The funeral and viewing were finally over. Everything about the day felt wrong to Jim, like it had been meant for someone other than Bonnie. She’d never been a churchgoer. The cross and the stained glass and the pews and the strange attire of the man addressing the crowd all seemed to confuse his children. Mindy in particular couldn’t wrap her brain around the fact that her mother was lying a few feet away in that closed box. Jim Jr. let out a tremendous sneeze every time the altar boy waved his incense.
It was Bonnie’s parents who’d demanded a traditional service. They had never approved of Jim beyond his finances, especially not his mother-in-law, whose previously snide comments turned downright hostile after her daughter’s death. “You should have been there with her, you know,” she’d said at church that morning. “But then I suppose Bonnie went up there to get away from you.” She wasn’t being malicious: she was simply too devastated to worry about Jim’s feelings.
Family, friends, colleagues, and neighbors were gathered now at the Hood home. The children appeared more at ease with so many familiar faces joined in a familiar setting. Jim Jr. sat on his grandfather’s lap and played with a Rubik’s Cube. Mindy, without asking permission, changed out of her dress and into her favored jeans and a T-shirt. Jim had the event catered, but Bonnie’s mother insisted on making ambrosia, which she claimed was Bonnie’s favorite childhood dessert though Jim had never seen his wife eat so much as a spoonful.
He’d hoped to open the backyard to guests, but it was a rare overcast night in SoCal. Even the Hoods’ sprawling and well-furnished living room couldn’t quite accommodate upwards of fifty people. Guests spilled into the family room, the kitchen, even the master bedroom. Jim mingled, listening to condolences and fond memories, nodding and smiling where appropriate, saying little, keeping each conversation brief. The facts of Bonnie’s death—in particular the fact of Rudy—had made the papers. Jim felt people looking at him with two expressions at once, as though attempting to mirror the mix of shame and grief they believed he must be feeling.
As the night wore on and people continued drinking, Jim seemed to become more and more invisible. He overheard things, the kind of things no one would have said to his face, though he wondered if deep down they wanted him to hear.
“You can’t blame her,” a friend of Bonnie’s told someone Jim didn’t recognize. “She was faithful to him for all those years, and he barely paid any attention to her outside of the business.”
“Maybe it wasn’t Jim who pulled the trigger, but it might as well have been,” said a cousin Jim had seen maybe a half-dozen times in his life.
Bonnie’s mother, after a few glasses of sherry, went even further: “Someone paid to have my daughter killed, and I know damn well who that someone is.”
It was the same wherever Jim went in the house. He needed to calm down. He needed a stiff drink. He was standing in the kitchen, filling his glass with ice, when the worst possible thought occurred to him: What if the children were overhearing these conversations, too? He tossed his glass in the sink, looked around frantically, then ran down the hall and burst into living room. He found Mindy and Jim Jr. sitting on floor with Bonnie’s brother, playing a game of Chinese Checkers, Jim Jr.’s latest obsession.
“Kids, kids,” Jim called, louder than he meant to. “It’s getting late. I think we need to start saying goodbye to our guests.”
“Just let us finish this game,” Jim Jr. said.
Jim felt panicked, like the boy’s failure to act quickly might somehow cost another life.
“Now,” he said.
Despite himself, he could feel his face turning red and his jaws flexing.
“Your mother’s dead, and you’re sitting there playing a game,” he shouted. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”
He scanned the faces in the room, saw the makings of an angry mob staring back at him.