HIS FORSAKEN WIFE HIS GREATEST REGRET

The Morgue Was Her Next Room

Roberta's POV

"No."

The word came out quiet. "You're lying. She's not— she's not gone."

The nurse's face stayed gentle and empty and sorry, and I looked at it and felt something in me refuse completely.

"No." I stepped forward. "That's my daughter."

"Ma'am—"

"That's my daughter." I moved past her to the bed. To Ziva. I took her face in both hands and really looked at it, the way you look at something you know, something you made, something that belongs to you. "She's not gone. You don't know her. She's not gone."

"I'm so sorry—"

"You're not." My voice didn't shake. "You're not sorry. If you were sorry, you would have fought harder. If you were sorry you would have made the doctor come." I pulled Ziva gently toward me, one arm under her shoulders, and held her against my chest. Her head fell against my collarbone. "It's okay," I said into her hair. "It's okay, baby. Mommy's here." I rocked her.

She was so still.

"Do you remember the park?" I was rocking slightly. I didn't mean to. My body just started doing it. "The one by the river. The one with the yellow slide you said was the best slide in the whole world. We're going to go back there, okay? We're going to go on a Saturday when the sun is out... and I'll buy the ice cream with nuts—butterscotch—the way you like it. We're going to—" My voice broke. I pressed it back down. "We're going to do all of it. We're going to do everything. So you need to wake up now. Mommy is asking you to wake up."

The room was very quiet.

"Remember the movie nights? Your cartoons. You always fell asleep before the end, and then in the morning, you'd ask me what happened, and I'd tell you wrong on purpose, and you'd get so cross." A sound came out of me that wasn't a laugh. "You'd get so cross, Ziva. You'd say, 'Mommy, that's not what happened.'"

The sound that came next from me wasn't crying. It was deeper than crying, something that started in the chest and moved upward and came out of me like it was tearing on the way. I pressed my face into her hair and shook. My whole body shook.

"Ziva, please." I was begging now. "Ziva, please. Mommy is asking you. Please open your eyes. Please just—please—"

I was shaking her. I didn't mean to. My hands were gripping her shoulders, and I was shaking her gently, then not gently, then the nurses were moving, and someone's hands were on my arms.

"Ma'am. Ma'am, you need to breathe."

"Open your eyes." I ignored the nurses. "Open your eyes. Right now. Ziva, don't do this. Don't—" My voice was low and cracked. "Don't do this to Mommy. I—I came. I drove as fast as I could. I didn't stop, I didn't—" My voice collapsed entirely. I held what was left of it and kept going. "I'm right here. I'm right here, baby. Please open your eyes."

She didn't move.

She didn't move, and I knew—some deep part of me had known from the moment the nurse turned around—but knowing and accepting are two entirely different countries, and I was not ready to cross that border.

I was not going to cross it.

"Ma'am." A different nurse, softer voice, her hand steady on my back. "You need to calm down. You're going to collapse if you don't breathe. Please."

I breathed.

It went in ragged and came out worse.

I sat on the edge of the bed with Ziva, and I held her hand and breathed until my body stopped shaking quite so violently.

Then a nurse said it.

"We'll need to take her now. To the morgue."

The morgue.

The word hit me sideways, and something snapped.

I laughed.

It came out of nowhere—a short, high, completely wrong sound. The nurses looked at each other.

"The morgue," I said. "You want to put my daughter in the morgue." I continued laughing.

"Ma'am—"

"She hates the cold." I stood up. My legs were strange under me. "She has always hated the cold. Since she was a baby. She would scream every time I gave her a bath if the water wasn't warm enough, she—" I stopped. Something shifted in my face. I could feel it shifting. "She's not going down there—it's too cold... Ziva wouldn't like—"

"We have to—"

"Don't touch her."

They touched her anyway. They were gentle. And it didn't matter because hands were moving my daughter's lifeless body, and I was being guided—then steered—then held by both arms as I stopped cooperating with the direction they were moving me.

"Get off me—"

I stopped fighting. Not because I wanted to. Because my legs decided.

I let them move me into the corridor.

