Lover Beware 03 - After Midnight

still unsettled, still adjusting. Still on edge with her new status as a widow, and with being alone on an isolated property.
    When Patrick had been alive, he'd filled her every waking moment with his schedule of medication and bathing, the hours she'd spent trying to coax him to eat—the regular visits to the hospital for chemotherapy and radiation treatments. Later on, when the treatments had stopped, there had been hours spent with the pastor and the steady stream of relatives coming to say good-bye.
    When Patrick had finally lost his battle with the cancer that had struck out of the blue, stunning them both, and all of the rituals and formalities that accompanied death had been completed, she'd found herself abruptly alone—wrung out and empty, as if Patrick's death had sucked away all her emotions, and she was simply running on automatic. It was as if, when Patrick had died, a part of her had shut down, too. She went through the motions. She ate her meals, and she slept eight hours a night; she cleaned her house and weeded her garden and tended to the animals. She'd even started doing the extra jobs, like painting the barn. The physical exertion helped fill the void, but the numbing repetitive work didn't solve the curious sense of blankness, as if, like a pupa, she was isolated and enclosed, caught in a curious stasis, waiting for change.
    According to her doctor, there was nothing physically wrong with her, other than the natural cycle of grief. The way she was feeling was perfectly understandable given the strain she'd been under. He'd prescribed antidepressants if she wanted them, but so far Jane had resisted medication.

    176
    FIONA BRAND
    The years of taking prescription medication for an ulcer that hadn't disappeared until she'd walked away from nervy stocks and volatile futures, which shifted like wet sand with every ebb and flow of the markets, had been enough, and besides, she was stubborn. She was thirty-two, and she'd finally grown into a quiet acceptance of the slow rhythm and flow of country life and her own body. If what was happening to her was a natural cycle, then she would let it run its course.
    A shiver struck through her despite the heat and the hard-earned comfort of logic and reason, and wrapped her arms around her middle in automatic reflex. Sometimes she felt so blank and hollow that the emptiness would roll up from deep inside in cold, aching waves, the chill so intense that her skin would roughen, and no matter what she did she couldn't get warm.
    Objectively she could feel the warmth, see the intensity of the light, but it was as if the sun, as powerful as it was, couldn't warm her, as if some essential part of her—the hot flicker of life—had been extinguished.
    She'd been married to Patrick for ten years. In that time they should have had children. Before they'd found out about the cancer they'd tried, because they had both wanted a family, but nothing had happened. It had been the fertility tests that had shown up the cancer. Once Patrick knew the reason he hadn't been able to make her pregnant, and that he was going to die, he'd begun to make plans. He'd worked for as long as , he could at his teaching job. He'd painted the house and finished building the barn. He'd leased out the orchard so that Jane didn't have to cope with managing the fruit trees at the front of the property. He'd even tried to convince her to sell the sheep, but Jane had put her foot down at the thought of letting the southdowns go. There weren't that many—she was down to thirty now—and the sheep kept her in a steady supply of wool for her weaving business. Besides, she was strong and healthy and more than capable of looking after the sheep and the few hens she kept.
    Now that Patrick was gone, sometimes it felt like her marriage had been a mirage, or a chimera, a magical creature of illusion, that had dissolved almost before it began, leaving her stranded, all the bright promise gone.

    After Midnight
    177
    She'd spent the past seven years marking time, preparing for emptiness, and now it was finally here.
    THE NOONDAY SUN poured down on Michael Rider's back, burning his already tanned skin to copper and sending a trickle of sweat down the deep groove of his spine as his calloused, long-fingered hands closed around the Glock 19. A magpie squawked, striking a discordant note and causing a ruckus in the large, gnarled branches of the towering, ancient magnolia that occupied one corner of his