Suddenly Read Free

large, normally ruddy-faced man, but he looked as if he’d been kicked in the gut.
    “She ran out of gas, but not before it did her in,” he mumbled. “Garage door was shut tight.”
    Paige drew a blank. “What?”
    “Dr. O’Neill. She’s dead.”
    That word echoed first in the room, then in Paige’s head. She didn’t like it. She had never liked it, which was largely why, after she had fallen hopelessly in love with the idea of being a doctor, she had gone into pediatrics. Of all the disciplines, it used that word the least.
    “Mara, dead?” It wasn’t possible.
    “We’ve taken her to the morgue,” Norman said. “You’ll have to identify the body.”
    The body . Paige pressed a hand to her mouth. Mara wasn’t a body . She was a doer, a fighter, a whirlwind. The idea of the body inert in a morgue was incongruous with the woman herself.
    “Mara? Dead?”
    “Coroner will do an autopsy,” Norman said, “but there’s no sign of violence.”
    It was a minute before Paige followed, and another before her horror allowed her to speak. “Then…then you think she committed suicide? ”
    “Looks that way.”
    Paige shook her head. “She wouldn’t. Not suicide. It must have been something else.” Mara dead? It couldn’t be. Paige glanced at the door, half expecting the woman in question to barge through wanting to know why Norman was there.
    But she didn’t barge through. The door remained shut, and Norman was insisting, “It’s the classic technique. Easy as pie and painless.”
    “Mara wouldn’t commit suicide,” Paige insisted. “Not with her practice thriving. Not with a baby on the way.”
    “She was pregnant?” Norman asked, seeming appalled by this in ways that talk of the body hadn’t horrified him, which angered Paige into a sharper tone.
    “She was adopting. From India. It’s taken forever, but everything is fine. Mara told me so just the other day. She said that the authorities in India had approved her, and that the baby would arrive in a month or so. She has a room all ready, with clothes and furniture, baby equipment, and toys. She was so excited.”
    “Why a month?”
    “Red tape.”
    “Did that depress her?”
    “It frustrated her.”
    “Was she depressed about the John girl?”
    “Not that depressed. I would have known if she was. We were best friends.”
    Norman nodded. He shifted his weight. “Maybe you’d rather someone else identify the body?”
    The body . There it was again, a sudden stark image devoid of mind and spirit, the antithesis of Mara O’Neill. Paige couldn’t picture it. It was wrong, obscene, perverse. She felt another spark of anger, then one of dismay.
    “Dr. Pfeiffer?”
    “It’s all right,” she managed. “I’ll do it.” She struggled to think. “But I’ll need someone here.” She phoned Angie, mentioning nothing of Norman’s claim. To say the words would make them real. Likewise, she insisted on following Norman in her own car. The more casually she behaved, she reasoned, the less of a fool she would feel when this turned out to be a joke.
    But she was playing games with herself. She knew it the instant she entered the morgue. The whole town knew Mara, including Norman Fitch, his deputy, and the coroner. Paige’s identifying the body was a formality.
    Death was quiet and still. It was a faint blue tinge to skin that had always been rosy. It was an immediate, stabbing sense of fear and loss and sadness. It was also strangely and unexpectedly peaceful.
    Paige recalled the Mara who had been her college roommate, the one who had skied the Canadian Rockies with her, who had baked birthday cakes, knitted sweaters, and practiced medicine beside her in Tucker, Vermont. She recalled the Mara who had prodded her into campaigning for more than one worthy cause over the years.
    “Oh, Mara,” she whispered, tearing up, “what happened? ”
    “You saw nothing?” the coroner asked from the side. “No sudden mood swings?”
    Paige took a minute