Page 123 of Happy Wife

Did you hear what happened to Nora Somerset? It’s a crazy story.

The night of Will’s party, Fritz—extremely inebriated—left with some lawyer friends, and as he was apparently known to do, abandoned his phone and his blazer on a chair somewhere out on our lawn for Gianna to deal with. Which she dutifully did. She and Fritz had taken to boating to our place when they visited, because Fritz liked to skirt DUI laws. So Gianna took their boat home, but somewhere between our house and theirs she had the idea to try to confront Will. Knowing Fritz was worried about the state of things in his partnership with Will, she decided to dowhat she does best: Handle it. She went back to our dock and called him from Fritz’s phone, claiming she was having boat trouble. Maybe he could come take a look? Will, being Will, of course obliged and went down.

Why he said it was Mia calling is the one piece that will never make sense to me, but after years of thinking on his feet in a courtroom, he handled the misdirect deftly. He probably knew if he told me Gianna was having boat problems, I would’ve told him to let her sink and drown. Will didn’t want the fight. He never wanted the fight, but especially not on his birthday. Things were good between us again. Sometimes it’s okay to skip the dumb fights. Happy wife, happy life, and all that.

But not telling me set something far more sinister into motion. Something that sent Winter Park into a spiral.

Gianna had heard Fritz and Will’s failed conversation by the dock during the party, she had doubled back when the lights around the house were turned down. When questioned by the police, she said she was trying to reason with Will and smooth over his issues with Fritz. She knew about Dean, and the money troubles. For all of their problems, Gianna and Fritz were thick as thieves in that way. She also knew that Fritz suspected Will was planning to leave the firm. All those late nights Will had been pulling were time he had put into working on his exit strategy. Will had stood his ground with Gianna. He had turned a blind eye to a lot of things, but Fritz was committing fraud. Gianna couldn’t negotiate her way around that fact—Fritz had driven the ship into the iceberg and Will wasn’t going to go down with him.

After they talked and he checked Gianna’s boat—it turned over just fine—Will stepped back onto the dock and bade her good night. That’s when she came after him with a hammer Fritz kept in the boat, walloping him until he was unconscious, then rolled him off the dock, watching him disappear beneath the water’s surface. His shirt snagged on the propeller of her boat—they’d found some threading on it after the fact—which explained why his shirt had shown up before his body.

The whole thing was messier than Gianna had hoped, but a dead Will couldn’t turn Fritz in for fraud. She used a bucket from her boat and the lake water to wash away the blood and ditched the hammer under the dock. She had thought of almosteverything. But she hadn’t thought about the blood on the bimini. Which did, in fact, match her DNA profile.

The rest of the story is something we may never know for certain. At least that’s what the authorities have told me. We were left to surmise because Will isn’t here to tell us. Ardell and his team spent their fair share of time wondering how the gemstone got in his stomach, but knowing Will, I have a pretty strong idea. Always the lawyer, he knew a good piece of evidence anywhere. And he knew good evidence was to be protected. He must have sensed his demise or at least an imminent loss of consciousness, and when the stone popped out of Gianna’s ring, knocked loose during the struggle, he swallowed it. He knew I’d be able to recognize it. And in that one act he gave me his parting gift—the power to take down Gianna Hall.

Gianna was always cleaning up after Fritz. I can’t say I believe the bit about her trying to smooth things over with Will. The size of the wounds in the back of his head would suggest blind rage, not steady rationality. But it was almost the perfect crime, because why would anyone look at Gianna? She’d placed a heavy bet on Fritz’s connections keeping her out of the pool of suspects and figured Fritz might be able to do some double-dealing if she was brought in. She’d probably covered up enough for him through the years to be able to call in the favor. But with Fritz in hot water for the financial crimes around the firm, his social capital was gone, which meant so were her protections. She hadn’t accounted for Dean and Perry. She hadn’t accounted for Fritz being arrested. And she certainly hadn’t accounted forme.

My theory on her motive is that Will was going to dethrone Fritz and Gianna, the royalty of Winter Park, and she wasn’t going to allow that to happen. All she had was the life she had created, and maintained at any cost to anyone else. Will had become another one of Fritz’s messes that she was going to clean up.

