The Widower's Wife: A Thriller Read Online Free Page B

What I wouldn’t give to have them back.
    “How can I help any more than I am?” The question slipped out along with my tears. “I work ten hours a day, twelve with the commute. I’m pretty much the only one taking care of Sophia, not to mention the cleaning and the cooking.” I choked out a sob. “I’m sorry that I can’t go from being a stay-at-home mom to making millions overnight. But I am trying.”
    Tom watched me cry as though I were a wounded animal and not his wife. Anger overwhelmed my sadness. How could he just stand there? Helpless. I threw up my hands. “What more can I do?” I shouted. “Really, Tom, what else do you need me to do?”
    He grasped my forearms. “It’s not you. Okay? I know you’re doing everything you can. I’m trying to talk to you about what I can do.”
    He cupped my cheek with his palm. The gesture warmed like a good memory. I wanted to lose myself in it, spend time in before , when we were happy.
    My eyes closed a moment longer than a blink. When they reopened, Tom was staring at me, jaw set tight.
    “I want to take out a life insurance policy,” he said. “Then I want to fake my death.”

3
    November 16
    T he traffic light switched from green to yellow. Ryan slid his foot off the gas and let the Dodge slow to a roll. He could have gunned the six-cylinder engine and, in all likelihood, made it through the intersection before the light turned red, but he didn’t take idle risks. Twenty-five percent of accidents resulted from running a red. Another 23 percent were blamed on weather conditions like the tire-stamped slush on the road.
    Goons gambled with their safety. And though many of the investigators that Ryan had met were little better than goombahs with gun permits, he wasn’t one of those. Ryan was a numbers man. Part detective, part mathematician. He prided himself on his ability to make informed decisions, to calculate the odds of potential outcomes, drawing from the encyclopedia of stats that he recalled with such ease. He figured he had a touch of Asperger’s syndrome, though he’d never been tested. He did have the symptoms: fixated interests (statistics), an inability to read body language (a problem he’d solved with countless hours researching and analyzing behavior), and relatively low empathy (very much an issue, if you asked his ex-wife).
    The light flipped red. Ryan scanned the sights of downtown suburbia as the car idled. A sprawling two-story school building extended from the side of a modest church. A café sign hung above a converted train station beside snow-packed tracks. Not much to see—just as with his case.
    Tom hadn’t given him anything to indicate that Ana had been depressed, and probably wouldn’t if he could help it. Ryan needed to find someone without a financial interest in Mrs. Bacon’s psychological condition.
    Ana’s parents in Brazil might know if she’d been suicidal. But they also had too great a stake in the insurance benefit to come clean about it. Though Sophia was Ana’s primary beneficiary, Anna had set aside a small portion of the death benefit for her parents’ care. Moreover, Ana had made her folks Sophia’s secondary guardians. If anything happened to Tom, then Ana’s parents would gain control of the ten million and Sophia. Still, Ryan would have to talk to them, if only to check a box on his report.
    A horn interrupted his thoughts. The light had changed. In his rearview, a woman gesticulated as she yelled. Ryan pressed his foot on the gas, a touch too hard. The Dodge lurched into the intersection and then skidded several feet on the icy ground. Distracted drivers caused more than 40 percent of accidents. He flipped on his right blinker and turned into town.
    Gray snow, piled a foot high by plows, pressed against the curb separating the tracks from free street parking. He stepped out of his car and into an unavoidable inch of salty slush. Boots already wet, he took the direct route to the café’s side