Betty Winston insisted on seeing her husband.
It wasn’t that she didn’t believe the sheriff or even Doc Melville, who’d taken custody of the body, explaining that he needed to give Bernie a careful once-over before he declared cause of death and released him to the funeral parlor.
Amos Melville was thorough. She would give him that.
But what Betty sorely needed was to look at her husband with her own two eyes, or she couldn’t accept that he was dead.
As the sheriff stood awkwardly in the living room, twisting his hat in his hands, Helen Evans sat beside her, saying how sorry she was and offering to help in any way she could. Betty felt like she was trapped a nightmare, one that had lasted for far, far too long. She wished someone would shake her hard to wake her up so that this whole horrible ordeal would be over, just another of those bad dreams her sleeping pills sometimes caused.
She saw Ellen crying and hugging Sawyer, Clara watching them from nearby with tears in her eyes.
Oddly enough, Betty’s own eyes were dry. She had already cried so much.
“This shouldn’t have happened, you know. There should be a cure by now for this. No one should have to suffer the way we’ve suffered,” she had stopped the sheriff midcondolences to say. “I want my Bernie back.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am.”
Sorry. She had heard that so often it barely registered anymore.
What if the sheriff was wrong and Bernie would return, like he had the day before? Nothing would change and their lives would go on. He would be as loopy as ever. He still wouldn’t know if she was his wife or his mother or a stranger. He would clomp around the house in his boxer shorts and golf cleats or rearrange the furniture in the den for the hundredth time. He would awaken her in the middle of the night, shrieking about a deer running up the hallway or a car trying to run him down, and she would do her best to calm him down and reassure him that everything was all right. She would keep his bedclothes clean and dry, no matter how often they had to be changed. She would keep Bernie clean and dry, no matter how often she had to change him. And she would feed him, bathe him, and finish his sentences. She would listen to his disjointed ramblings and pretend they were conversations. She would try to remember him as he once was: the man she’d fallen in love with, the man who’d worked so hard to provide for the family that Betty had always wanted. The partner who had held her hand when she’d miscarried so many times and who had played nursemaid during her bout with breast cancer.
Betty shook her head, finding it all too much to bear.
“Would you like to see him?” the sheriff asked. “Sometimes it helps people, makes it real. Other times it makes it worse.”
How much worse could it get?
She lifted her gaze to meet Frank Biddle’s. “Yes, I want to see him,” she said, “right now, please.”
“Uh, sure, ma’am, let me just call Doc,” he told her and went out to the porch to get on his phone.
Betty told Clara to stay with Ellen and Sawyer while the sheriff drove her to Doc’s office, a trip that took all of two minutes, just enough time for Betty to go over what she’d been told about her husband.
Bernie had been found in the flooded creek a couple of houses away.
He had been pulled from the water not breathing. He’d had no pulse. Despite attempts at CPR, his heart could not be made to beat again. Doc Melville had been called to the scene and had pronounced death.
Amos Melville patted her hand when they arrived at his office. “Hello, Mrs. Winston, I’m so sorry for your loss.”
Sorry.
There was that word again.
“Where is he?” Betty asked, wondering if Bernie was lying in an exam room or if Doc had some kind of morgue with a big ol’ refrigerator like the funeral home and the county hospital.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Doc Melville asked rather than answering her question. He peered at her through his bifocals, his bushy brows knitted.
Betty swallowed. “Yes.”
She was glad for the medication she’d taken, thankful for the calm it made her feel when otherwise she would have been a nervous wreck. Still, her hands shook as Doc preceded her into the back room and gently pulled away the white sheet he’d draped over Bernie’s body. He folded it at the shoulders. Then Doc stepped away.
Despite herself, Betty let out a small cry when she saw Bernie’s face. There were scratches and mottled bruises on his brow and cheeks. His eye sockets seemed sunken and gray.
“Oh, God, how did it ever come to this?” she whispered, going nearer. She reached out a trembling hand to touch him. He felt cold, waxy. His eyes were closed, thankfully, as she didn’t think she could bear to look into them. “You are in a better place now, aren’t you?” she asked, though his colorless lips did not move in response. “You’re whole again, I’m sure of it. You’re you. When I see you again, you will be the man I fell in love with. You will wait for me . . . remember me . . . won’t you?”
When she turned to tell Doc she was done, he looked at her with moist eyes. He lifted his specs from his nose to wipe at them. Then he gently drew the sheet over Bernie’s head like a shroud.
“Come,” he said gently.
Betty felt his hand at her elbow as he led her from the exam room and out to the waiting room, where Sheriff Biddle sat, his hat in his hands. Beside him was Helen Evans, who had tagged along at the sheriff’s insistence even though Betty had told them it wasn’t necessary. She wasn’t going to fall apart. It was much too late for that.
