After He Killed Me Read online

  ALSO BY NATALIE BARELLI

  The Emma Fern Series

  Until I Met Her

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2017 Natalie Barelli

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542046992

  ISBN-10: 1542046998

  Cover design by Mark Swan

  CONTENTS

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  1

  They’ve come to gawk at me; the very people whose admiration I once longed for, the ones who read my novel and stopped me in the street to tell me—a complete stranger—that they loved me. Just like that. Well! They don’t love me now.

  And then there are the others. They’re here too, of course; the ones who are most entertained by the misfortune of people like me, people whose lives until now have been blessed. The higher and more painful the fall, the better, and mine is vertiginous. I’m surprised they didn’t bring popcorn.

  To think that only a few weeks ago, these were the same people whose adoration I was craving. I was depressed. There were new books to be read, none of them mine, and new writers to be admired. I was being forgotten; the crowds had started to move on. If only that were still true.

  I watch them as they watch me. I’m not afraid of them. They make me sick, craning their necks; anything to get a better view of me, and my shame.

  I had never seen the inside of a courtroom before all this started, which is incredible when you think about it. They are part of our society: the laws we live by are decided here; as is our fate, should we be unlucky enough to have broken those laws. A courtroom is more important than a museum, and yet most people will have seen the inside of a museum at least once. But a courtroom? Not so many.

  If I ever get out of here a free woman, I will lobby for visits to courtrooms to become part of the school curriculum, I decide. All schoolchildren should become familiar with how they operate so they will be prepared, instead of feeling like they’ve wandered through the wrong door and into a foreign country where people have different customs, and where the language spoken is related to English but not the same, so you don’t really understand what’s being said, and even when you think you do, you’ve got it wrong.

  “So this ‘novel’ . . .” The prosecutor sneers a little on the word novel. “Sorry, what is it called again?”

  “The Lie,” I murmur.

  “Can you speak up, please?”

  “The Lie.” Louder this time.

  “Right, thank you. The Lie.”

  I’m on display, on the witness stand. I had an image this morning of myself in the dock, handcuffed, my head bowed in shame, waiting for my punishment, but my lawyer said no, it’s not like that. She said I’d be seated at the defense table facing the judge until I was called to testify, and on the opposite side of the aisle would be the prosecutor and his assistants. I’m only up here because I’m being questioned.

  “Now, if I understand correctly, you’re suggesting you didn’t write this novel?”

  “Yes. No. I mean, no.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  There are beads of sweat pearling on my lip. I wipe them with one finger; it buys me time. I don’t want to answer that question. I don’t know how.

  “Not completely,” is all I can come up with.

  “I see. Which parts did you not completely write, Mrs. Fern?”

  “Objection, argumentative.”

  That’s my lawyer, and I have no idea if she’s any good, but she’s all I’ve got.

  “Overruled.”

  I don’t even remember my lawyer’s name It’s a blank. Is it Katherine? Or maybe she just looks like a woman I knew once called Katherine. But she is arguing on my behalf, even if I can barely follow the proceedings. The very idea that I could go to jail is simply impossible to contemplate. If I think about it, I can’t breathe, and so I don’t . . . think about it.

  “Someone rewrote it.”

  I hear myself as if I were speaking from a long distance away, and it makes the statement sound even more preposterous. But truth is like that sometimes.

  “I see. You wrote it, and someone rewrote it. Tell me, the part where you meticulously plan and then commit murder, and then get rid of the evidence—did you write that, Mrs. Fern? Or did someone”—and here he lifts two fingers in air quotes—“rewrite it? As you put it?”

  I lower my gaze. “I didn’t write that.”

  “And yet you submitted it to your publisher as your own words, correct?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “The entire manuscript delivered by yourself, to your publisher, Mr.”—he consults his notes, pushing his thin-rimmed glasses farther up his nose—“Badosa, is that correct?”

  “But—”

  “But what, Mrs. Fern?”

  Katherine, I’ll call her Katherine for now until I remember her name, is on her feet again, she spreads her arms wide in frustration.

  “Your Honor, my client is trying to answer the question. Now if only Mr. Ackerman here—”

  “Yes, I agree. Mr. Ackerman, let the defendant answer the question.”

  “My apologies. Please, Mrs. Fern, go ahead.”

  I take a deep breath. “Yes, I personally delivered the manuscript to my publisher.”

  “Thank you. Would you agree that the last chapter amounts to a confession? Of murder? Committed by yourself?”

  Katherine jumps up again. “Your Honor!”

  It’s hot in here. I look around the room to see if there are any air vents, and my gaze lands upon the sea of faces beyond in the gallery. They’ve already judged me. As far as they’re concerned, I’m guilty as sin. I stare back, give them a good eyeful. There. That should give them something to feed on. And then I spot her and my heart stops. Beatrice is sitting in the gallery and she’s staring straight at me.

