Blue Dahlia Read Free Page A

to stay with you?”
    “No. Not now. I need ... the boys.”
    “I’ll get them. Come inside, Stella.”
    But she only shook her head.
    “All right. They’re in the family room. I’ll bring them. Stella, if there’s anything, anything at all. You’ve only to call. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
    She stood in the dark, looking in at the light, and waited.
    She heard the protests, the complaints, then the scrambling of feet. And there were her boys—Gavin with his father’s sunny hair, Luke with his father’s mouth.
    “We don’t want to go yet,” Gavin told her. “We’re playing a game. Can’t we finish?”
    “Not now. We have to go home now.”
    “But I’m winning. It’s not fair, and—”
    “Gavin. We have to go.”
    “Is Daddy home?”
    She looked down at Luke, his happy, innocent face, and nearly broke. “No.” Reaching down, she picked him up, touched her lips to the mouth that was so like Kevin’s. “Let’s go home.”
    She took Gavin’s hand and began the walk back to her empty house.
    “If Daddy was home, he’d let me finish.” Cranky tears smeared Gavin’s voice. “I want Daddy.”
    “I know. I do too.”
    “Can we have a dog?” Luke wanted to know, and turned her face to his with his hands. “Can we ask Daddy? Can we have a dog like Jessie and Wyatt?”
    “We’ll talk about it later.”
    “I want Daddy,” Gavin said again, with a rising pitch in his voice.
    He knows, Stella thought. He knows something is wrong, something’s terribly wrong. I have to do this. I have to do it now.
    “We need to sit down.” Carefully, very carefully, she closed the door behind her, carried Luke to the couch. She sat with him in her lap and laid her arm over Gavin’s shoulder.
    “If I had a dog,” Luke told her soberly, “I’d take care of him. When’s Daddy coming?”
    “He can’t come.”
    “ ’Cause of the busy trip?”
    “He ...” Help me. God, help me do this. “There was an accident. Daddy was in an accident.”
    “Like when the cars smash?” Luke asked, and Gavin said nothing, nothing at all as his eyes burned into her face.
    “It was a very bad accident. Daddy had to go to heaven.”
    “But he has to come home after.”
    “He can’t. He can’t come home anymore. He has to stay in heaven now.”
    “I don’t want him there.” Gavin tried to wrench away, but she held him tightly. “I want him to come home now .”
    “I don’t want him there either, baby. But he can’t come back anymore, no matter how much we want it.”
    Luke’s lips trembled. “Is he mad at us?”
    “No. No, no, no, baby. No.” She pressed her face to his hair as her stomach pitched and what was left of her heart throbbed like a wound. “He’s not mad at us. He loves us. He’ll always love us.”
    “He’s dead.” There was fury in Gavin’s voice, rage on his face. Then it crumpled, and he was just a little boy, weeping in his mother’s arms.
    She held them until they slept, then carried them to her bed so none of them would wake alone. As she had countless times before, she slipped off their shoes, tucked blankets around them.
    She left a light burning while she walked—it felt like floating—through the house, locking doors, checking windows. When she knew everything was safe, she closed herself into the bathroom. She ran a bath so hot the steam rose off the water and misted the room.
    Only when she slipped into the tub, submerged herself in the steaming water, did she allow that knot to snap. With her boys sleeping, and her body shivering in the hot water, she wept and wept and wept.
     
    SHE GOT THROUGH IT. A FEW FRIENDS SUGGESTED SHE might take a tranquilizer, but she didn’t want to block the feelings. Nor did she want to have a muzzy head when she had her children to think of.
    She kept it simple. Kevin would have wanted simple. She chose every detail—the music, the flowers, the photographs—of his memorial service. She selected a silver box for his ashes and planned to