To Catch the Moon by Diana Dempsey

cross and
recross her legs, and occasionally finger her hair, as if all she
wanted was to get this over with.
    Alicia watched. As a prosecutor she was
constantly assessing people: defendants, witnesses, potential
jurors. After ten years in the business, she prided herself on her
instincts.
    Yet those instincts were in a muddle when it
came to Joan Gaines. There was something false about her, though
Alicia thought that was true of most rich people. She was about the
coldest fish Alicia had ever run across. What kind of woman didn’t
ask a single question about how her husband had been killed? What
kind of wife didn’t care to know the details? It was so far from
the typical spousal reaction that Alicia didn’t know what to make
of it.
    Finally Penrose was finished. Silence
fell.
    “How did you meet your husband?” Alicia heard
herself ask, and was rewarded with an affronted look from Joan
Gaines and a scowl from Penrose. She was curious, she realized, not
just to hear the answer to that question but to hear Joan Gaines
talk about her murdered spouse.
    “We met in New York,” she said
eventually.
    “You were living there at the time?”
    Her tone was curt. “I was working in
investment banking.”
    “Was this before Mr. Gaines bought Headwaters
Resources?”
    “Yes, he was still in private equity.”
    Penrose cut in, with another pointed glare at
Alicia. “Joan, I drafted a potential time line for the trial,
assuming that Treebeard is picked up within the next few days, as
we expect him to be. I know you need to plan your time.” He reached
down into the leather briefcase at his feet and pulled out a manila
file. He was about to spread it open on the coffee table when he
stopped. The dirty tea tray was in the way.
    Slowly Joan turned her head from Penrose
toward Alicia. “I’m so sorry,” she said, though there was no
apology in her smooth voice. Her blue eyes shone with a curious
light. “Will you clear that, please?”
    Alicia froze. Maybe she hadn’t heard right,
or had misunderstood. “Excuse me?”
    “Will you clear that?”
    She’d heard right. She’d understood.
    Nobody moved. It felt to Alicia as if time
stopped. Even Penrose seemed to be in a kind of suspended
animation.
    Something inside her seethed. The small, dark
crypt in her soul where she’d buried the frustrations of
thirty-five years. Always having to do without, her and her
sisters. Her father never home because he was driving that damn
eighteen-wheeler. The drawn, worried face of her mother, her beauty
stolen at a young age by poverty and childbirth. Her own burden,
knowing she was the only one who could pull the family out of the
mire. And worst of all, that horrible night when she learned that
her father had fallen asleep at the wheel, and knew from then on
that what he had done, she would have to do. She would have to
support her mother and sisters. Then and always.
    Most times Alicia was resigned to her
history. Sometimes it grated. And sometimes, as on this night, it
fueled a cold anger that could barely contain itself within her
skin.
    “No,” she heard herself say into the silent
room, “I will not clear it. If you want it cleared, either do it
yourself or call room service.”
    The other woman’s eyes narrowed. Alicia
forced herself to hold Joan Gaines’ stare, though her heart pounded
fiercely inside her chest. Penrose was oddly forgotten; it was as
if the two women were alone in the room. Abruptly Joan Gaines stood
up. “We’re finished here.”
    Alicia had a feeling of having won a point in
a contest that had not yet been declared. She remained seated and
smiled, her heart still thumping. “Actually, I have a few more
questions. I was curious what time you returned home last Saturday
and what you were so busy doing that you didn’t notice your husband
lying with an arrow in his chest on the floor of the library.”
    “That’s enough, Alicia,” Penrose barked, his
face flushed, but Joan Gaines said nothing at all.