“In my mind we did.”

“Mine too, but that doesn’t count, now does it?”

“Well…”

“Come on now, does it?” “No, I guess not.”

“Don’t get me wrong. I’ve wanted to screw your brains out since I first spoke to you. Something about that low sexy voice of yours. But it’s not like you live around the corner lover. I’d cheat on Charlie with you in a heartbeat. But words are words. You shouldn’t feel guilty. You said yourself that our little tryst had made you fall in love with Catherine all over again.”

“It did. Not that we were having any real problems, but we were getting bored with each other.”

I heard a door clang shut over the telephone. “That’ll be Charlie. I have to go. But call me if you need to talk lover; any time.” Her voice was reduced to a hurried whisper.

The line went dead.

* * *

Catherine’s wake was a one night stand. I didn’t expect a great many people to come because Catherine had drifted apart from most of her childhood friends and we had only a few mutual friends. We mostly kept to ourselves. I expected her parents to come, as well as her older brother Tom who lived in Denver Colorado and a few of our respective workplace friends, my boss, her boss, and a few others; beyond that, a curious neighbor, perhaps, but not much else.

Sarah and I sat on two tarnished brass metal frame chairs with mustard colored cushions near the threshold of the parlor where Catherine’s body lay in a shiny marble-grey colored polymer casket with brass colored handles (the best of the economical line and a steal at nine-hundred dollars, said the clerk, as though he were selling convertibles instead of caskets). The room was decorated in nineteen sixties yellows and oranges. A small electric organ sat in the corner of the partition that separated us from the other half of the parlor where a Mr. Francis Thomas lay silently in wait for his wake. The high ceilings were adorned with white plaster crown moldings laced with angels holding hands and otherwise spiritually occupied with harps and trumpets and swords. The carpet was a commercial grade the color of blood speckled with yellow and orange which matched the painted yellow walls. There were no windows and as such the odors of embalmed bodies from multiple generations of the dead must have been trapped inside the walls, floors and ceilings of the rooms, much like the endless parade of corpses themselves were trapped inside their respective coffins. The room was lighted with small, inexpensive garish brass chandeliers evenly spaced about ten feet apart in rows of two. Some recorded organ music hummed softly and mysteriously from speakers hidden from our view. The musical arrangements were the sort of dreary organ pieces you’d expect to hear in a Belalagosi horror movie.

Catherine lay in her coffin with eyes closed in her favorite blue dress, a flowing silk party gown with white lace adorning the cuffs neck and hem-line. Her face was heavily made with cover-up and eye-shadow and mascara. I couldn’t help but wonder if this was done to cover up the damage done to her during her autopsy. The image of scalpels and saws and liquid filled syringes sucking the fluids from Catherine’s vacant shell played in my mind; ashes to ashes, my sole consolation. They must have cut her up good in search of clues with which to coral the sole suspect of the crime: me. Her face never needed make-up of any sort, although Catherine often wore a bit of blush on her cheeks and some pink lipstick.

The picture I provided to the mortician would surely have born this out. Catherine’s hair was wavy and her thick dark locks flowed down across her bosom. She was beautiful in death despite the mortician’s best efforts.

Sarah was attired in a lacey black dress that Catherine’s mother had had delivered by phantom express or some such means. It showed up on our doorstep in a plain brown box, taped with duct-tape, on the day we were permitted to move back home. It came with a pair of dull black flat shoes and a pair of dark grey socks and a black sun-bonnet with a grey ribbon. I battled my instinct to pitch the clothes into the trash receptacle out of spite; but truth be told I was too exhausted with grief to assemble an outfit for Sarah on my own, so I set my ego aside and I succumbed to Catherine’s parent’s wishes. Sarah looked awkwardly cheerful in her bleak ensemble. When Catherine’s parents arrived Sarah smiled as she ran to them.

“Gramma!” Sarah hugged Rita with delight, as if she were greeting her at a wedding.

Rita, Catherine’s mother, glared at me as she hugged Sarah. Rudy, Catherine’s father, averted my eyes and hung his head low. I had had a pretty good relationship with Rudy before Catherine’s death and I wanted to talk to him, to explain to him that I had not killed his precious little girl. But I could tell by the droop of his head that he was not permitted to talk to me; that such an act would be considered treasonous and punishable by emotional banishment; a sentence that Rudy was not willing to risk.

My boss, Tom Mills, followed Rita and

Rudy into the parlor and the usual condolences followed along with an obligatory reassurance and support for me. To my surprise a line of visitors soon formed and the parlor was filled with the low muffled murmur of mixed conversations; hearty greetings between parties who, lost in the moment, had forgotten that they were at a wake; subtle sniffles of grief from friends of Catherine’s as they recounted childhood memories with thick southern accents; whispers of murder and suggestions, spoken too loudly, of the probability of my guilt. There were, of course, the obligated guests who whisked in and out as quickly as they could sign the guest register. The truth is that the evening could not have ended soon enough for me. Sarah flitted about like a sprite, too joyful for the occasion; but I was want to admonish her - happy for her that she was not in the throes of grief. I overheard Catherine’s brother Tom, who bumped around in a battery- powered chrome wheelchair, mention to Marianne that Sarah “did not appear to miss her mother too badly”, but rather than reprimand him as I would have liked I opted instead for peace.

Later after the family priest, a portly balding piggish man by the name of Father Johns, had conducted a solemn service and all of the guests had gone home I watched as Sarah glided up to Catherine’s casket, with her all too gleeful demeanor, stop and stare for the first and last time at her mother. She looked at Catherine quietly and after a few moments she started to cry, and then to sob. She turned and ran to me leaping up into my arms and continued to cry on my shoulder in subdued sniffles.

The next morning a small crowd gathered at Catherine’s grave and Sarah and I both tossed a handful of dirt onto her coffin after it was lowered into the ground. As we walked back to the limousine I heard Rita yell “You killed her, you bastard!” I stopped without turning, and then decided to ignore her rather than confront her, and I continued my stroll to the hearse.

* * *

Catherine had not been in the ground long enough for the worms to begin circling her casket when the blue plague showed up at my front door in the form of Detective Bergant. I parted the mini blinds and peered into the yard at the dark blue Crown Victoria parked in my driveway. At least he had waited until after the funeral I supposed.

I told Sarah to go to her room and play and then I answered the third repetition of relentless raps upon my front door and I showed the good detective into my living room.

I forced a smile, “What brings you to my home this morning detective?” I was sick to my stomach at his mere presence; at his representation of more misery in my life. He had not come to console me, but rather to separate me from Sarah. Or at least that is what I suspected, or more accurately, feared. He had no empathy for me. No sympathy for me. He had only his own selfish desire to solve the case no matter the consequences; for his fifteen minutes of fame, or the promise of a promotion. I loathed the man, who despite my obvious innocence, had decided to pursue me like a hound to a fox, or more likely a fox to a rabbit. His face bore a snide expression, much like the one he wore when he pulled his ridiculous and transparent stunt: Amber in the next room. I could not find it in my heart to forgive him for such a crude assault on my intelligence.