The Dead Letter by Finley Martin Page A

once or twice afterwards. That was about it. He never seemed comfortable, though, and we were never close. Everyone grieves differently, I s’pose. Anyway, he married a year or two later. Some Dutch girl from eastern PEI, but I hear they’re split up now.”
    â€œFrom what I heard, Simone and Jamie had been heading in that direction. Sounded like they were planning a future together, marriage even.”
    â€œNewspapers played that up after her death. Don’t know where they got it from.”
    â€œIt wasn’t true?”
    â€œCan’t say it was…or it wasn’t.”
    â€œBut you weren’t convinced?”
    â€œOn the surface everything looked fine, but, call it mother’s intuition or what, I think she may have had her eyes on someone else.”
    â€œAny idea who?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œWhen Simone learned that she was pregnant, how did she react? Was she excited? Confused? Worried?”
    Bernadette became silent. Rigid. Her face paled, and her eyes filled with tears.
    â€œI’m sorry. I thought you knew.”
    After she left, Anne sat in her car for a few minutes and reflected on what had happened. Things had changed. Now there were two conflicting sides to the Jamie MacFarlane–Simone Villier love story: Jamie’s romantic recollection of Simone as a textbook Cinderella, and Bernadette’s suspicion that Simone was in the process of trading up.
    Which could be trusted, she didn’t know. MacFarlane was egotistical enough to fancy that Simone could only love him, but was he so egotistical that he missed any warning signs that she was cheating on him? Bernadette suspected her. Why wouldn’t MacFarlane? For cops like him, attention to detail and suspicion go together like a pair of handcuffs.
    Then, too, if MacFarlane suspected that Simone was playing around, how would he react? Dump her? Humiliate her? Hit her? And the other man? If there was one, what was his role in this drama?
    MacFarlane’s description of his relationship with Bernadette was skewed as well. He had depicted Bernadette as a lonely, distraught mother grieving for her daughter and husband almost to the point of alcoholism, but that wasn’t the same Bernadette Anne had spoken with. That woman was resilient, stable, and self-reliant. Had MacFarlane deluded himself? Had he reinvented his self-image as a more generous and altruistic person than he had ever been? Or was he just lying?
    Something else bothered Anne, too. Her reaction to Simone’s pregnancy was surprising. Perhaps Bernadette didn’t know her daughter as well as she thought.
    A lot of questions , thought Anne, not many answers .
    Anne started the car, turned around, and headed up the street. A breeze had come up and stirred a drift of leaves across her path. Another car turned up the avenue behind her. Its headlights illuminated a cold, bluish path ahead of it. She hated halogen lights. They were bright and glaring. Even in her rear-view mirror, they were distracting. She speeded up. So did the driver behind her.
    Anne’s hand reached up to flip the dim switch on her mirror at the same time as a large red fox darted in front of her. She slammed the brake pedal. Her car skidded and slid to a stop, but Anne’s eyes locked on the glare in her rear-view mirror. She saw the cold blue lights of a car hurtle toward her. She heard the screech of its tires, and she braced for collision, but the other car stopped. Just inches from her bumper.
    The driver, impatient or angry, slammed his gear shift in reverse, spun tires, and squealed backwards until he intersected a side street and roared away.
    Anne’s hands trembled. The fox had vanished into the night.

24.
    Anne pulled into a no-parking space near her Victoria Row office building. It was early morning. The sun was low and carried little warmth. Dew dampened squares of grass along the street. The few cars parked overnight reflected the hysterical