Chapter 2

Astillness filled the air, almost the quiet before the storm.

For the first time in her life, Doreen knew exactly what that meant. She had a sense of holding on to something so fragile, so breakable, that even the slightest breath would shatter it. Soon the news would get out, and everybody would know, and her phone would ring, and everybody would wonder if she had done this—if she had murdered Mathew.

Doreen sat here at home, staring at her phone for at least the fifteenth time, reassuring herself that she'd turned off the ringer. Mack had sent her home as soon as he could, but she still got sideways looks from all the cops, even though they should have known better. Mack told her to wait, just wait by the phone, and he would call her.

He hadn't called, and she had surely spent hours in the dark abyss of her mind. Yet, no matter how she felt about it, it had only been an hour. An hour in which time stood still. An hour in which her heart didn't know what to do. She had alternately mourned, cried, rejoiced, and then felt horribly guilty, only to have the vicious cycle start all over again.

With her phone's ringer off, she wouldn't hear a call coming through. However, she kept hoping she would see the missed call. Then she would return Mack's call, but she didn't want to deal with the rest of the world. She couldn't deal with the rest of the world.

That sense of being breakable, that sense of fragility, that sense of her world coming apart at the seams was so strong and right in her face. She saw no way out of the upcoming blowback, the media frenzy, her phone ringing off the wall, and people knocking on her door. Everything was blowing up, and she had no way to stop it. She didn't even know if she should. Would some people say this was the next step of her life?

It was the next step, just not the step she had expected. Obviously not the step she had wanted.

She had no ill will toward Mathew, but she also knew the world around her wouldn't hear that or believe her. They wouldn't listen to that. They would think what they wanted to think. When she first had been confronted with Mathew's death in the back of Mr. Woo's restaurant, she was certain that no one would believe she could do such a thing.

However, the longer she sat here in the aftermath, the more she wondered if a lot of the world would think the worst and wouldn't bother to get the answers or seek the truth. They would just judge her and laugh because it had nothing to do with them. That she could understand—but the rest? Not so much.

Back in the never-ending silence, contemplating her marriage, its breakdown, the pending divorce, Robin, and everything that led up to this day, Doreen wondered if this could have been avoided.

She didn't want anything from Mathew. She didn't want so much money that it would cause him any hardship. She went over all her conversations with Nick, again and again in her mind, wondering if she had somehow wrongly given him the impression that he should push, when she didn't want that.

As far as she was concerned, that forceful division of the marital assets was not needed at all. Nick would probably say that she was due part of Mathew's money after her fourteen years of marriage, that this was not her fault, and that it had nothing to do with her. However, in her heart of hearts, she knew it had everything to do with her.

"How could it not?" The thought was killing her.

She and Mathew were in the middle of a divorce that the media would say was an ugly one, even though she didn't know what that meant. It's the only divorce she'd ever had. It had been a bad marriage, but there was no reason for anyone to get hurt, or worse, to get killed over it.

"Was there such a thing as a nice divorce?" Doreen asked aloud. "Was there such a thing as an amicable divorce? Truly?… Did people get along and sit down and sign paperwork together, after congenially working out a settlement considered equitable for both parties? Is it possible to go separate ways and still be good to each other? If so, how?"

Her questions were all over the place, and there was no coherency in her thoughts. Mathew had come up to Kelowna—to apparently sign the divorce papers—so she didn't understand what had happened between his arrival here and her finding his body.

Had she been afraid of him?

She wanted to say no, not anymore, but a small part of her had to answer truthfully, and that answer was yes. That part of her was relieved to know any wife-beating scenario would never happen again. She was guilty of feeling relieved about that, yet that wasn't the same thing as actively killing someone or even arranging somebody's death.

She'd heard too many stories, had seen too much, over these last seven months of investigating cold cases to not know how the world would react. When the news finally broke, and the media got a hold of it, she would be crucified. She was the most logical suspect. And the news would harp on this "fact" until proven otherwise. Maybe not even then. People would most likely remember this period of thinking Doreen was capable of murder. They would say that she'd learned so much in solving cold cases that she figured out how to kill her husband and how to get away with it.

She gave a bitter laugh because, if that were the case, she surely wouldn't have put him in a garden beside the Chinese restaurant, only to be the one who found his body. That would have been a little too obvious, even for her.

As the time passed, with still no word from Mack—or anybody else for that matter—Doreen got more and more worried that something else was going on that she didn't know about. She half expected the police to arrive at her front door and arrest her at any moment. She didn't even know how they could possibly come to that conclusion, yet everything in her world was coalescing to that point.

When her phone lit up, she reached for it, then checked who was calling. Nick. She sighed but answered it. "Hello," she replied, the single word coming slowly and quietly.

"Doreen," Nick greeted her. Then his tone sharpened. "Are you all right?"

"Am I all right, after finding the body of my soon-to-be ex-husband, where I was picking up Chinese food to provide a meal for your brother?" she asked, her words spoken in almost a monotone. Then came a slightly hysterical laugh, which she couldn't contain. "I'm fine, just fine."

"I want you to buck up now. I'm trying to get up to Kelowna, but I'm at the airport. No matter how hard I try, I'll still be an hour or two."

"It's fine," she muttered. "No rush." Then came an odd silence.

"You don't sound okay."

"No, I'm probably not okay," she admitted in between short hysterical chuckles. "I don't even know what to think anymore. I've been sitting here in the dark, just waiting for time to go by, waiting for Mack to call and let me know what's going on. But, to be honest, I know he won't tell me anything. He can't. It's his case. It's a pending case," she said, her voice almost a whisper.

"No, not in this case especially, he won't talk to you at all."

She nodded, but, of course, Nick couldn't see it.

"Look. Stay where you are, don't go out, don't do anything. You have a habit of answering calls without checking who it is, but now would be the time to listen to me. Don't answer the phone unless it's Mack. I'll be there as soon as I can. Got it?"

"Yes," she whispered. Then, with her voice rising hysterically, she continued. "Nick, you're a divorce lawyer. Are you also a criminal lawyer as well?"

"No, I'm not," he stated, then hesitated. "Do you need one?"

She stared at the phone. "Are you asking me if I killed him?" she cried out. "Because that's a whole different story than needing a lawyer."

"You're right," he told her calmly, "and that's why I didn't ask that because you didn't." His tone was strong with conviction.

She closed her eyes, feeling the hot tears behind them. "No, I didn't kill him. Yet, for a lot of the world, that is a truth nobody will care about." And then she started to cry.

"Hold on, Doreen. Just hold on," he repeated, his tone rising in worry. "What about getting your grandmother to come up? Can she come over and visit you? Can she stay with you until Mack can come or at least until I get there?"

"No," she mumbled, "I haven't even told her yet."

"No way she doesn't already know. You understand that, right?"

"I'm hoping that maybe the news will be delayed ever-so-slightly. At least until I have better control of myself."

"That's a good point." There was an announcement in the background, and he relayed, "They're calling for my plane, so I should be in Kelowna in an hour. I hope to be at your place twenty minutes after that. Got it?"

"Yes," she whispered, "I've got it."

"Hold tight. I'll be there soon."

"The cavalry to the rescue?"

At the odd note of sarcasm in her tone, he laughed. "Only this time, you need rescuing."

With that, he disconnected.