Her Last Doubt (Rachel Gift #24)

PROLOGUE

Margaret Osley set the phone down on the side table and eased back into her chair, satisfied.

Such a feeling of satisfaction was often rare for a woman of her age.

At eighty-three, she focused on these sorts of moments every chance she got.

The apartment was quiet now, a gentle and soothing silence she had hated about a year and a half ago but had recently come to love and appreciate.

Outside the window to her right, Richmond was unrolling its usual nighttime scene: a distant siren, the soft percussion of rain beginning against the glass, the occasional muffled voice from the hallway.

She barely heard any of it, though. She was still thinking about what she'd told her daughter on the phone less than two minutes ago.

It had taken her weeks to say it out loud…

weeks of rehearsing it in the shower and at the breakfast table and during the long slow afternoons when Miller's absence still sometimes caught her off guard.

But she'd said it tonight, clearly and without apology, and Samantha had listened without interrupting. In fact, Samantha hadn’t said a word until she was done.

"Mom," Samantha had said finally, "are you sure?"

"I'm sure."

And she was. She'd been sure since the morning back in February when she'd driven past Meadowview Estates with its manicured grounds and its enormous American flag.

And of course, there was the verbiage on the entrance sign that read Assisted Living and Memory Care in cheerful blue letters.

The idea of it was almost repulsive to her.

She wasn't ready for that. She wasn't sure she'd ever be ready for that.

The Hargrove had been her home for fourteen years, and she intended to die here.

She was healthy for her age and had no immediate concerns.

But she was also realistic. She knew she may only have a handful of years left, and she wanted to spend them in her own apartment, on her own time, without anyone managing it for her.

Samantha's kids had gotten on the phone for a few minutes near the end.

Her granddaughter Becca, twelve and already more sophisticated than Margaret had been at thirty, wanted to tell her about a book she was reading.

Her grandson Tyler, seven, mostly wanted to tell her about a frog he'd found in the backyard.

She listened to both with equal pleasure.

Samantha was doing well at the publishing house; it was her second year as an acquisitions editor, a job she'd worked toward for a long time, and she had finally started to date again after her divorce had been finalized about eight months ago.

Margaret was proud of Samantha in the uncomplicated way that grandchildren make possible. Her own failure to become what she'd once imagined no longer seemed like a loss when she watched what Samantha had made of herself.

It had been a good phone call, even after Margaret had dropped that hard bit of information. Samantha and the kids lived a bit farther down south, in Greensboro, North Carolina. They’d spoken about a visit, though hadn’t settled on a date. But the mere idea of it was cheerful enough.

Miller had been gone for a year and a half now.

The cancer had come fast and gone faster, which the hospice nurse had told them was sometimes a mercy.

Margaret hadn't believed it at the time, but she was beginning to believe it now.

The apartment still held him in small, stubborn ways — the dent in the far couch cushion he'd always claimed, the particular way the bathroom mirror caught the morning light because he'd insisted on hanging it a full inch higher than she wanted.

She'd stopped trying to correct these things and had come to cherish them.

She got up from the chair and began to move through her nighttime routine.

She ran warm water in the bathroom sink and washed her face with the same bar soap she'd used for forty years.

She took her blood pressure medication and her vitamin D, and the fish oil that she remained unconvinced about but took anyway, simply because Samantha worried about it.

She brushed her teeth and rinsed and checked that the kitchen stove was off, even though she hadn't used it since lunch.

Miller had always checked it, and she had inherited the habit.

She put on her nightgown and turned off the overhead light in the bedroom, leaving only the small lamp on the nightstand.

From the window, she could see a thin slice of the street below lit in an orange hue by the nearest streetlamp.

The Hargrove was old (built in 1924, the lobby plaque said) and the building made the noises old buildings made.

She'd learned them all the way you learn a person's sounds—the pop of the pipes in cold weather, the occasional deep groan from somewhere in the walls that she suspected was the elevator system, the way a draft could make the windows breathe.

She checked the clock as she entered her bedroom. It was 9:52. She was rarely out of bed past ten, and usually asleep by 10:30. It really all depended on whether or not she was currently reading a book and if she was, how good it was.

She turned down the bed and climbed in, drawing the blankets up to her chest. She was tired in a contented way, the tiredness of a day that had ended well.

She thought about Samantha's voice, the steadiness of it.

She thought about Becca's book and Tyler's frog.

She knew she had lived a good life and she was grateful to still be blessed with such things this deep into it.

"Okay, Mom,” Samantha had said at the end of the call. “If that's where you want to be."

She was nearly asleep when she heard the sound from the living room.

It was difficult to describe. It wasn't loud, and it wasn't a crash or a bump.

It was more like pressure shifting, like a door that had been open finding a new position.

She lay still for a moment, listening, but the building offered up only its usual complaints in the form of the pipes, that low, distant groan.

She decided it was the building settling, as buildings do, and turned onto her side.

She closed her eyes.

The room changed in some way that had nothing to do with sound. She registered it the way you register a shadow crossing your face while you sleep, not quite waking but knowing something is different.

But she knew something was wrong.

She opened her eyes again, just in time to notice the large shape by her bed. She tried to move, but she was too slow. And when she drew in a breath to scream, it was blocked off by the pillow that was pushed down hard across her face.