I OPENED my eyes when they absolutely wouldn’t stay closed any longer, then rolled onto my side and switched the alarm clock to Radio. This morning—if you can call 12:30 p.m. morning—the local DJ was playing Martha and the Vandellas: “Nowhere to hide / Got nowhere to run to, baby…” I laughed out loud at the irony, then got up and danced a little.

I never would have guessed that New Orleans was my kind of town. Jambalaya gives me the trots. Dixieland makes me twitch. But so far, I couldn’t find a single thing wrong with my post-Anthony life. I enjoyed sitting on my wrought iron balcony with a dark roast in the morning and a gin fizz at night. I enjoyed looking down on the cobblestoned street where tourists and locals mingled and sometimes clashed. I even enjoyed the smell of fresh horse manure from the buggy tours that passed under my window every hour like clockwork.

But most of all I enjoyed being alone. It beat the hell out of tiptoeing around that soulless McMansion, doing my best to steer clear of the man who only spoke to me when he wanted someone to scream at, only touched me when he wanted someone to slap around. My marriage had become a nonstop game of hide-and-seek.

Which isn’t to say that my old life didn’t haunt me. Coffee and gin cured a lot, but they couldn’t keep the uglier memories at bay. I’d be sitting on the toilet, swimming in the hotel pool, finishing a crossword puzzle in bed, when out of nowhere I’d flash on an image of Tony, Vincent, Defoe, Broch. They came at me like monsters rearing their heads in a children’s pop-up book. Tony spitting in my face because I’d scraped his Bentley when I was backing out of the garage. Defoe grinning at me through a shattered rear window. Vincent whispering in my ear that sooner or later Anthony would snap and kill me—not because Anthony was evil, but because, as wives go, I was “my own special ring of hell.”

Of course, there was still plenty to fret over in the here and now. I’d been following the investigation from afar. I knew Sarah was out of jail, and I knew Sean was locked up. I’d even managed to get Serena on the phone. Haagen pushed her to the brink, but she stood tall. Serena, more than anyone, put Sean behind bars. When I talked to her, her voice was half nerves and half exhaustion, but there was some hope, too. She’d moved in with her brother and was starting a new job, working in the cafeteria of a downtown public school. Spooning out mashed potatoes was a far cry from what Serena wanted to be doing, or was capable of doing, but she’d be treated well, and the school system would pay for night courses. She’d be Serena Flores, Esquire, soon enough.

It felt as though the three of us had turned a corner, but that didn’t mean we were in the clear. Anthony was dead. Sean was staring down a life sentence. But skeletal old Uncle Vincent still loomed large. Who knew what story Sean was feeding him? Chances were he’d say he’d taken the fall for Sarah, play the devoted husband to keep from getting shanked. And Vincent, who seemed to think that women were made to lay traps for men, wouldn’t be hard to convince.

Or maybe Sean would point the finger at me. That would be the smart play. As I said, there was never any love lost between me and Vincent. It wouldn’t take much to convince him that I’d killed his beloved nephew. Besides, as he saw it, I was costing him money just by staying alive. A lot of money. Between the house, the yacht, the luxury cars, and the offshore accounts, I stood to inherit a sizable fortune—a fortune Vincent believed was rightfully his.

Anthony wasn’t all the way stupid, but the Costello empire-building gene had skipped right over him. If the playing field had been level, if he’d been born into a nice middle-class family in the suburbs, he might have wound up managing a restaurant or owning a car wash. I’d put his absolute ceiling at real estate agent. But with Vincent backing him, he’d gone crashing through that ceiling. In other words, Vincent made Anthony wealthy, and now Vincent felt that wealth should revert back to him.

And with me out of the picture, it would. Anthony had no other next of kin. My guess was that Vincent planned to help me commit suicide. Probably with a noose or pills. Something that would leave a clean corpse for the medical examiner, who was most likely in Vincent’s pocket anyway. Not a bruise on her apart from what she did to herself, this hypothetical coroner would say. Suicide, open and shut. The distraught wife just couldn’t go on.

All that to say: I was still jumpy as hell. In the morning, I expected to pull back the curtains and find Defoe standing on my balcony. At night, before I went to bed, I spilled a garbage bag of crumpled newspaper over the floor so no one could sneak up on me. I even cut back on the sleeping pills for fear the noise wouldn’t wake me.

Of course, Haagen would come hunting for me, too, once the trial was underway. I’d be witness and widow—the person who humanized Anthony for the jury. Maybe the DA would offer me some kind of temporary protection, put me up in a swank hotel for the duration. But the trial would end, and unless Sean was convicted beyond a shadow of a doubt, my straits would be no less dire. Vincent had to walk out of that courtroom without a doubt in his head. Then, if I had to pay him off, I would. Meanwhile, the staff at this boutique hotel knew me as Jane Pepper, and I wore my curly red wig morning, noon, and night. I even wore it to bed.

And yet, part of me felt so free. All that was missing was a companion. Someone I could talk to without worrying that they’d turn on me—or turn me in. To Vincent. To Haagen. Someone I trusted. Someone who had as much to lose as me.