For all of the ways he kept trying to put himself in the middle of the investigation, there were plenty of questions about whether Fritz had known what Gianna did. But both of them denied Fritz’s involvement in Will’s murder. Even if things were tenuous between them, Fritz wouldn’t be foolish enough to kill off his biggest source of income. Will had been single-handedly floating the company with his work and reputation. Fritz was convinced hecould salvage things. As for Gianna, she was Machiavellian enough to know there are some secrets a lady takes with her to the grave.

The four of us were sadly entangled—Will, Fritz, Gianna, and me. We had all worked to keep up appearances and hold our perfect lives together, each in our own way.

Cable newsrooms were thrilled. In the end, therewasa pretty wife who’d committed murder, but she wasn’t dumb. She was calculating. Lindy had dined out on the story for weeks. I had secretly felt vindicated by it.

Now, Este is watching me move a few boxes around the living room. “You know you’re rich, right? Paying people to move your shit around for you is one of the greatest luxuries fuck-you money can buy. And where is Autumn? I would think color-coding your boxes and running around this house like a maniac with a label maker would be her version of Disney World.”

“She’s coming by later to deal with the Realtor. I’ve made her promise to call only if the house is on fire. I don’t think I’ll ever want to set foot in this place again.”

I follow Este into the kitchen, where she turns around and looks at me. “This is such bullshit. I can’t even bribe you to stay next door anymore. You’re too expensive.”

In the middle of all the shit, it really hadn’t occurred to me that Will would leave money behind. That all of this was going to be mine. While there’d been a trust for Mia since the day she was born, the account would get a healthy infusion, but she couldn’t touch it for anything other than education until she was thirty. Will was adamant that she needed to figure out who she was without money first. Constance would get the equivalent of her alimony until Mia graduated. But the rest was mine. Like I had won some fucked-up dark-web lottery.

Dead husband? Winner! Here’s tens of millions of dollars.

The resolution of the Martinez case Fritz had been keeping an eagle eye on was a nine-figure payout, something the Halls had been counting on to take care of their outstanding debts. Fritz’s half of the case fee was seized by the IRS. But for me, it was a cherry on top of an already massive pile of money. I had absolutely no idea what I was going to do with any of it.

I put my hand on the amber pendant around my neck.

We were happy. There was a time when we were each just what the other needed.

The memory of Will giving me the necklace is worth more than any of the money.

As for Fritz’s finances, the investigation Will had commissioned with Dean had given authorities a strong start. The feds had gone on to uncover proof that Fritz had bled his estate dry on a series of failed investments, a busted Ponzi scheme that he was too dumb to execute, and an ungodly amount of gambling, drugs, and alcohol. Fritz had squandered a few million dollars on bets alone when he got hammered on a trip to Vegas. Their historic house was finally up for sale after months of legal holdups. The Hall family’s legal team had high hopes that the proceeds of the sale could shore up all the money Fritz had leveraged our names to steal. And the proceeds of the sale of Fritz and Will’s law practice, the building, and the entirety of the Hall estate would be divided among equity partners and Lenore; the rest would go to Mia and the Halls’ kids. I didn’t want a single cent of that cesspool.

Este told me that in time I would figure out what to do with the money Will had left me. She’d set me up with her fancy wealth manager. I didn’t want to think about it now. First, a new start in a rental a few minutes away, then the spoils of this tragic war.

“You know there is no scenario in which I could stay in this house,” I say to Este. “But you’re going to see me all the time. Instead of waking up and walking next door, you can just call me. But please stop FaceTiming from the bathtub. It’s weird and there aren’t enough bubbles.”

“You say it like it’s a crime to do my administrative tasks from the tub. It’s called balance; look it up.”

She hugs me too hard, and I tell her I love her. “I really don’t know if I would have survived this without you.”

“And you’ve decided to repay this debt by leaving me.”

I don’t know how else to tell her I’m notleavingleaving. But she’s right that things are changing. They have to. I give her a look, and she softens.

“I’m proud of you,” she says. The words come out shaky, and I think she might cry.

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