“What can I do for you, ma’am?” Frank Biddle asked, quickly rising to his feet, though he kept his hat off, spinning it like a record player. “How might I help, other than take you home, I mean?”
“I need to make arrangements,” Betty said, the monotone of her voice reflecting how dead she felt deep inside. “Bernie left a directive. He wanted to be cremated.”
“Right.”
“This stupid disease has taken such a toll on our lives. It’s robbed us of years that we should have had. It made us different people and not always for the good—” Betty stopped to draw in a breath. “I don’t want to drag it out further. I’m so tired, Sheriff. I’m so very, very tired.”
“I’m sure you are.” Biddle glanced over at Doc Melville. “Once there’s a signed death certificate, you can do whatever needs doing.”
“Will that take long?” she asked.
“Only as long as it takes me to confirm the cause of death,” Doc said.
“But we know how he died.” Betty sighed, impatient, wanting it all to be over with. “He slipped out of the house in the middle of the night, got lost, and fell into the creek. He must have drowned. Isn’t it obvious?”
Doc patted her shoulder. “That would seem to be the general order of things, yes. Look, I promise to take good care of Mr. Winston, just like I’ve cared for most of the folks in this town, from birth onward. So there’s no need to worry.”
“I’ll try,” Betty said, though it wasn’t exactly the truth. For years she had worried day and night. She didn’t know how to do anything else.
“Hang it all. I almost forgot something,” Doc said and disappeared back up the hallway for a bit before returning with a zippered baggie. “Your husband’s wedding band is still on his finger. I can remove the ring if you’d like to have it . . .”
“No, no,” Betty said, her stomach churning. “Please, leave it on.”
“Then this is all I have to give you of his personal effects,” he told her, holding out the baggie as Betty looked blankly at it.
Reluctantly, she took it, eyeing the contents through the clear plastic: a thick black pen with lots of gold details. If she squinted through her glasses, she could make out cartier imprinted on a band on the pen’s cap. “That can’t be Bernie’s,” she said, trying to hand back the baggie to Doc. “He never owned a pen so fancy.”
“But it was in the pocket of his pajama pants,” Doc said, reluctantly taking the bag back. “Maybe he picked it up from somewhere and hung on to it.”
“I guess he could have,” Betty replied. “He’s done so many strange things.” Then she hesitated, blinking. “Hold on. I do recognize it.” She turned to the sheriff, her voice angry as she told him, “It belongs to that awful man, Jackson Lee. I caught him at our house a while back, trying to bamboozle Bernie. He must have been conning Bernie out of our money for years. I’ve found canceled checks . . . contracts for oil wells and windmills and God knows what else that drained our bank account.” She caught herself, took a deep breath. “Bernie didn’t know what he was doing. Mr. Lee must have left that pen at our house when I chased him out. I saw it in Bernie’s hand . . .”
“You should have called me, ma’am,” Biddle said.
“There are a lot of things I should have done, Sheriff,” she replied, thinking hard. She tapped a finger in the air. “I do believe I’ve seen his car since, parked across the street at odd hours. It’s an older Cadillac. Black. It may have been there last night, too.”
The sheriff plunked his hat on his head. “Jackson Lee’s car?” he repeated and took a few steps forward to get the bag from Doc. “You’re sure?”
“Pretty sure.”
“Jackson?” Helen Evans said, and her eyes widened as they looked at the sheriff. “Who is he?”
“Someone I need to talk to,” the sheriff answered, pocketing the baggie.
“He’s a liar and a thief,” Betty spat. “If he had anything to do with Bernie . . . with what happened to Bernie, I want to know. He belongs behind bars as it is, targeting people like Bernie who don’t have a wit about them.” She started to shake, her whole body shuddering, and she couldn’t seem to stop.
“Are you okay, ma’am?” Biddle said. “Doc, maybe she needs something?”
Betty turned to Doc Melville. “Just get this over with.” Despite everything, she began to sob. “It needs to be over. It needs to be done.”
The doctor reached out to steady her. “Mrs. Winston, perhaps I should give you a sedative . . .”
“I want to see Ellen and Sawyer,” she howled and jerked away from Amos, addressing the sheriff again. “I need to get home. I need my family!”
“Yes, ma’am, we’ll be on our way pronto.” Frank Biddle went to the door to hold it wide for her.
“Let me help you—” Helen Evans approached to take her arm, but Betty somehow found the strength to shake off Helen’s hand.
“I’ll be fine,” she insisted, sounding crosser than she meant to. “I just need time alone with my girls.”
“Of course.” Helen nodded.
Betty knew that if she’d been alone in the world, she would have thrown herself into the floodwaters after Bernie. But she couldn’t. She had a daughter and a granddaughter to live for, and that was precisely what she planned to do.