Fullepub 
Chapter 10
10
Catherine watches them go, then closes the door of the examining room and collapses back into the chair. She can hardly catch her breath. She feels light-headed, queasy, unable to think. She has patients waiting, and Cindy at the front desk will wonder what’s happened to her. She must pull herself together.
This is so difficult. She wonders what the detectives thought of her. She’d lied to them. Could they tell?
She must talk to Dan and Jenna. She’ll have Cindy reschedule her patients. They’ll understand once they find out why. No one would expect her to carry on with work after what’s happened. She hears a light tap at the door. “Yes?” she says.
Cindy opens the door tentatively. “Are you okay?” she asks, clearly worried. “What’s happened?”
Her voice leaden, Catherine says, “My parents have been murdered.” Cindy’s eyes widen in horror and disbelief. She’s speechless. Catherine says brusquely, “Can you please reschedule all my appointments? I’m going to need a few days off. I have to leave.”
Catherine walks hurriedly past Cindy to her own office to hang up her white coat, put on her trench coat, and grab her handbag. She strides right past the patients in the waiting room without acknowledging them and out of her practice, into the elevator, and straight out to her car in the parking lot. Once she’s seated inside the car, she grabs her cell phone out of her purse. Her hands are shaking. She takes a deep breath and calls Ted.
Fortunately, he’s not with a patient and he answers. “Yes?”
She tries to stifle a sob, but it escapes.
“Catherine—what’s wrong?” he asks quickly.
“The police were just here, at my office.” She’s beginning to panic now. Her breathing is fast and ragged. “My parents are dead. They’ve been murdered. In their house.”
There’s complete silence on the other end of the phone for a moment; Ted is obviously stunned. “That’s—that’s—oh, Catherine, how awful. What happened?”
“They think it was a robbery,” she says. Her voice sounds strained to her own ears.
“Stay there,” he says. “I’ll come get you.”
“No, don’t do that. I have to—I’ll go to Dan and Lisa’s. They’ll know by now. Maybe you could meet me there? And I’ll call Jenna, tell her to join us.”
“Okay,” he says, his voice tight. “This is—it’s unbelievable. I mean—you just saw them on Sunday night.”
She hesitates and says, “About that.”
“What?”
“We need to talk.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just—don’t tell anyone that I went over there later that night, okay? I-I didn’t tell the police. I’ll explain.”
• • •jenna wakes blearily to the sound of her phone buzzing. She opens one eye, sees the empty space where Jake should be—it’s his bed, his apartment, his sexy scent on the sheets—and then reaches for her phone on the floor. Jesus, it’s late. Jake must have gone to work and let her sleep. It’s her sister, Catherine. She accepts the call. “What?” she says.
“Jenna—have the police spoken to you yet?”
“What? No. Why?”
“Where are you?”
She can hear the distress in her sister’s voice. “I’m at Jake’s, in the city. Why?”
“Oh. I have some bad news.”
Jenna sits up in the bed, brushing her hair back from her forehead. “What?”
“Mom and Dad are dead. They’ve been murdered.”
“Fuck,” Jenna says. “For real?” Her heart is suddenly racing.
They talk briefly—Catherine telling her to meet them at Dan’s—then Jenna gets out of bed, throws on some clothes, and goes into the kitchen to leave a note for Jake. But he’s already left one for her.
Hi Gorgeous,
Stay as long as you want. Or come down to the studio when you wake up. XO
She decides against a note. Better to tell him over the phone.
• • •through the kitchen window, Lisa sees Catherine’s car pull into their driveway. Dan has been hovering anxiously, waiting for her. Lisa turns around and glances at her husband. He’s been so agitated since they got the news, and now that Catherine has arrived he looks like he’s about to jump out of his own skin.
She walks toward the front door, but Dan brushes past her, opens it, and meets Catherine outside on the driveway.
Lisa hears Catherine say, “Let’s get inside.”
Catherine looks pale and distressed. She’s obviously been crying, Lisa thinks. She hears the sound of another car and they all look to the street—Lisa recognizes Ted in his sports car, the top down on this pleasant April day. Catherine doesn’t wait for her husband, just walks straight into the house, and Dan follows. Lisa waits for Ted and wordlessly they go inside. Ted, too, seems shaken.
The distress coming off Catherine is upsetting to Lisa, who absorbs other people’s stress like a sponge. She goes to Catherine—whom she thinks of as a sister—and gives her a warm hug, feeling her own eyes filling up in sympathy. They all make their way into the living room.
“Jenna is on her way,” Catherine says. “I called her to join us, but she’s in the city. I had to tell her.” Catherine slumps into an armchair and drops her purse at her feet.
Lisa glances at Dan as she sits down on the sofa—he’s pacing around the living room, his movements jumpy. Ted goes to stand beside Catherine and rests his hand protectively on her shoulder.
Catherine says, bluntly, “They were probably murdered on Sunday night.” Catherine looks at Dan as she says it. There’s something in the way she’s looking at him that Lisa doesn’t like.
“I can’t believe it!” Dan exclaims.
Lisa watches him, disturbed at how high strung he is.
“I know,” Catherine says. “I can’t believe it either. But two detectives just came to my office.” Her voice is a bit shrill. “They’re opening a murder investigation.”
“Jesus—this is—surreal,” Dan says, stopping suddenly.
Lisa gestures to him to come sit beside her and he does, dropping heavily onto the sofa.
Catherine stares at them. “Did they tell you that Irena is the one who found them?”
Dan nods nervously from the sofa. He grabs Lisa’s hand and clutches it.
It’s finally hitting her. They’re both dead, Lisa thinks. She can’t believe it either. She can’t believe their good luck. This changes everything. She glances at her husband. Maybe things aren’t so bad after all. Maybe they’re rich.
Dan asks, “What did the detectives say?”
“They seem to think that it was a robbery that turned violent.” There’s a tinge of hysteria in Catherine’s voice. “Mom was strangled. Dad—Dad’s throat was slit, and he was stabbed.”
“My God,” Dan says, standing up again suddenly and running a hand through his dark hair. “That’s horrible. They didn’t tell us that.”
Lisa looks back at Catherine in horror. They hadn’t heard those details from the officers at the door, only that Fred and Sheila had been murdered, not how. Now she feels like she’s going to be sick.
Dan hesitates, then turns to Catherine. “But—you know what this means,” he says.
Lisa watches her husband, trying to keep down the bile with a hand pressed against her mouth.
“What?” Catherine says, as if she isn’t following him.
“We’re free. All of us, we’re free of him.”
Catherine’s face falls; she looks appalled. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that,” she says repressively. “And I would keep thoughts like that to yourself.”
Lisa watches uneasily, the sick feeling growing in the pit of her stomach. She wishes Dan had more of Catherine’s self-control. Lisa is pretty sure the same thought was one of the first things to cross Catherine’s mind when she heard the news, but she has more sense than to admit it.
