The Sinner: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

when she was a child. The book of holiday songs should still be in the piano bench, where it had been stored since . . .
    Since my last Christmas with Victor.
    She looked at the phone on the end table. Already, she could feel the effects of the sherry, and she knew that any decision she made now would be tainted by alcohol. By recklessness.
    Yet she picked up the phone. As the hotel operator rang his room, she stared at the fireplace, thinking: This is a mistake. This is only going to break my heart.
    He answered: “Maura?” Without her saying a word, he had known she was the one calling.
    “I know it’s late,” she said.
    “It’s only ten thirty.”
    “Still, I shouldn’t have called.”
    “So why did you?” he asked softly.
    She paused and closed her eyes. Even then, she could still see the glow of the flames.
Even if you don’t look at them, even if you pretend they aren’t there, the flames are still burning. Whether or not you see them, they burn.
    “I thought it was time to stop avoiding you,” she said. “Or I’ll never get on with my life.”
    “Well, that’s a flattering reason for you to call.”
    She sighed. “It’s not coming out right.”
    “I don’t think there’s any way to say it kindly, what you want to tell me. The least you can do is say it to me in person. Not over the phone.”
    “Would that be kinder?”
    “It’d be a hell of a lot braver.” A dare. An attack on her courage.
    She sat up straighter, her gaze back on the fire. “Why would it make a difference to you?”
    “Because let’s face it, we both need to move on. We’re stuck in place, since neither of us really understands what went wrong. I loved you, and I think you loved me, yet look where we ended up. We can’t even be friends. Tell me why that is. Why can’t two people, who just happened to be married to each other, have a civilized conversation? The way we would with anyone else?”
    “Because you’re not anyone else.”
Because I loved you.
    “We can do that, can’t we? Just talk, face to face. Bury the ghosts. I won’t be in town long. It’s now or never. Either we go on hiding from each other, or we bring this out in the open and talk about what happened. Put the blame on me, if you want to. I admit, I deserve a lot of it. But let’s stop pretending the other one doesn’t exist.”
    She looked down at her empty sherry glass. “When do you want to meet?”
    “I could come over now.”
    Through the window, she saw the decorative lights across the street suddenly go dark, the twinkling icicles vanishing into a snowy night. A week before Christmas, and in all her life, she had never felt so lonely.
    “I live in Brookline,” she said.

S EVEN
     
    S HE SAW HIS HEADLIGHTS through the falling snowflakes. He drove slowly, in search of her house, and came to a stop at the end of her driveway. Are you having doubts too, Victor? she thought. Are you wondering if this is a mistake, that you should turn around and go back to the city?
    The car pulled over to the curb and parked.
    She stepped away from the window and stood in the living room, aware that her heart was pounding, her hands sweating. The sound of the doorbell made her draw in a startled breath. She was unprepared to face him, but he was here now, and she couldn’t very well leave him standing outside in the cold.
    The bell rang again.
    She opened the door and snowflakes whirled in. They sparkled on his jacket, glittered in his hair, his beard. It was a classic Hallmark moment, the old lover standing on her doorstep, his hungry gaze searching her face, and she couldn’t think of anything to say except, “Come in.” No kiss, no hug, not even a brushing of hands.
    He stepped inside and shrugged off his jacket. As she hung it up, the familiar smell of leather, of Victor, brought an ache to her throat. She shut the closet and turned to look at him. “Would you like a drink?”
    “How about some coffee?”
    “The real stuff?”
    “It’s only been three years, Maura. You have to ask?”
    No, she didn’t have to ask. High-octane and black was the way he always drank it. She felt an unsettling sense of familiarity as she led him into the kitchen, as she took the bag of Mt. Sutro Roasters coffee beans from the freezer. It had been their favorite brand in San Francisco, and she still had a fresh bag of it shipped to her from the shop every two weeks. Marriages may end, but some things one simply couldn’t give up. She ground the beans