Vengeance. Mystery Writers of America Presents B00A25NLU4

finds.
    This was the feeling she wanted to take with her — not the horror of the last twenty years. Not the sight of her daughter lying dead. Not the questions about how much Grace knew, how much she had suffered. Not the thought of Danielle Parson, the pretty young girl who could make it through the day only with the help of heroin.
    June wanted the feeling from the first time she had held her child. She wanted the bliss from her wedding day, the first time Richard had made love to her. There were happy times in this home. There were birthdays and surprise parties and Thanksgivings and wonderful Christmases. There was warmth and love. There was Grace.
    “Grace,” Richard said, as if he could read her mind. Or perhaps June had said the word, so sweet on her lips. The smell of her shampoo. The way her tiny clothes felt in June’s hand. Her socks were impossibly small. June had pressed them to her mouth one day, kissing them, thinking of kissing her daughter’s feet.
    Richard cleared his throat. His tone was low. “You want the truth.”
    June tried to shake her head, but her muscles were gone, her brain disconnecting from the stem, nerve impulses wandering down vacant paths. It was here. It was so close. She was not going to find religion this late in the game, but she wanted lightness to be the last thing in her heart, not the darkness his words promised to bring.
    “It’s true,” he told her, as if she didn’t know this already. “It’s true what Danielle said.”
    June forced out a groan of air. Valentine’s Day cards. Birthday balloons. Mother’s Day breakfasts. Crayon drawings hanging on the refrigerator. Skinned knees that needed to be kissed. Monsters that were chased away by a hug and a gentle stroke of hair.
    “Grace saw us.”
    June tried to shake her head. She didn’t need to hear it from his mouth. She didn’t need to take his confession to her grave. Let her have this one thing. Let her have at least a moment of peace.
    He leaned in closer. She could feel the heat from his mouth. “Can you hear me, wife?”
    She had no more air. Her lungs froze. Her heart lurched to a stop.
    “Can you hear me?” he repeated.
    June’s eyes would not close. This was the last minute, second, millisecond. She was not breathing. Her heart was still. Her brain whirred and whirred, seconds from burning itself out.
    Richard’s voice came to her down the long tunnel. “Grace didn’t kill herself because she caught me fucking Danielle.” His tongue caught between his teeth. There was a smile on his lips. “She did it because she was jealous.”

IT AIN’T RIGHT
    BY MICHELLE GAGNON
    I t ain’t right, is all I’m saying.”
    Joe just kept walking the way he always did, shovel over his shoulder, cigarette clinging to his bottom lip.
    “You hear me?”
    He stopped and turned, lifting his head inch by inch until his eyes found my hips then my breasts then my eyes. A dust devil whirled away behind him, making the bottom branches of the tree dance like girls on May Day, up and down. He stared at me long and hard, and I felt the last heat of the day seeping into my skin and down through my bones, reaching inside to meet the cold that burrowed into my stomach early that morning.
    “She’s dead, ain’t she?” With his free hand, Joe scratched his belly where the bottom of his T-shirt had pulled away.
    “Just ’cause she’s dead don’t mean she should be put down like this.”
    He looked past me toward where the road met the hill and dove behind it, wheat tips glowing pink in the twilight. “What else we gonna do with her?”
    We stared each other down while the shadows crept in and heat eased into darkness like air escaping a balloon. Night surrounded Joe’s head, digging under his cheekbones and into his eye sockets, carving out the face that had been so handsome years earlier that I swore he could’ve been in pictures.
    I turned and shuffled back to the house, kicking up pebbles and dust with my sandals, crossing my arms against the cold that radiated out like there was a snowball growing inside me.
    He was gone a long time. The six o’clock news came and went, then
Wheel of Fortune
and
Jeopardy!,
and me checking the clock every five minutes, getting up from time to time to peer through our fading curtains. It was always so quiet at night, I swear the TV was the only thing keeping my head screwed on my shoulders.
    Law & Order
was on when he finally came in, bolted both locks, and went to the sink