Secret Prey

was standing in the doorway as she limped up the sidewalk. Putting on the limp.
    ‘‘I’m sorry,’’ Helen said. ‘‘He was hurting you so badly that I don’t think I had a choice.’’
    Audrey nodded abruptly and let Helen take her coat at the door. ‘‘Still hurt,’’ she mumbled. And she looked terrible. The bruises were going yellow, and her hair, unwashed since the attack, looked like sticky pieces of dirty brown kite string.
    ‘‘Let me get you a coffee,’’ Helen said, bustling around.
    ‘‘Why aren’t you working?’’ Audrey asked. Audrey hadn’t worked since Wilson’s second promotion, the one that carried him into mortgages. She’d always talked about Helen’s having a ‘‘career’’ in a way that made both Helen and her ex-husband feel like rag-pickers.
    ‘‘I had personal time coming, and since the fight with Wilson, I thought . . . I just thought I ought to be around,’’ Helen said from the kitchen. She appeared a moment later with the coffee. ‘‘How are you?’’
    Audrey shook her head: ‘‘I still hurt. I still feel like I’ve been in an auto accident . . . and Wilson . . .’’ She sniffed.
    ‘‘When’s the funeral?’’
    ‘‘They released him today. His father’s secretary called and said his father wanted to handle the funeral, but I said no, I would handle it. It’s at Bite Brothers, day after tomorrow, at two o’clock.’’
    ‘‘I’ll take you,’’ Helen said.
    ‘‘Thank you. I think we should go in Wilson’s Lexus, though.’’
    ‘‘No problem; I’ll come over to your place with Connie, and we’ll all go together in the Lexus.’’
    They talked for a few minutes about the funeral, sipping the coffee as they talked. Then Audrey asked, ‘‘What all did Detective Davenport want to talk about?’’
    ‘‘Oh, he just figured out that I was the one who wrote the letter about Wilson,’’ Helen said. ‘‘And he wanted to know why I thought Wilson did it.’’
    ‘‘You know, I’m not sure Wilson did all those things,’’ Audrey said tentatively.
    Helen looked away, flushing just a bit; this embarrassed her. ‘‘Oh, Audrey . . . I know you loved him.’’
    ‘‘Yes. And sometimes . . . I don’t know.’’
    ‘‘What?’’ Helen asked. Audrey almost never opened up. Now she seemed about to.
    ‘‘I sometimes wondered myself. Something you don’t know—and please don’t tell Detective Davenport this, I mean, Wilson is gone—but I began to wonder myself. And after Andy Ingall disappeared on his boat, well, Wilson was gone the night before. He came home at three o’clock in the morning, and he’d been drinking, and we had an awful fight. And the next day, Andy sailed away. That’s when I began to wonder.’’
    ‘‘You should have said something,’’ Helen said.
    ‘‘I . . . really did love him,’’ Audrey said. ‘‘And he loved me. Nobody ever loved me before, no man did. I’m not so good-looking as you are . . .’’
    ‘‘Oh, shut up, Audrey,’’ Helen said. ‘‘As soon as this is all over with, we’ll take you to a friend of mine for a makeover, and you’ll be amazed. You’ll have guys coming around. You’ve got the whole rest of your life to look forward to.’’
    ‘‘Unless they send me to jail,’’ Audrey said piteously.
    ‘‘No way,’’ Helen declared. ‘‘I asked Detective Davenport about that, and he said that the county attorney was ready to declare that it was self-defense. Which it obviously was . . .’’
    Audrey perked up a bit at that. ‘‘Maybe I could do a makeover,’’ she said, brushing some of her sticky hair away from her face. ‘‘That would be good . . .’’
    ‘‘So you’ll be okay?’’
    ‘‘I think so. I have to go now, there’s more funeral things to be done. I talked to Wilson’s father; he seemed to think the whole thing was like a bad business deal. I was afraid he’d hate me. But he didn’t seem any different.’’
    ‘‘Well, you know the old man,’’ Helen said. She’d met him two or three times at the McDonalds’ house; he was, she thought, a spectacular horse’s ass. ‘‘Though usually, they say, having a child die is the worst thing that can happen to a person.’’
    ‘‘Not for that old man; he is a monster,’’ Audrey said.
    ‘‘I was just talking about our folks with Detective Davenport,’’ Helen said. She’d gone to get Audrey’s coat from a chair, and didn’t see her sister jerk around toward