A Welcome Grave Read Free

waited.
    “Lincoln?”
    “Yes.”
    “I wasn’t sure if you were still there.”
    “I’m here.”
    Another pause, then, “Anyhow, I was hoping, if you had a few minutes, you could come by.”
    “So you could apologize?”
    “Well, yes.”
    “You just did. And, thank you, but it was unnecessary.”
    “Okay,” she said. “Okay. Well . . . goodbye, Lincoln.”
    “Goodbye, Karen. Good luck.”
    She hung up, but only when the phone began to beep at me did I remember to lean over and click off the speakerphone.
    Ten minutes later, it rang again. Karen.
    “Lincoln, I really do need to see you. I’m drained, and emotional, and I hung up before because . . . well, your voice was so defensive. And I understand that. I do. But I need to see you. In person.”
    “Just to apologize?”
    “Lincoln . . .” There were tears in her voice now.
    Shit. I pushed back in my chair, rolled my eyes to the ceiling, and shook my head. What the hell was this about?
    “Twenty minutes,” she said, speaking the words softly and carefully, trying to keep the emotion out of her voice. “It’s important.”
    “Where?”
    “The house.”
    The house
. Like it was Monticello, some sort of damn landmark.
    “I don’t know where the house is, Karen.”
    “Pepper Pike. Off Shaker, near the country club.” She gave me the address.
    “The country club,” I said. “Of course.” That had been the location of my last encounter with Jefferson, but Karen didn’t strike me as someone who’d appreciate that particular flash of nostalgia, so I kept it to myself.
    “You’ll come?”
    “Like I’ve got no sense at all.”
    “Pardon?”
    “Nothing. I’ll see you in a bit.”
    “Thank you, Lincoln.”
    We hung up again, and, after a few minutes of swearing at myself, I got up and walked out the door.

2

    T he house was a spectacle. A driveway that was probably repaved every year wound through a collection of tall, perfect trees shading a lawn that looked like a fairway at Augusta. Then the home came into view around the bend—southern mansion met colonial met contemporary, but, somehow, the damn thing worked. It was a lot of white and glass and a sprawling front porch beneath second-story balconies. A stone wall bordered a swimming pool and patio. A cover had been spread across the pool, and it looked like there was a stone fireplace built alongside the patio.
    A four-car garage stood to the side, styled to look like a carriage house. I pulled to a stop in front of it and waited for someone to come out and offer to provide my truck with oats and water while I went inside. When nobody did, I shut the engine off and got out. The spacious yard was still and silent, the house more of the same. I walked up a cobblestone path to the porch. At the front door, I lifted the brass handle and dropped it back on the wood a few times. A minute passed, maybe two. Someone had left a bouquet of flowers at the door. I picked them up, looked at the card.
From Ted and Nancy, with our deepest sympathies
. I kept the flowers in my free hand while I banged the knocker again, the sound loud and hollow. This time the door opened.
    The sight of her shook me. She was gorgeous, sure, but that wasn’t it—she was the way I remembered her, the way I tried
not
to remember her. A new lineor two on the face, maybe, the soft blond hair cut in a more expensive style, five extra pounds on a body that always could stand ten extra pounds, but, damn it, she was still the Karen I’d proposed to in the rain on a warm night in April. I didn’t want her to be.
    She wore loose white pants and a sleeveless shirt, no shoes, no jewelry. Her body was firm and lithe. Looking at her I saw a sudden flash of the scenes I’d missed in the last few years: the dinner parties where Jefferson’s rich, fat friends had looked at his trophy wife and sworn under their breath with envy; the smug smile on Jefferson’s face when he and Karen encountered one of his aging