Page 2 of My Wife

I clutch the single red rose I’m holding tightly, grateful that the funeral director sheared off the thorns. He’s a stern man in his early forties who met me at the grave before disappearing togive me privacy once the cemetery staff member started to lower the empty casket. I’m supposed to toss the rose on top of it once he’s done, a symbol of saying goodbye to my husband.

I’ll never say goodbye to Clay. If that means I’ll take this rose home and press it between two pages of a book, I will—but, first, I turn to see if someone really is watching me.

There never is. Whether it’s the alley between my neighbor’s lot and mine, or the shadows of our backyard, I never actually see someone there when my senses are tripped… but now?

Ido.

My heart skips a beat when I spy a very familiar man waving at me once I notice he’s there. He has on a sleek black leather jacket—probably the only piece of black clothing he owns—and a pair of dark denim jeans. Aviator sunglasses hide his deep blue eyes, and he steps lightly in his heavy boots, purposely moving around the recently covered grave plots as though he can’t bring himself to disrespect the dead.

Thomas Gillis.

What is he doing here?

His tousled black curls waft in the November breeze. He shoves his hands in the pockets of his jacket, his expression turning from friendly to sympathetic as he moves to join me by the graveside.

He gives me that old familiar crooked smile. “We’ve got to stop meeting at funerals.”

That’s right. The last time I saw him, it was during another tragedy. Another funeral. Clay’s parents both perished when their private plane went down over the Cascade Mountains in California. Their bodieswererecovered, though they were in no state to have an open-casket funeral, and me and Clay flew out West for the first time in years to make all of the arrangements for the Riverses.

Tommy was there. It was awkward for all of us, especially when he noticed the ring on my left hand and casually asked if his wedding invite got lost in the mail. The truth was that Clay and I eloped without telling any of his family—since I had none—or any of our friends. But he showed up at the funeral to support Clay, and I know I shouldn’t bethatsurprised he’s here now.

But I am. I can hardly believe he’s here and for a simple reason, too: I didn’t tell anyone except Dr. Lucas, Detective O’Halloran, and the funeral home I hired that I was ‘burying’ Clay.

I drift closer to him, forcefully swallowing the lump that lodged in my throat when I initially recognized him. “Tommy. You came.”

Tommy removes his right hand from his jacket, flicking his sunglasses up so that they’re nestled in his mess of curls. His gaze sweeps over my face, taking in the deep purple bags under my eyes, plus the tight smile I can barely offer him.

His hand lands on the shoulder of my coat. “Clay was my best friend. I had to.”

Even after everything that happened, Tommy still thinks of Clay as his best friend. I haven’t shed a single tear since I arrived at the cemetery earlier, but that realization has my eyes stinging.

It’s true. Clay and Tommy were incredibly tight when we were kids. Even in high school, they were loyal friends who did everything together… and that included eventually falling for the same girl.

Me.

I still have my regrets about how that all went down. When my mother died, I was only six months away from turning eighteen. I could’ve returned to my childhood home, but the idea of living in it alone gutted me. Especially with graduation only a couple of weeks away, I had to stay in Gullhaven. I just didn’t know where.

Tommy wanted me to come stay with him. It made sense. We’d been in a committed relationship since freshman year when boys started looking less like friends and more like boyfriends. He was mine, and we were so serious that, by the time we were on the cusp of graduating, the town gossips were making bets on how long before he popped the question.

Then my mother drowned on Halo Island and everything changed…

I couldn’t stay with Tommy. Besides his mother being a bit of a prude—no mixed-sex sleepovers at the Gillis house which just meant Tommy and me snuck over to mine to fuck—there was also the fact that he had one younger brother and two younger sisters. It was too full of a house for me; I was used to being an only child with a single parent. But Clay…

Clay had both of his parents at home, but that only meant the big Rivers mansion was their address. So busy with work and building their wealth and reputation, they were rarely there. Clay convinced them that he didn’t need a live-in nanny by the time he was thirteen. At seventeen, he ruled the entire place on his own.

He didn’t have to ask his parents if I could stay. The three months I lived with Clay in his family home, I think I saw them twice. They smiled, thinking I was Clay’s new girlfriend and, well, by the time summer ended, Iwas.We were foolishly, desperately in love, and I had to make a choice.

I had to break Tommy’s heart and admit that, while his best friend was doing his girlfriend a favor, they fell for each other. When Clay left at the end of August for New Jersey, there was nothing keeping me in Gullhaven. I followed him there, and we’d lived together ever since.

But that big house in Gullhaven… it’s one of the reasons that, when we moved to Little Falls, we bought a decent-sized two-floor house instead of a McMansion. With Clay’s money, wecould’ve afforded something much larger, but that’s not what he wanted. When he wanted to be with me every moment he could, there was no reason for us to have more than a handful of rooms.

Now they’re all empty. He’s gone, and like how I put my mom’s house up for sale without ever spending another night inside of it, once this burial is over, one of the first things I’ll be doing is looking for a good real estate agent.

At least, that was the plan. Now that Tommy’s here…

“How did you know?” I ask him. For him to fly out just in time… “About the burial today. I didn’t tell anyone.”

A flash of guilt dances across his face. It might’ve been five years since I was his girlfriend, but I’ve always been able to read Tommy. “You sure you want to know?”

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