired by my concussion, but it didn’t want to be found. So I’d been tossing and turning for some time, and was awake when the nurse came in to check on me.

I asked her about the possibility of getting a sleeping pill, but she smiled and shook her head. Apparently the plan was to prevent me from slipping into a coma, not to assist me in the descent. Which was damned decent of them I suppose, although I wasn’t completely positive that I really wouldn’t have preferred that state of oblivion. Trust me, if I’d thought that I could go there and wake up when everything was resolved, I might have seriously considered it. But there was no one I trusted to look after my kids as they coped with their grief, so I guess that really wasn’t an option. Besides, with dear old Sheriff Pusser (okay so I don’t really know how to spell it, do you?) on the loose, I might end up waking up in some cell somewhere.

Which brings me right back to where I started; lying in an unfamiliar bed, with a very uncomfortable pillow, trying to figure out just exactly where everything got so screwed up. Just how the hell did Kevin end up in the trunk of my car? Who put him in there…and why? And when did he, or she, we must keep an open mind here, get him in there? Maybe that was the most important question of all. It was certainly the one that was troubling me the most at this precise point in time. Perhaps if I could figure out exactly when Kevin had been dumped in my trunk, then maybe it would become obvious to me who’d had the motive, means and opportunity? (See, all those hours reading murder mysteries haven’t been wasted after all.) Okay, okay, maybe it wouldn’t be that obvious gleaning motive and means from that, but at least I’d be able to narrow down opportunity...wouldn’t I?

When was the last time I’d opened that trunk, for any reason at all? There was last Monday, when I’d done last week’s groceries, but I think if the body had been in there that long I would have smelled it before today, especially in this heat. What about on the weekend…when I took Mark to the airport for his grand European excursion? Yes, I’d definitely had the trunk open then, and I’m pretty sure there hadn’t been any body in the trunk at that time. I closed my eyes and tried to picture opening the trunk and Mark tossing his backpack into it. Nope, the trunk had definitely been empty at the time, so whenever it had happened, it had been after Sunday morning.

Excellent, I felt I was really getting somewhere. I had narrowed it down to a twenty-four hour period, sometime between when I took my son to the airport yesterday morning, and when I opened up the trunk this afternoon in the Sobey's parking lot. Okay, so that’s a little bit longer than 24 hours…purist! Now all I had to do was remember exactly where and when the car had been in between those times. I was pretty certain that I could eliminate the daylight hours, because I was never parked anywhere remote enough to make a body transfer in broad daylight safe, so that pretty much left overnight, when the car was parked in our driveway the whole time.

Great, now there was a thought to make you feel safe. While we were tucked into bed sleeping, me in my enormous queen-sized bed for one, and Shelby in one of the ancient, matching twin beds that she’s outgrown but I haven’t been able to afford to replace, someone was slipping a corpse into the locked trunk of our car. That was definitely the stuff that nightmares were made of. And that was assuming that Kevin was dead…what if he was barely alive when he got tossed in, and died a slow and lonely death in there? Or even worse, what if the poor man had actually been killed in the trunk of my car, with our innocent daughter slumbering only a few feet away? And I wondered why I was finding sleep so elusive?

Okay, okay, time to calm down. What happened last night? Did Mark take the car and leave it parked on some unlit side road while he and his friends partied in the park? Is that maybe when the opportunity presented itself? And was that really any better? I mean I’ve never been one to believe in coincidence, so the fact that my ex was dumped in my car had to have been deliberate. Therefor, if Kevin was put in there when Mark had the car, then someone had to have been following Mark and waiting for an opportunity to present itself. Somehow the idea that my precious son might have been followed seemed even more frightening than the thought of my car being violated in my driveway.

Well, I certainly haven’t done a very good job of calming myself down, have I? The nurse has just been around for another peek at me and has gently admonished me for still being awake. I’d like to see her try to sleep with the knowledge that some psycho murderer has been following her baby around in the middle of the night. Okay, so maybe I exaggerate…but only a little!

So, time to stop getting hysterical, time to make a plan…a plan. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t remember if Mark took the car last night. I knew I would have to figure out a casual way of finding out if he’d had the car last night, and where he might have left it unguarded. It wouldn’t be easy, because he wouldn’t want to admit to drinking in the park with his buds. We had been through this before…many times. It was another one of those things that I just couldn’t understand. What, exactly, is the attraction of drinking in a public park like that? Do they actually enjoy dodging the police? Is the possibility of being arrested part of the excitement?

I know, I know, wandering again. God, I never thought I’d be the type to fall apart under pressure, but then I never expected to find myself in this situation. It’s just not something that I’d even remotely planned for.

Alright enough! Grab hold of one single train of thought and hold onto it. How to get the information I needed from Mark without offending him…Mark…oh my God how could I forget? I took Mark to the airport yesterday morning, where he and three of his friends got on a plane for France. This was supposed to be his European summer, the trip his paternal grandparents had given him as a graduation gift, before he started university.

Tears ran silently down my cheeks as I thought about telling my beautiful boy of the death of his father. I pictured him boarding the plane all by himself to come home for the funeral, missing out on the trip of a lifetime, a trip that would probably never be repeated because of the association it would always hold. For the first time that day I realized the full impact of what had been taken from us. I finally understood how our lives would be forever altered by that single act of brutality. And if it wasn’t bad enough that we would never again know the pleasure of Kevin’s company, whoever had done this had done so in a way that would thrust suspicion on me.

I knew then, in my heart, that I would be charged with Kevin’s murder, no matter how absurd the idea was. I knew that our charming Chief of Police would look no further for a suspect, and that if any kind of investigation were to be done, it would be up to me to do it. And strangely enough, the knowledge acted as a balm, calming me for the first time that day. It was probably because I had finally found a focus, and one that had so much riding on it. So, knowing that it was a safe bet that tomorrow was going to be one hell of a day; one where I would certainly need my wits about me, I finally found the path to sleep.

***

I never got a chance to wake myself at 6:59 on Tuesday morning; the hospital was up and bustling long before that. I wish I could say that I felt rested and refreshed; ready to convince the world of my innocence and relentlessly pursue the true guilty party, but have you ever tried to get by with sleep that is interrupted every hour on the hour? I thought I’d read somewhere that they don’t bother waking concussion victims any more, but I guess it was just wishful thinking, because wake me they did. And it wasn’t just a gentle nudge either, enough to make me grunt in protest before rolling over and going back to sleep. It was necessary, as it was patiently explained to me every time I tried to resist, to