My Gal Sunday Read Free

her to come here and talk it over, but she taunted you and an argument ensued. Suddenly, you lost your head, and in a blinding rage so intense that you can’t even remember the details, you shot her. The gun normally was kept locked away, but this evening you had it out because you had been so upset that you actually had entertained thoughts of killing yourself.”
    The lawyer paused in his presentation, and in the moment of silence the former secretary of state stared up at him, a puzzled look on his face. “ Is that actually how you see it?” he asked.
    Hart seemed surprised at the question. “Why, yes, of course,” he replied. “There are a few details we have to iron out yet, a few things that I’m not completely clear on. For example, we’ll have to explain how you could simply leave Miss Young bleeding on the floor and go up to bed, where you slept so soundly that you didn’t even hear your housekeeper’s scream when she discovered the body the next morning. Based on what I know, though, I would think that at the trial we would contend that you were in a state of shock.”
    “Would you?” Shipman asked wearily. “But I wasn’t in shock. In fact, after I had that drink, I just seemed to start floating. I can barely remember what Arabella and I said to each other, never mind recalling actually shooting her.”
    A pained look crossed the lawyer’s face. “I think, Tom, that I must beg you not to make statements like that to anyone. Will you promise me, please? And may I also suggest that certainly for the foreseeable future you go easy on the scotch; obviously it isn’t agreeing with you.”
    Thomas Shipman stood behind the drapes as he peered through the window, watching as his rotund attorney attempted to fend off a charge by the media. Rather like seeing the lions released on a solitary Christian, he thought. Only in this case, it wasn’t Attorney Hart’s blood they were after. It was his own. Unfortunately, he had no taste for martyrdom.
    Fortunately, he had been able to reach his housekeeper, Lillian West, in time to tell her to stay home today. He had known last evening, when the indictment was handed down, that television cameras would be camped outside his house, to witness and record every step of his leaving in handcuffs, followed by the arrangement, the fingerprinting, the plea of innocence, and then this morning’s less-than-triumphal return home. No, getting into his house today had been like running the gauntlet; he didn’t want his housekeeper to be subjected to that too.
    He did miss having someone around, though. The house felt too quiet, and lonely. Engulfed by memories, his mind was drawn back to the day he and Constance had bought the place, some thirty years ago. They had driven up from Manhattan to have lunch at the Bird and Bottle near Bear Mountain, then had taken a leisurely drive back to the city. Impulsively, they had decided to detour through the lovely residential streets in Tarrytown, and it was then that they came across the For Sale sign in front of this turn-of-the-century house overlooking the Hudson River and the Palisades.
    And for the next twenty-eight years, two months, and ten days, we lived here in a state of happily ever after, Shipman thought. “Oh, Constance, if only we could have had twenty-eight more,” he said quietly as he headed toward the kitchen, having decided on coffee instead of scotch as the drink he needed.
    This house had been a special place for them. Even when he served as secretary of state and had to travel so much of the time, they managed to have occasional weekends together here, and always it was a kind of restorative for the soul. And then one morning two years ago, Constance had said, “Tom, I don’t feel so well.” And a moment later she was gone.
    Working twenty-hour days had helped him numb the pain somewhat.
Thank God I had the job to distract me,
he thought, smiling to himself as he recalled the nickname the press had given him,