The lobby was mostly empty at this hour.

My voice when it came out was enormous in the space.

"I hope you're satisfied!"

A nurse flinched. An elderly woman stopped walking. Somewhere to my left, a man in a chair looked up.

"Is the VIP happy now? Did they get what they wanted?" My voice rose. I looked at the ceiling. At the walls. "Whoever you are—the one who took my daughter's place—I hope you're satisfied. I hope you sleep well tonight. Because my daughter is dead. She's dead because you decided she wasn't worth saving." The sound in my voice frightened me. "She was kind, and she saved her brother's life, and you—" I stopped. My chest heaved. "You killed her. You killed my daughter! I hope you never know peace. All of you."

The lobby held very still.

My voice echoed. Nurses stared.

I didn't care.

Then I stopped.

I went quiet.

My body went still.

Then, slowly, something shifted.

"No," I said. Quieter now. "No. Not you." I shook my head. "Not the VIP." My voice was dropping, going somewhere inward. "Jace." I said his name like I just remembered him. "Jace did this. Jace. Irene. Nolan. And whoever Nolan's mother is. They killed her. They took her. They used her. They threw her away."

I was walking now. Moving toward the exit. Talking to the air, to the lobby, to anyone, to no one. "They killed her. They're responsible."

The automatic doors opened.

The night air hit me.

I made it three steps onto the pavement before my legs gave out completely.

I sat down on the cold ground. Just sat. Like a person who had forgotten the reason to stand.

"Jace." I said his name to the street. To the dark. To nobody. "Jace, you killed her." Over and over, quiet now, the way you say true things once you've run out of the energy to be loud about them. "You killed our daughter."

A shadow fell across me.

An outstretched hand appeared.

I looked at it without understanding it for a moment. Then I looked up.

Brett.

I almost didn't process it. My brain was so far past its capacity that his face arrived in pieces—the jaw, the eyes, the same face from that one night stand, was now standing over me, looking down at me.

He didn't say, "Are you okay?" He could see I wasn't.

"Let me help you up," he said.

He didn't wait. He bent down. His hands went under my arms. He lifted me and set me on my feet. Steadied me with his hands on my shoulders.

"I'm sorry," he said. "About your daughter."

I looked at him. At his face. Does he remember me now?

I couldn't speak.

I turned and walked to my car. My feet found it somehow. My hand found the handle.

"Can you drive?" he asked from behind me. "Do you live nearby?"

I thought about the woman he brought in on the stretcher, the ring on her finger, the way he'd held her hand. I wanted to ask if she was okay, but I was too exhausted.

"I'm fine," I said.

I got in and drove off.

***

Jace's car was parked outside.

He was home.

For the first time since the morning he'd blocked me from following my daughter into a car and drove her away, he was home.

I walked to the front door. My keys were heavy in my hand. I opened it.

The silence came at me immediately—the silence of a house that knew something had changed. I felt it. The permanent absence of Ziva. The shape of where she should have been.

The tears came again, sudden and wordless, and I pressed my hand to my mouth. I walked up the stairs.

The hallway was dark. But I heard something.

A sound.

A groan and a moan.

I stopped.

It was coming from our bedroom.

Jace's voice. Low. Rough.

"Yes. Just like that."

A woman's voice. Moaning.

"My wife's body is so dry compared to yours," Jace said. "She's useless."

The woman moaned harder.

"I don't feel anything when I'm inside her. Never did. But you? God, you're perfect." He groaned.

I heard the bed creaking and the sound of their skin slapping against each other.

I couldn't move.

His daughter was lying in a morgue. Cold. Alone. And he was in our bed. In our bed. Having s*x with another woman.

"I can't wait for you and Nolan to come home," Jace said. "This house needs a real family."

The woman moaned, her voice muffled. "That's right, baby. Very soon."

I knew who she was.

Nolan's mother. The woman who had been sleeping with my husband for years. The woman who helped kill my daughter. She was on the other side of this door, and I would finally get to see the face of the woman who ruined my marriage.

My hand closed around the door handle.

The metal was cold.

I pressed down.