Page 59 of Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers

He sits in the dark and clicks through their photos, the perfect family. How painful that because he and Randall are twins, Randall and Aurelia’s child looks like he could be David’s. That same smile that goes ever so slightly higher on the right cheek, the way the eyebrows turn up like so...

Oh god. So he’s fantasized about Emma being his daughter. God, this is horrifying. Julia doesn’t know what to do. She wantsto stop reading, but she can’t. Her fingers keep moving, keep flipping the pages, and she only realizes what she’s looking for when she finds it.

“You’re so fucking pathetic,” Randall spits at David.

“Pathetic.” The word that has haunted him his entire life. He looks at Randall without speaking, without doing anything, and as Randall laughs, David comes to a decision. He’s going to end Randall. He doesn’t know how yet, but he’ll find a way.

The doorbell rings then, and a choked gasp claws out of Julia. She actually screams a little, jumping to her feet, blood rushing to her head. Her heart is pumping so hard and fast that it sounds like drums being beaten right inside her ears. The bell rings again. Shit, who is it? Oliver? Did she ask him to come by today? She’s hurrying down the hallway when she realizes that she’s still grasping the manuscript. She puts it on the sofa and places a cushion over it, then goes to the door, still breathing hard. She looks through the peephole, and oh god. It’s not Oliver. It’s Officer Gray. She can’t actually decide whom she’s more afraid of right now. Forcing herself to take a deep breath and plastering a smile on her face, Julia opens the door.

“Hi, Officer Gray,” she says brightly. “What brings you here?”

“Can I come in?” Officer Gray says.

“Oh, um, sure.” Julia ushers the officer into the living room, where she is painfully aware that Oliver’s manuscript is hiding under the cushion. She gestures for Officer Gray to sit in a spot as far away from the manuscript as possible. “What can I do for you?”

“I won’t take up too much of your time,” Officer Gray says. “Iwas looking into your husband’s death, you know, just crossing our t’s and dotting our i’s, when I noticed that you are due for a rather large insurance payout due to his passing.”

“Wait, what?” The noise that has thus far been screaming in Julia’s head grinds to a deafening halt. Life insurance? Then, belatedly, she recalls bits and pieces of it. “Oh,” she says stupidly. That’s right, when Emma was newly born, Julia had looked into her tiny sleeping face and was gripped in a fear so visceral that she’d marched straight to Marshall and told him that they had to take out life insurance. In case anything were to happen to them, she wanted assurance that their beautiful, perfect baby would be okay. It was the only time that Julia had put her foot down on something, and her fierce determination had taken Marshall so aback that he’d agreed to it without as much of a fight as she’d been expecting. They’d taken out a humble package, paying just thirty dollars a month for the two of them, and over time, because Marshall took care of all the bills, Julia had forgotten about it entirely.

And now here it is, come back to bite her in the ass.

“You’re due to receive”—Officer Gray checks her notes and raises her eyebrows—“no less than seven hundred thousand dollars. That’s quite the payout.”

Seven hundred grand. That’s life-changing money. She could pay off the house and still have enough left over to put into Emma’s college fund, plus it would tide them over nicely until she gets her photography business set up.

Shit, she shouldn’t already be planning how to spend the money now, with Officer Gray literally sitting right across from her, staring at her with that suspicious look. And who can blame Officer Gray? This is shady as shit! Her husband dies understrange circumstances and she gets seven hundred grand? No prizes for guessing who had motivation to kill him. Julia strives to come up with something appropriate to say, but what the hell is appropriate right now?

Officer Gray isn’t done. “I spoke to your neighbors. They said they heard shouts on the evening that Marshall died. Angry shouts. They said they heard you crying and Marshall shouting?”

Her neighbors? Julia doesn’t even know their names. Aside from Linda, that is. Marshall always told her to not get sucked into “housewife drama,” and so she never bothered to show up at neighborhood gatherings. But apparently just because she’s been unaware of their existence, that doesn’t mean they’ve been unaware of hers. Bitterness sears her belly. What a sneaky thing to do, talking to the cops about her and Marshall. The logical side of her reminds her that if a cop had turned up at her house asking about her neighbor’s death, she would probably try her best to be cooperative. But logic is trumped by the white-hot combination of fear and anger raging inside her.

“When we first came to your house,” Officer Gray continues, “I noticed trash bags behind the door. Quite a few of them. What was in them?”

Julia has watched enough spy movies to fool herself into thinking that lying under duress is easy. But now, actually having a police officer asking her these things, she finds that she doesn’t have what it takes to tell a convincing lie. Her mouth opens and she hears the truth flopping out of her like a dead fish. “Marshall’s things.”

Officer Gray raises her eyebrows, but it’s obvious she’s not surprised in the least bit by this answer. “Care to expand on that?”

Julia swallows. “He was leaving me.” Her voice is soft to begin with, tinged with shame, but the more she talks, the stronger it gets, shame giving way to anger. “He said he was finally about to make it big and he didn’t want to have to split the payoff with me because I had nothing to do with his success. Ten years we’ve been married and we have a beautiful daughter, but none of it meant anything to him. He walked out the door as I cried.”

Officer Gray nods. “Then what did you do?”

Julia shakes her head, sighing. “I don’t know, I... oh, Emma was crying too, so I comforted her and she fell asleep. Then I called his dad. I told him what had happened. I just had to tell someone, you know? I mean, I was a mess. Then I packed all of his things up. I was still bawling. I thought maybe I’d throw them in the trash or burn them, I don’t know, but by the time I was done, I was too exhausted to do anything with them, and Emma had woken up from her nap, so I had to look after her. In the morning, what had happened seemed so surreal. I guess I was still hoping that he’d come back; that’s why I didn’t throw away his things. Then you came by and told me he’d died...”

“Hmm.” Officer Gray is still watching Julia closely, and Julia can’t tell what’s going through the cop’s mind. Does she believe what Julia just told her? It does sound ridiculous, even to Julia’s own ears. “And where were you the night that Vera’s teahouse was broken into?”

Julia is grasping at straws. “I—well, here! I have a toddler. I’m here every freaking night, okay?” Oh god, she hadn’t meant to lose her temper like that. “I know how bad this looks—” Julia says, shifting uncomfortably, and her elbow knocks against the cushion next to her. The cushion covering Oliver’s manuscript. Her eyesdart to the manuscript and quickly back to Officer Gray’s face, and something in Julia’s expression must have betrayed her, because Officer Gray practically pounces on the manuscript.

“What’s this?”

“Oh, it’s just—”

Officer Gray turns the manuscript pages with interest. “Huh. Oliver Chen. That’s Marshall’s twin brother, isn’t it? He’s a writer? He give this to you?”

“Ah—” Julia tries to think of something to say. But what? She doesn’t even really know what she should say here. She’s so incredibly furious at Oliver, yes, but she’s not sure if she should be telling Officer Gray anything, not until she’s fully figured out what the hell really happened. But now it’s out of her hands, literally, and in Officer Gray’s. “I found it here. He must’ve given it to Vera. Or maybe Vera took it herself, I don’t know. I think it’s just some made-up boring story.” She gives the world’s fakest laugh and reaches for the manuscript, but Officer Gray holds it out of reach.

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to borrow this for a bit. I like to do a bit of reading now and again. Take a break from social media.”

No, no!

---