Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
My alarm went off at six, and I slapped at my phone in hopes of hitting the snooze button. Jack never does that. It’s a fundamental difference between us that I’ve stopped trying to correct.
I lay there for a minute in the dark of our bedroom and listened to the house wake up.
From the third floor in the early morning you could hear the rush of the Potomac and the birds going at it in the tree line just before the sun came up.
The sheets smelled like Jack and like sex and like the end of a very long night, and my whole body was pleasantly sore in all the right places.
I was early in my second trimester, and for some reason everything was louder than it used to be.
The morning light through the tall windows was brighter than it needed to be.
Smells were stronger. I’d read that pregnancy heightens the senses and had been skeptical until I started smelling coffee from two floors away.
The shower was already running hot and the bathroom was filled with steam. Jack had turned it on before he went downstairs, which meant he hadn’t gotten up too much earlier than I had.
I stepped inside and let the water hit my back and shoulders.
I stood there for a moment in the steam, the bathroom warm and close, the smell of Jack’s shampoo still hanging in the air from his own shower.
Despite the last couple of months—the early stages of pregnancy, the morning sickness, the violence and danger our last big cases had brought, and the destruction of the funeral home—I felt at peace.
I got out and toweled off and caught my reflection in the mirror and made the mistake of really looking.
It wasn’t dramatic. I wasn’t showing in any way a stranger would notice.
But I knew my own body, and there was a softness low on my stomach that hadn’t been there before, a slight roundness I couldn’t explain away as anything else.
I stood there for a moment with my hand flat against my own stomach, feeling the warmth of my skin under my palm, and thought about what it meant that I still felt at peace with it.
I pulled on black pants and a black-and-white striped sleeveless top. The top was tighter across my chest than it had been the last time I’d worn it. I raised my eyebrows at my own reflection. The girls had apparently decided to make themselves known. I’d always wanted breasts.
I put on mascara and called it done.
Jack was at the kitchen table with his phone to his ear when I came downstairs. He raised his brows in acknowledgment and I went over to the espresso machine. All I had to do was punch the button and the beans ground themselves and made me a fresh cup. Even I couldn’t mess it up.
I waited for the mug and leaned against the counter. Jack was still on his call, so I used the time to dial Richmond. The tech picked up on the second ring and I asked him to run specific tests for testosterone and performance-enhancing steroids. I thanked him and hung up.
Jack was already off his call. He was leaning against the counter with his coffee mug, watching me, and there was a slow smile at the corner of his mouth that told me exactly what he was thinking about.
“Good morning,” he said.
“You could’ve woken me up the fun way,” I said.
“We had a case.”
“We always have a case.”
He smiled and set his mug down and crossed the kitchen and kissed me—not a quick kiss, but the slow kind that meant he remembered exactly how the night had ended. His hands were warm on my waist and I leaned into him for a moment and let myself just be there.
“You smell good,” he said against my hair.
“I used your shampoo.”
“I know.” He pulled back and looked at me, and his eyes went to the top for a half second and back up. “I like that shirt.”
“I think you like what’s inside it.”
He smirked and said, “We need to get going. We’ve got a stop to make before we meet Sheri Downs.”
“Where?”
“It’s a surprise.”
I finished my coffee while he rinsed his mug, and we left before Doug was up.
The county looked different this early. We turned off Heresy Road and headed toward town. I was curious where we were headed, but I knew not to press.
We passed swaths of land and farmhouses before we got closer into town. We passed the Presbyterian church and the graveyard, and were heading in the direction of the funeral home. I exhaled slowly when I realized the anxiety of passing by had me holding my breath.
Jack noticed.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Just watching,” I said. We drove past the funeral home without stopping, and I let myself look at what was left of it as we went by.
Not much. The roof was gone and the upper floors had collapsed.
What was left was three exterior walls and a pile of charred debris where the interior used to be.
One of the two old elm trees that had shaded the yard for a hundred years had burned down to a black stump.
The other still stood but the leaves were gone and the bark had split.
