The 8th Confession (Women's Murder Club 8)

Then I made that romantic, candlelit march all by myself down the thirty-foot corridor, through the restaurant, and out to the back garden.

I got there as the waiter was taking the plates away.

“Down in front!” the person who’d yelled before yelled again. “You. Yes, you.”

I sat down across from Joe, said, “That was stupid of me and I’m sorry.”

Joe’s expression told me that he was really wounded. He said, “I’m sorry, too. I shouldn’t have sprung that on you, but I didn’t imagine you’d react like that.”

“No, don’t apologize. You were right and I was a complete idiot, Joe. Will you please forgive me?”

“I’ve already forgiven you. But Lindsay, every time we fight, the elephant in our relationship does what it does.”

“Trumpets?” I asked, trying to be helpful.

Joe smiled, but it was a sad smile.

“You’re going on forty.”

“I know that. Thank you.”

“I’ll be forty-seven, as you pointed out, tomorrow. Last year I asked you to marry me. The ring I gave you is still in a box in a drawer, not on your finger. What I want for my birthday? I want you to decide, Lindsay.”

With the precisely inconvenient timing waiters around the world have perfected, a trio of young men grouped around our table, a small cake in hand, candles burning, and began singing “Happy Birthday” to Joe. Just as I had planned.

The song was picked up by other diners, and a lot of eyes turned on us. Joe smiled, blew out the candles.

Then he looked at me, love written all over his face. He said, “Don’t beg, Blondie. I’m not going to say what I wished for.”

Did I feel the fool for blighting our evening?

I did.

Did I know what to do about Joe’s wish and that diamond ring in its black velvet box?

>

I did not.

But I was pretty sure my indecision had nothing to do with Joe.

Chapter 11

WE WOKE UP before dawn and made urgent love without speaking. Hair was pulled, lips were bitten, pillows were thrown on the floor.

The fierce lovemaking was true, heartfelt acknowledgment that we were stuck. That there was nothing either one of us could say that the other didn’t already know.

Our skin glistening in the afterglow, we lay together side by side, our hands gripped tightly together. The high-tech clock on the nightstand projected the time and outside temperature on the ceiling in large red digits.

Five fifteen a.m.

Fifty-two degrees.

Joe said, “I had a good dream. Everything is going to be okay.”

Was he assuring me? Or reassuring himself?

“What was the dream?”