ANGELICA
border in the middle of a rain shower felt appropriate. Angelica Read held the steering wheel in both hands, grounding herself with the feel of firm leather beneath her sweating palms, and followed the prompts from the screen on the dash. She’d told the map to take her to Lake Geneva without being more specific. There was no friend she’d come to visit. No hotel she wanted to check into. No restaurant to try. No attraction to take in.
She just wanted to find the place, hear the map tell her, “You have arrived,” and breathe. Then she’d drive aimlessly for as long as she needed. Explore the streets. The neighborhoods. The outskirts. Wrap her mind around the idea that this place was in fact real.
This place where her husband, Will Read, had grown up. Where, three weeks ago, he had been murdered. Drowned. Left tied to a pier post somewhere in a lake she’d never heard of before. Because he had never told her.
While the rain was perfectly on cue, the corn was a surprise. There was just so much of it. And not a billboard in sight. No flashy signs advertising the numerous delights to be had if you only pulled off the highway for a moment. For a popular Chicago tourist destination, this town gave no hint it existed, beyond a few unassuming green signs along the road. Lake Geneva, twenty miles. Lake Geneva, ten miles…
As the distance shrank, her soul twisted into ever tighter knots. Should she be here? Should she be asking questions about her husband’s past? Was it better to live with a beautiful lie—a shrine to a beautiful nothing—or to know the ugly truth?
Her hands tightened on the wheel as her resolution grew firm. Truth. It was always better to know the truth. That was what she and Will had always valued togeth—
The tears wrenched free. In a moment, she could barely see the road. She twisted her head, fighting the pain. Truth? What was truth anymore? How could she say she valued truth when her entire marriage had been a falsehood? A flimsy stage prop? A cheap roadside attraction? Light and mirrors and illusions? A lie?
But still, ten thousand questions screamed for answers. The desire to feel something firm under her feet demanded her attention. All of it. She could no longer sit at home in LA pretending to grieve like a normal widow. She hadn’t merely lost a husband. She had lost every precious moment with a man she only thought she knew. A man who had played her, and played her well.
She would seek the truth, even if the word itself was now tainted in her mind.
She turned onto another country highway, one of a million that seemed to spiderweb northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin. An iron fence appeared on her right, and instead of green stalks, stone monoliths cropped up from the ground. There was a black canopy. A crowd. A white casket on a scaffold. A funeral. Like the rain, this, too, felt appropriate.
Filled with morbid curiosity, she scanned the crowd. A military funeral? Half the people were dressed in uniform. But then she saw the dozens of police cars.
Returning her eyes to the road, she pressed her lips together and remembered to breathe. She was naturalized now. Her parents were, too, and her aunt and uncle and cousins. It had taken twenty years, but it had happened. For all of them. Still, she often had to remind herself she was no longer an undocumented immigrant. There was nothing to fear.
But when she had married Will, and especially when the boys had been born, she would sometimes lie awake at night. What if they arrested her? What if they sent her back to a country she barely knew anymore? What if she never saw her boys again? What if she lost everything they had gained together?
Will’s job as a bank executive had allowed them every luxury they wanted. He’d encouraged her to follow her passion of becoming a realtor. She loved beautiful homes. They’d had their two sons. Lived in a house in Malibu with a view of the ocean. They’d created a life together beyond her wildest dreams. And in the back of her mind, she feared losing it all because she didn’t have paperwork. No one could hand her a form to fill without her heart rate going up. What if it asked…?
On nights when the fears were too real, she would cling to Will and cry into his shoulder. Even in his sleep, he would wrap an arm around her. Mutter that everything would be okay. That he loved her. And somehow, she had believed that love as real as theirs was equal to anything the world could throw at them. It was all that got her through.
But when it turned out a man had told you nothing about himself—nothing that was true—could such a love have been real at all?
Three weeks ago, Will had flown to a conference in Las Vegas. That was what he told her. Then he quit calling and texting. Then there had been a ring at her bell. Two police officers. They told her that her husband was dead. Murdered. He had never been in Vegas. He was killed in a small town in Wisconsin. They told her they had no answers. They left her blank. Hanging. Confused. Disoriented. She told herself they had identified the wrong person. She didn’t know why Will didn’t call, but they had to have the wrong person. He’d never been to Wisconsin in his life.
Then a detective from Lake Geneva, a woman named Monica Steele, had flown all the way to Los Angeles to tell her that her husband had been a fugitive. A bank burglar. A member of an infamous ring. A man named Fritz Geissler, not Will Read. And did Angelica know where his accomplice was?
Angelica flared her nostrils and wrung the steering wheel. No. No, she did not know where his “accomplice” was. What was the woman talking about? This was madness.
But the days had rolled on and Will had not come home. The papers and news stations reported that a long-lost member of the “infamous” Markham Ring was dead. Then they sent his body. They flew it home. They asked her to identify him. The police showed her a picture of Will’s face. His face after death. Calm. Composed. Lifeless.
She broke in two.
It was true, then. Will was gone.
They had a funeral. It was small. Few friends showed up. No one knew what to say. Her family wept. Brought her food. Tried to comfort her.
There was no comfort for this.
She’d sent her boys to her parents’ and come to Lake Geneva for answers. Answers about the man she’d loved. The man she’d devoted ten years of her life to. The man she’d never actually known.
How could he lie to her like this? How could he betray her? He was her heart. Her everything.
It turned out, she’d never even known his real name.