she used the phone to call 911.
“Is this an emergency?” the dispatcher asked.
Laura’s brain felt foggy. Ray was dead. There was nothing anyone could do to change that fact, no matter how quickly they got to the house.
“Is this an emergency?” the dispatcher repeated.
“My husband shot himself,” Laura said. “He’s dead.” She had a sudden, desperate need to get out of the house. Ignoring the dispatcher’s questions, she dropped the receiver to the kitchen floor, grabbed Emma once again and ran with her outside to the small front porch.
Sitting down on the old wooden bench Ray’d picked up at a garage sale, she pulled Emma onto her lap. I’m in shock. The thought was clinical and detached. She was nauseated and a little dizzy, and although she knew the air was cold, she couldn’t actually feel it. This is what shock feels like. Her eyes couldn’t focus, even as the police cars, the ambulance and the fire truck pulled in front of her town house, sirens blaring. Neighbors came out to their yards or peered through their windows to see what was happening, but Laura simply stared at the snow covering the front lawn. All she could see, though, was the butterfly-shaped stain on the wallpaper in the bedroom.
“He’s upstairs,” she said to the first police officer who approached her. She pressed her chin to the top of Emma’s head as the army of EMTs marched past them and into the house, and she closed her eyes against the image of what they would find in the upstairs bedroom.
Emma had stopped crying, but her head remained buried in the crook of Laura’s shoulder. She was really too big to sit on anyone’s lap, but she had made herself fit, and Laura did not want to let go of her. The little girl shivered in her light sweater, and Laura rubbed her arms. What had Emma seen? Had she heard the gunshot and gone into the bedroom to investigate? Might she have actually been in the room when Ray did it? Laura should not have left her with him. She should not have been gone more than an hour.
It seemed like a long time before one of the police officers returned to the porch, carrying jackets for her and Emma. He’d brought Ray’s down jacket for Laura, and she put it on, pressing the collar close to her nose to breathe in her husband’s scent.
“Who was in the house when it happened?” the officer asked, pulling a notepad from his pocket. He stood on the walkway, one foot resting on the step.
“Emma.” Laura nodded toward her daughter, who had once again folded herself to fit in Laura’s lap.
The police officer studied Emma for a moment and seemed to decide against questioning her.
“And you were out?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you know why the jewelry box and its contents were on the floor?”
“I knocked into it after I found him,” she said. The image of the jewelry spilled across the floor seemed like something she’d seen days ago, not mere minutes.
“There was a note in the bedroom,” the officer said. “Did you see it?”
“A note?”
“Yes. Taped to the dresser mirror. It read, ‘I asked you not to go.’ Does that mean anything to you?”
Laura squeezed her eyes shut. “I had to visit someone this morning and he didn’t want me to go.”
“Ah,” he said, as though he’d found the missing piece to the puzzle. “There was a big age difference between you and your husband, huh?”
The question seemed rude, but she didn’t have the strength to protest. “Yes,” she said.
“So, was this ‘someone’ you had to visit another man?”
Laura looked at the policeman in confusion. “Another…? No. No. It was a woman. An old woman. But he asked me not to go, and I went, anyway. I was always leaving him. Always working. I left him alone too much. It’s my fault.”
“Now, don’t jump to conclusions, ma’am. Did your husband suffer from depression?”
She nodded. “Terribly. I should have realized how bad it had gotten, but—”
“He has an old scar obviously made from a bullet in his left shoulder,” the officer said. “Was that from some previous botched suicide attempt?”
“No. He got that fighting in Korea.” He had survived Korea. He had not survived his marriage to her. Guilt rested like a boulder in her chest.
The police officer nodded at Emma. “Do you think I could ask her a couple of questions?”
Laura leaned back to shift Emma’s head from her shoulder. “Honey,” she said, “can you tell the policeman what happened? Can you tell me?”
Emma looked at them both in silence, her eyes glazed. And that’s when Laura realized that her daughter had not spoken a single word since she’d gotten home.
5
LAURA SAT NEXT TO STUART, RAY’S YOUNGER BROTHER AND only sibling, during the memorial service at Georgetown University. Ray had taught at Georgetown for many years, and the chapel was completely full. People stood in the rear of the building, some of them forced into the foyer by the crowd. Many were his former sociology students and fellow professors. Ray had left his mark at the university.
He’d left his mark in the streets, as well. A busload of homeless people and the staff from several shelters were already sitting in the chapel by the time Laura arrived. The news of Ray’s death had brought an outpouring of sympathy from the entire metropolitan D.C. area. Ray had been loved and respected. She hoped he had known that. He’d been so wrapped up in his inability to get his book published these last few years that he’d lost sight of all the good he’d accomplished. Seeing the somber crowd in the chapel made her heart ache. She wasn’t sure how she would get through this service.
She glanced at her brother-in-law. Stuart gazed straight ahead, and she could see the tight line of his jaw as he struggled to maintain control. She wrapped her hand around his arm. The hardest call for her to make after Ray’s death had been to Stuart. He lived in Connecticut, and as a marketing representative for a textbook company, he traveled frequently. She’d worried he might be on the road, but she’d found him at home. Stuart had cried when she told him. Big gulping sobs that frightened her, they were so out of character for him. He’d adored and admired his older brother. Ray was all the blood family Stuart had.
Stuart was staying in the town house while he was in Leesburg, but he was staying there alone. Laura had barely been able to set foot in the house since finding Ray’s body. All evidence of his death had been scrubbed away by some people the police had recommended, but still, it was impossible to be there, to sleep there, without feeling Ray’s presence. Stuart, though, had no negative images attached to the town house. Besides, he told her, he would feel closest to Ray there.
Laura and Emma had been staying in the vacant, above-garage apartment of some friends. As soon as Laura could get things organized, she planned to move Emma and herself out to the lake house. She’d told the Smithsonian and Johns Hopkins she would be taking some time off, sending them scrambling to find replacements for her. She would probably sell the town house. She could
