Chapter 1 #2
Ivory’s been divorced twice—to the same man—so when her now-husband Fred proposed marriage, she proposed a pre-nup with a clause that stated she could take everything from him if he left her, including his life, if need be.
They laugh about it like it’s funny, but I can’t even force a grin because it reminds me of my dead husband.
I walk toward the front of the studio where Wren is perched on a chair sipping over-sweetened coffee from a lidded mug that I keep stocked out of necessity, not hospitality. After one too many coffee spills near my priceless cameras, I insisted all cups were required to wear lids.
“I find it hard to believe you were married, Shari.” Wren clearly has never met a boundary she couldn’t trespass with her bold statement shoes.
“Why is that so shocking?” I ask, wondering if my biggest insecurity is true—that my past is so dark that no decent man on earth could possibly want me.
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s because you strike me as…” Wren assesses me carefully and scrunches her nose, “a homebody. Just not the type to put yourself out there, you know?”
“You’re saying I look frumpy,” I clarify for her.
“Well, I could always help with that and give you a makeover on my podcast. It’s my specialty.” Wren fluffs her dark waves with tips dyed fading pink. “Where’s your husband now—did he get tired of vanilla?”
I assume she’s referring to my cream-colored wardrobe and house. Certainly she can’t know my sex life was as boring as my wardrobe apparently is.
“He’s dead,” I say flatly. “I’m widowed.”
“Oh. That sucks.”
I don’t judge her inappropriate response too harshly, since she’s barely legal drinking age and probably doesn’t know any better. “Yeah, it does suck.”
“What happened to him?” Wren leans in with morbid interest. “Like, how’d he die?”
I stiffen, and Ivory must notice my discomfort because she comes to my rescue. Again.
“Wren, we don’t talk about—” Ivory pauses, because she doesn’t know my husband’s name. It’s been four years since I’ve uttered it aloud. “—Shari’s dead husband, okay? Let’s focus on aperture and shutter speed, not ancient history.”
“I’m guessing it was bad?” Wren persists.
“Well, his death sure wasn’t good.”
I should have known when the accident happened at my wedding that my marriage was doomed.
All the red flags waved even before I said yes to Stewart Dobson’s proposal, but I chose to ignore them.
When I told my future mother-in-law that I would be keeping my own last name, she warned me we wouldn’t last. Which was why I shouldn’t have been shocked on the day of our nuptials when we released doves at the ceremony, and someone mistook it for a dove hunt and proceeded to shoot each bird, spraying my dress with guts.
Ironically, it was the very same gun my husband would later die by.
Wren’s gaze sweeps over the photo gallery of my former lives, my Wall of Exile: a blood-sprayed wedding portrait; a sun-drenched California beach; a rural Pennsylvania Amish market; snow-capped Colorado peaks; and my post-prison-release seedy apartment with the buzzing AC unit and peeling wallpaper.
Most recently added is the cabin near the waterfall at Doomwood Falls, framed in the last gift my husband ever gave me before his untimely death.
The collage serves as a visual autobiography of a woman on the run, frozen in perfect symmetry across my drywall.
“Did you take all of these pictures?” Wren taps her fingernail on the picture of the cabin. I grab her finger to stop her.
“Don’t touch that. It’s sentimental.” The edge to my voice makes Wren quirk an eyebrow at me. “The frame is from my husband before he died.”
Her mouth puckers as she returns her attention to the photos with more interest than makes me comfortable. “Why’d you move around so much?”
“I just needed a change,” I answer.
“A change… or an escape?” Her question hangs in the air like fog.
My cheeks flush and heat creeps up my neck in an unspoken confession. I’ve always had a terrible poker face. “I happen to have an adventurous spirit, Wren. I like to see the world.”
Wren grins like she’s won a debate. “Adventurous spirit, huh? Is that why you’re a widow—your husband couldn’t keep up with the mysterious Shari Catalano?” She laughs like she hasn’t just thrown a grenade into the middle of the room.
“Nothing is as adventurous or as mysterious as your outfit choice, Wren,” Ivory chimes in.
I chuckle along with them, even though it sounds wrong in my throat—too high, too hollow—while Ivory shoots Wren a look sharp enough to puncture tires.
My past is a monstrous shadow I’ve tried to outrun until my feet bled, until the memories blurred, until I found this quiet corner of the world, hoping to finally outwit its relentless pursuit.
But every time I think I’ve left it behind, I feel it breathing down my neck.
Yes, it is my fault my husband is dead. And yes, I buried him while wearing an orange jumpsuit and handcuffs.
And when I finally walked out of that prison three years later—I got lucky with the sentencing due to a technicality—the air didn’t feel like freedom.
It felt like punishment, because freedom meant living with everything I’d lost. Everything he’d taken.
But I don’t need some ignorant girl to remind me of this.
“Can we get back to today’s lesson?” Apparently Ivory senses my distress and steers the conversation into safer terrain with a practiced ease that only best friends and therapists possess.
The scent of developer and acetic acid from my dark room hangs in the air. We’re about an hour into the basics of wedding photography when Ivory’s phone buzzes. She answers it with the same enthusiasm she has for tequila shots.
“Hey, baby!” she says, grinning at her husband’s face on the screen.
She glances at me, cups a hand over her mouth, and whispers, “It’s Fred.
He’s pretending to clean out the garage but I know he’s only just moving stuff around.
” Fred continues talking, then Ivory says, “One sec—” and holds the phone out to me. “He actually wants to speak to you.”
I blink. “Why does he want to talk to me?”
“No clue. Here. Find out.” She pushes the phone into my hand like it’s a ticking device.
I hold an empty screen in front of me. “Uh, Fred, you there?”
The image jostles as if the phone is being passed along, making me slightly nauseous from the jarring movement.
“Is this Sharon?” The screen is still black, but the voice isn’t Fred’s. Not unless Fred started smoking ten packs a day and has a cold.
“Uh, it’s Shari,” I answer.
Then a bleach-white smile fills the screen, and it’s not Fred’s either. “Nice to finally meet you, Sharon. I’m—”
That’s it. That’s all I hear, and it’s more than enough.
Before he finishes his sentence, before I can throw the phone at Ivory and pretend I don’t know this man, it slips from my hand onto the floor and makes a dangerous crack.
Because I know that face intimately. But it’s someone who’s supposed to be dead.