My Husband's Mistress Hired Me to Plan His Funeral

The woman wearing my wedding ring wanted a refund on my husband. “If he survives Sunday,” she said, “I don't intend to pay the balance.” I was pinning the cuff of a dead schoolteacher's good jacket. His daughter had brought it in a supermarket bag and apologized for the missing button. I had told her we could hide that hand. Now I laid the needle in its tray and took the stranger into the arrangement room, away from the schoolteacher and his inconveniently ordinary death. The ring caught in the lining of her glove. She tugged it free. I knew the chip under the black diamond. I had made it against this very table, opening a delivery on the morning after my honeymoon. Gideon said damaged things could be more beautiful. Six months later, when the ring disappeared, he said I was careless. “That's mine,” I said. “I know.” She put her hand flat on the table. I waited for her to remove the ring. It was petty, making her do it in front of me, and I enjoyed it for approximately two seconds. Her knuckle was swollen. The ring would not pass over it. “Soap,” I said, and fetched some myself. She worked it off while I watched. A red groove remained. I put the ring in an empty teacup because I could not bear either wearing it or making a ceremony of putting it away. “Mara Bell,” she said. I knew. Her photograph was on the Cross Holdings website: chief financial officer, raised on a scholarship, a success story my husband liked to tell as though he had invented poor girls. “You can explain the ring after you explain Sunday.” “Gideon asked me to arrange a private memorial rehearsal. He wants his investors to hear their own eulogies before approving a restructuring. He used to run these things years ago. You know about those?” I did. My father had supplied the venue once. He never accepted a second booking. “He's not dying,” I said. “Neither were the people at his last rehearsal.” Mara unbuttoned her coat but did not take it off. Rain had soaked through the shoulders. She placed a folder beside the teacup, then pushed it back toward herself when I reached for it. “First I need to know you won't call him.” “You arrive wearing my ring and ask me to keep secrets from my husband. You've overspent your credit.” She flinched. I wanted her to. Then she took a photograph from the folder and I wished I had wasted the cruelty on someone else. It showed the interior of a boat. On a narrow bunk lay my green dress, a pair of shoes in my size, and a bag from the pharmacy where I filled my sleeping prescription. The date on the receipt was yesterday. I had not requested a refill. “I was supposed to leave the ring in your bathroom,” she said. “Make you ask who had been there. He would admit enough to hurt you, then offer the anniversary trip as a reconciliation. That's what he told me.” “And the funeral?” “Sunday afternoon. Before the yacht leaves. A roomful of respectable people would see him talk about accepting death. If he disappeared that night, they'd remember a farewell.” She gave me the next page. A draft statement described a fire aboard Second Chance. Evelyn Cross was feared dead. Gideon Cross remained missing after attempting to rescue his wife. The statement was dated Monday. I read it twice, irritated by a misplaced apostrophe. My brain had apparently decided punctuation was the emergency it could manage. “Have you called the police?” “I've given copies to an insurance investigator. He told me to keep you off the boat. He didn't tell me how to make you believe me.” I reached for the desk telephone. Mara caught my wrist. Her hand was cold and surprisingly strong. “Let go,” I said. She did, at once. I called the nonemergency police number, gave my name, and said I had been shown documents describing a future incident in which I died. The dispatcher asked where I was and whether the person threatening me was present. I said he was not. She told me to remain somewhere safe and sent an officer. When I put down the receiver, Mara was crying without sound. “I thought you'd call him.” “So did I.” She rubbed her face with the heel of her hand. “I'm not his mistress.” “Then why say you were?” “I didn't. You looked at the ring and said it for me.” I had not said it aloud. That made the correction worse. In the passage, Lena knocked once and opened the door. She had run the preparation rooms since I was a child. She looked at Mara, the wet coat, the teacup, then back at me. “The schoolteacher's daughter wants to see him before she goes home.” For a moment I resented the daughter. Her father was already dead. She could have given me ten minutes to establish whether my husband intended to kill me. “Tell her I'm coming.” “Evelyn.” “Police are on their way. Please stay with Ms. Bell. Don't let Gideon into the private rooms.” Lena's expression changed, but she only nodded. I went back to the teacher. His daughter had bought the wrong size shoes. They were too small, and she was afraid people would notice. I knelt beside her and said we would leave them off. Her father had hated formal shoes; she laughed when she remembered, then apologized for laughing. I had spent twelve years telling people they did not have to apologize for what grief did to them. I had never learned to apply the rule to embarrassment. The officer arrived while I was washing my hands. She read the documents, photographed them with Mara's permission, and asked whether Gideon had threatened me directly. “No,” I said. “Does he know you're planning to leave him?” “I didn't know I was.” She let that sit. She did not promise an arrest. Draft publicity material for an unusual event, a photograph, and Mara's account would need investigation. She asked about a safe address, access to my money, weapons in the house. I answered each question while my marriage acquired a new set of headings. Mara provided a number for Rowan Shaw at the state insurance bureau. The officer called him herself. He agreed to come. When the officer stepped into the hall, I opened the folder again. Beneath the draft statement was a payment list. A name had been highlighted: Phoebe Lane. Five thousand dollars for a fitting and promotional photographs aboard Second Chance. Balance payable after Sunday. “Who's she?” “An actor. She looks enough like you from behind.” “Have you warned her?” “She stopped answering.” I found the invoice's contact number and called. Voicemail. I left my own name, the funeral home's number, and a request to call before going near the boat. Nothing about murder. Nothing a frightened stranger might dismiss as a joke. Mara watched my hands. “You should see the other page.” “How many more pages are you saving until I react correctly?” She pulled out a removal authorization dated eleven years earlier. I recognized our old letterhead, my father's careful corrections, and my own signature. I had been twenty-one, proud of being allowed to sign a form without asking him first. Patient or deceased: Elise Ward. Transfer from: Cross & Vale Memorial House. Receiving facility: Northmere Recovery. I remembered a shut walnut casket. A woman laughing too loudly upstairs. My father gripping my arm hard enough to hurt, telling me to get the keys. Below my signature, in a box I had ticked myself, were the words No further contact requested. “Elise didn't die on that night,” Mara said. “Your husband has been paying to make sure nobody asks her what happened.” My phone lit up before I could answer. Gideon had sent a photograph of our dining table. Two glasses. The white candles I saved for anniversaries. He had remembered the flowers I liked, which felt suddenly more obscene than forgetting them. Come home, Evie. We can discuss whatever she showed you. I turned the phone over. On the table, the ring tapped the side of the cup. “I'll take the commission,” I said. Mara stared. “You still want to plan his funeral?” “A rehearsal. Everyone invited will know he's alive. No death notices, no lies to families, no innocent person on that boat.” “And if he refuses to attend?” I looked at the signature I had spent eleven years not remembering. “Then the first person who has to explain herself on Sunday will be me.”