Yellow caution tape ran the perimeter. A chain-link construction fence had been put up at some point, and someone had attached a weathered county notice to it. Then it was behind us.
Jack turned onto Seymour Court and slowed.
I knew the house the moment I saw the fence.
I’d driven past it my whole life. You couldn’t live in Bloody Mary and not know the Greek Revival on Seymour Court—a white three-story with six columns across the front portico and a roofline with a full-width pediment.
Every window had black shutters, and the covered front porch ran the full width of the house.
The whole thing sat back from the road on what had to be fifteen or twenty acres, and the property was lined with a white painted wood fence that ran as far as I could see in both directions.
Mature trees lined the fence and extended beyond it, and somewhere back in the tree line you could make out the shapes of outbuildings.
The house had been in the Aldrich family since the 1840s until the last of them—an elderly widow named Frances—died without heirs three years ago and left the estate to the historical preservation society that didn’t have the funds to maintain it and couldn’t agree on what to do with it.
It had been tied up in legal proceedings ever since, sitting empty while lawyers billed hours and the grass grew long and the paint on the shutters started to peel at the corners.
Jack pulled into the driveway and stopped at the gate.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“I have no idea,” I said. “What am I thinking about?”
“The funeral home,” he said. “I think it’d be the perfect place to relocate.”
“This is millions of dollars,” I said. “We would never make that back from a funeral home.”
“I know,” he said.
“So?”
“So I’ve been thinking about that.” He looked out the window for a moment.
“This property could support a lot more than a funeral home. You’ve got the acreage for a chapel and a proper reception hall, which means you’re not just offering preparation—you’re doing the full service and the gathering afterward.
We could offer weddings as well. That’s a different revenue model.
And if you build cabins back in the trees, you’ve got somewhere for families to stay, wedding parties to book, overnight guests.
There’s nothing like it anywhere in the state of Virginia. ”
I looked at the fence line. “Weddings and funerals.” I felt dread in my gut. “I’m not a wedding planner.”
“You don’t have to be. The house would be yours for the funeral home. Any other businesses on the property would have a manager. With the rate the county is growing, I think we can recoup our money in five years.”
I was quiet for a moment. “You’ve been thinking about this for a while.”
“About a week,” he said. “I got early word that the historical society has decided to sell. It’s not public knowledge yet.”
“What about my funeral home?” I asked. “The old one, I mean.”
“I’ve not shown you this to make you sad,” he said.
“If you want to keep the old funeral home and rebuild you should. But I know you’re wanting to get back in your own space, and this is the quickest way to do it.
All the other is the business side of me making sure we have an inheritance to leave to our kids. ”
This was a good thing, I knew. Jack had a head for business. I still had no clue of the scope of not only his family wealth, but what he’d done to expand it over the years. But I also knew that if anyone could turn this place into a success, it was him.
I just wasn’t as keen on the other businesses. I liked my funeral home. And I liked being coroner. It just so happened the two collided in a compatible way. Mostly I didn’t care for people. At least the living ones.
“Maybe the delay on the insurance money is a sign,” I said. “I’ve been thinking more about legacy and what that means now that the baby is coming.
“Your family has an incredible legacy. Not just the land and the farm and the businesses. But your family—your parents and uncles and aunts and cousins. You come from a good family that knows how to love and nurture and protect. And I love that our children will inherit that legacy. But what do I have to contribute?”
“Jaye,” he interrupted.
“No, let me finish,” I said. “I always thought that the funeral home would be my legacy. Something to pass down that came from my family. And then after the explosion destroyed it, I had this grief over something that was nothing but an empty shell that held secrets and darkness and lies. Why would I want to pass that on to our children? That’s not a legacy I’d ever want them to have to carry. ”
I stared at the Greek Revival that looked like something out of Gone with the Wind, and something clicked into place.
“So maybe it’s time to let it go,” I said. “And start something fresh. The insurance can play out and then we can sell it and cut our losses.”
“Are you sure?” he asked, looking me over closely.
“Can we afford this place?” I asked.