  Without a hint of a smile, she arches an eyebrow, the way she used to sometimes, as if to say, Fancy seeing you here! Someone is playing a trick on me. Beatrice can’t be here. It’s not possible. She’s dead. I should know, since I killed her myself. I shut my eyes tightly. I count to ten, taking a breath on each beat.

  “Mrs. Fern has unlimited funds available, Your Honor. She has access to resources that could make it very easy for her to disappear.”

  My eyes fly open. How does he think I could disappear? There are photographers outside, already jostling each other to get to the front. Does he se
riously believe I can escape this baying pack of paparazzi? I put a hand up to say something. I want to tell the judge—but Katherine says that I have no money. Great! Now the whole world knows just how bad things have become. I can already see the headlines: FROM RICHES TO RAGS.

  “Bail is set at two hundred thousand dollars.”

  The bang of the gavel resonates loudly and makes me jump. There’s too much noise. My head is spinning. I look to where Beatrice was sitting, but it’s a different woman there now. I quickly get up from the witness stand and someone in uniform takes my arm.

  “Wait, please wait!”

  I plead and point to Katherine, who is gathering her things from the table; putting legal notepads away in her elegant attaché case. She’s not even looking at me. She behaves as if her work is done here and there’s nothing more to be said. I go to her, the uniformed woman by my side, holding my elbow, and with my other hand I grasp Katherine’s arm, desperation engulfing me.

  “I don’t have that kind of money,” I say urgently.

  She looks at me, almost surprised to see me.

  “Then you’ll have to go to jail.”

  “Killer!”

  I turn to see who shouted. I’m almost at the door of the courtroom, trying to stop Katherine from leaving me, and when the doors open, I am in full view of journalists and photographers shoving each other out of the way; the others too, people shouting. Someone spits on me.

  They hate me. I let them down. They loved me so, and now they think I’ve committed this heinous crime. If only they knew. Yes, I am a killer. I am a murderer. I am all the things they think I am and worse, but I am not guilty of the crime they have accused me of.

  I did not kill my husband.

  I tell them, “I did not kill my husband,” but they’re not listening, so I shout, louder still, over the chants of “Killer!”

  “I did not kill my husband!”

  Someone is pulling me back.

  “Kil-ler!” they chant.

  “Kil-ler!”

  “Kill her!”

  2

  “Happy anniversary, my love.”

  My wonderful, devoted husband gently places a small blue gift box on the table between us. I clap my hands, enchanted.

  “What’s this?”

  Jim raises his glass of champagne in a gesture that invites me to do the same. I follow his lead and we clink them together. I can’t stop grinning.

  “Happy anniversary to you, my darling,” I reply. I feel a little shy suddenly. Sitting across the table from this handsome, powerful man who adores me, makes me weak at the knees.

  “Open it.”

  “But you shouldn’t have, really,” I admonish gently, looking down at the unmistakable Tiffany box. “It looks expensive.”

  Jim smiles. He opens his mouth to say something, when I hear a voice behind me.

  “Emma Fern?”

  I don’t know who she is, the elegant woman who is staring at me, eyes wide, bending down slightly to get a better view of me. I hide the tinge of annoyance I feel at the interruption and smile.

  “Yes?”

  “I thought it was you! Oh, my dear, it’s wonderful to meet you!” she says as she takes my hand in hers and shakes it up and down and up and down until I remove it gently.

  “Thank you so much. It’s wonderful to meet you too.”

  It’s surprisingly awkward when people do this to me, because I feel I should ask something like, “And you are?” but that would make me sound like a snob. Do I know you? Have we met?

  I know of course why this happens. I am a famous, beloved novelist. I am a Poulton Prize winner—frankly I have no idea who won after me, because who cares?—and I am last year’s bestselling author by a long shot.

  “Charlotte Harper,” she says, reading my mind, “and this is Cornelius.” She turns to—I assume—her husband, who even from this distance looks too young to be a Cornelius.

  I know who the Harpers are. I’ve never met them before, but I’ve seen them in the social pages, many times. They’re always photographed at this ball or that charity event.

  “I’m delighted to meet you, Charlotte, thank you.” I try not to stare at her beautiful dress.

  “I knew it was you,” she says now. “I wanted to tell you how much I loved Long Grass Running. A truly beautiful novel.”

  “Thank you. It’s kind of you.” I raise my hand toward Jim. “This is my husband, Jim Fern.”

  “Yes, of course, the economist. It’s nice to meet you. You must be very proud,” Charlotte Harper says, and for a moment I think she’s referring to the work he’s doing at the Millennium Forum, but then she smiles at me and says, “. . . to be married to such a wonderful woman.”

