No Good Deed Left Undone by Ginny Fite

Author:Ginny Fite
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2022-08-29T21:25:21+00:00

2:00 p.m.

It was afternoon before Emma remembered her son William was asleep in the third floor guest room. She forgave herself instantly. Her husband had been murdered this morning. She was rattled, forgetting from one minute to the next what she had started to do; she was a dragonfly, flitting back and forth in the air but not accomplishing anything.

She had not yet given in to the huge, heaving sobs that threatened to break over her but she worried she could not hold them off much longer. The numbness from her initial shock was wearing off and she could see them coming—a three-story high tsunami forming on the horizon. Once they hit the shore, there would be nothing she could do but hold her breath and hope that she would float to the surface when the grief subsided. Hours after he died, she was still surprised by her unexpected sorrow. It had never occurred to her that losing Grant would make her feel this way. But until the sobs hit, she was determined to marshal her forces. She had to call the funeral home to schedule pick-up of Grant’s body from the morgue whenever the police were done with it. What she most dreaded was the horrifyingly difficult call to Rebecca to tell her that her father was dead.

She berated herself now that she had sounded wooden and cold on the call. “Rebecca,” she said when her step-daughter answered the phone, “your father died this morning.”

Emma hadn’t engaged in any small-talk first or asked after Rebecca’s children, nor did she talk about the weather; hadn’t even said hello. The three-hour time difference between West Virginia and Arizona did not even occur to her. It seemed like a different day to Emma. Rebecca’s family was probably eating breakfast when she called, children around the table, in the middle of pouring orange juice. The call couldn’t have been more unexpected.

Rebecca said, “What? What do you mean? My father? You’re saying Daddy is dead? How can that be?”

“He was killed in the barn.” Somehow she had completely forgotten how to have a conversation, had lost all knowledge of words that might soften the blow.

“Oh my God! Oh my God!”

Emma listened to Rebecca try to swallow her sobs. She knew her step-daughter was trying to remain calm.

She failed. “I’ll call you back later,” Rebecca said between gasps and hung up.

Emma sat there with the phone in her hand thinking about all the missed opportunities with Rebecca. Then she gathered herself together and called Ann about the funeral arrangements. She spoke to Grant’s idiot partner, Eugene Waters, about being a pall bearer. She was reminded from her few minutes on the phone with Eugene what a complete and utter creep he was. Even his voice made her skin crawl. Of this one thing she was glad: Grant’s death gave her ample excuse to sever all ties with Eugene.

Intermittently, Emma tried calling Kyle. Between these calls, she paced the house, watching what the forensic team was doing.

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