Half-Past Dawn Read Free Page A

it a moment, his eyes darting between the macabre piece of artwork and Jack’s troubled eyes. Jack slowly rolled down his sleeve, waiting for his friend to speak.
    “How can you not remember last night?” Frank finally asked. “You were dreading it for weeks. You were so pissed about giving up your tickets for the Yankees game—which was rained out, by the way—having to celebrate the life of the man who had yet to offer you a simple sign of respect. Don’t you remember making him his present? Ten nights you spent working on that thing, creating it fromscratch, all those pieces. You’re a better man than I. I wouldn’t even have bought him a card.”
    “I’ve got nothing,” Jack said. “Not an image, a thought. It’s like someone threw a white can of paint on my mind. Yesterday just isn’t there.”
    “Think. What time did you and Mia leave the party? Did you leave together? You didn’t just drive off that bridge, did you? And the gunshot wound?” Frank pointed at Jack’s shoulder. “It didn’t just appear. Is someone after you? Which is a distinct possibility. Most criminals hold the man who throws them in jail responsible for the troubles in their lives. You put your fair share away.”
    No matter how hard Jack thought on it, his mind was blank.
    “Think back,” Frank said. “What is the last memory you had before this morning? You remember me, not that I’m the forgettable type.”
    Jack’s mind was on overload, as if it had short-circuited. He couldn’t hold a coherent thought as he tried to reflect back to the last memory before that morning. It was like lifting an impossible weight, his brain straining with the effort.
    Last Friday, a week ago, appeared within a fog in his mind. In his office. Images started to come into focus. Reviewing pending cases with his assistant, Joy. But none of the cases was of any significance. He had arrived at work later than usual. Skipped lunch, early dinner with Mia and the girls … and then it completely fogged over.
    “Ok,” Jack finally said as he looked up. “Last Friday.”
    “Good.” Frank smiled. “It’s a start.”
    But his mind was already back on Mia and the hollow feeling of being alone in the world, of grief, how he would tell his daughters that their mother was dead. He couldn’t bear to look in their eyes. He wouldn’t know how to answer “Daddy, I don’t understand. Why isn’t she coming back?”
    “Hey,” Frank snapped. “I see your face. Your mind is spinning tales of supposition. Stay focused. Think. Something’s got to spark your memory. A song, a piece of clothing.”
    Jack ran his hands down his face. Everything made him think of Mia. The kitchen table they sat at, which she’d bought from a friend and was so proud of after he had sanded it down and polished it in his shop. The kitchen she designed, the wallpaper, the framed pictures of her and the kids on the windowsill. Everything in his life made him think of Mia. She was part of the fabric of his being.
    He walked through the house, hoping that something would just pop out and fill in the holes in his memory. Past the living room, glancing at the piano, which sparked a vision of his girls whining about Thursday lessons with Mrs. Henry. Past the dining room, which only pulled up memories of Mia’s home-cooked Thanksgiving dinner for twenty-eight. The front hall: nothing. Feeling a fool, he headed back to the kitchen, and as he passed the powder room, it hit him. Her perfume, Chanel, hung in the air, its faint scent still lingering from … the night before. It was what she always wore, part of her essence since college, the smell of Mia. It was what filled his mind as he drifted off to sleep, what he smelled on her pillow, on her clothes, on her neck when he held her.
    He froze where he stood, motionless by the powder-room door, trying to coax the memory of the night before from the dark hollow of his brain, but it kept slipping away, drifting off just out of