  I smile my thanks back and Jim winks at me, tells her that he most certainly is, and I try not to grin, because I can tell he is proud of me, and I love that feeling more than anything. Then Charlotte Harper asks, “Do you have another novel coming out soon?”

  She asks this very genuinely, but frankly I hate that question. Why do people assume I even want to publish another novel? Do they have any idea what I went through with Long Grass Running? No. Obviously not. I’d be in jail otherwise.

  “Yes, yes,” I lie, easily. “It’s coming out this fall.”

  “Oh wonderful! I’ll be looking out for it.”

  She reaches for my hand, and for a moment I think she’s going to kiss it, but no, thank God, because that really would be a little too much, instead she takes it in both her hands and squeezes it.

  “Thank you,” she says, with feeling. “Thank you.”

  She turns and leaves, just as I reply, “No, thank you.”

  Jim, who sat silent, completely ignored in this exchange, mutters, “Here we go again,” although not unkindly.

  I laugh. “Well, yes, what can I do?”

  Except that it hasn’t happened in a while—someone stopping me like this, asking for my autograph, acknowledging me. I’ve been vaguely aware of a new, creeping anonymity, and it has worried me a little, so it’s nice after all to be recognized today of all days, on my wedding anniversary.

  “Now, where were we?” I smile.

  I take the pretty box in my hand, carefully untie the ribbon, unwrap the pale blue paper and open the box. He strokes my arm as I lift the velvety top and discover the thin diamond and white gold band inside. I gently lift the ring from its cushioned container, and lift it up to admire it. It takes my breath away.

  “Do you like it?”

  I hold it gently between my fingers and watch the diamonds sparkle in the light.

  “It’s beautiful.” I slip the ring onto my finger. I look up at him, my face flushed with joy.

  “You’re staring,” he says, smiling.

  “I know.” I love observing him. He’s looking better than he ever has, his wavy hair thick and dark, and longer than he used to wear it. I wasn’t sure about it at first, but now I love it. It makes him look like a European intellectual. Especially with that little bit of gray at the temples.

  He’s in better shape too, fitter than he used to be. He works out at the gym almost every day now, at lunchtime. He has done so for months. A few years ago, he would have turned up his nose at men who did that, but all it took was one particularly unflattering picture of himself in the media, back when he was carrying those extra pounds around his waist.

  His features are sharper now, his jaw more defined. Sometimes, in a certain light, I catch sight of him, and I think that he has never been this handsome.

  “Sorry, what did you say?” I ask, shaking my head.

  “I had it engraved.”

  He points to it and I take it off my finger to look. It comes off a little too easily, and I make a mental note to have it resized.

  I love you more every day.

  “Oh, Jim! Thank you, darling.”

  If I ever had any doubts, then surely this must dispel them. Jim didn’t have to do that—the inscription—it’s a very nice touch.

 
; “Would you order us more champagne?” I ask.

  “Of course.” He turns to catch the waiter’s eye and signals to him.

  I bend down and pull out a soft package from my bag, careful not to flatten its bow, and push it toward him.

  “Your turn,” I say.

  He smiles, draws it closer to him.

  “What is it?” he asks.

  “You know what it is.”

  He raises an eyebrow.

  “It’s my promise.” I say this coyly, almost girlish, but the moment is solemn between us. He nods, silent.

  “Thank you.” He takes the package and puts it inside his soft leather briefcase.

  “You don’t want to open it?” I ask.

  “I don’t need to.”

  “I understand.”

  “I trust you.” He reaches a hand over the table to take mine and squeezes it.

  “I’m glad. I trust you too.”

  “To us,” he toasts.

  “To us.”

  The champagne tickles my tongue. It’s cold and sweet and delicious. Jim takes a sip, puts his glass back on the table and slowly turns it around, its stem between his fingers.

  “So, how is work?” I ask brightly.

  “Fantastic,” he nods. “We have a new researcher who’s joined us, did I tell you? From the World Economy Lab at MIT.”

  “Really?” It’s the first I’ve heard of it, and I can’t help but feel a small pang of unease. I’ve learned to be wary of Jim’s research colleagues. First Allison, an ex-student of his who did some work for him, although he has always maintained there was never anything romantic between them, but then Carol came along, and well . . .

  “He’s very good,” Jim continues. “He showed me some very promising modeling this morning. We’re very excited.”

  It didn’t occur to me that it would be a man, and I almost laugh out loud with relief. I only half listen to him after that. I prefer to look at his handsome face while he tells me all about the exciting activities going on at the Forum. That’s where my husband works, the Millennium Forum—a groundbreaking economics think tank that advises the government on how to reduce poverty and increase employment and quality of life, through better-funded social services for example, all without increasing taxes. They’ve got some modeling miracle thing going, supposedly.