Of course, Owen knew that Death would return. It came for everyone, after all. It was only a matter of when.
And then, in the winter of Owen’s eighteenth year, Death came back into his life. Much to his surprise, however, Death bypassed him, coming for someone else. And Death’s modus operandi this time was not cancer, but homicide.
PART ONE
1
James Sommers considered looking at his wife in her wedding dress irrefutable proof that there was no relationship between virtue and happiness. It had been a year and four days since they’d married, and the simple sight of Jessica still made him smile like an idiot at his good fortune.
“Too much?”
James knew his wife was asking whether rewearing her wedding dress was overkill for their anniversary party. She had posed the question before—several times, in fact. He had always answered honestly, telling Jessica that she looked perfect.
This time, however, he decided to flirt.
“I do prefer you naked.”
She smiled at his joke. “There’ll be time for that later. But seriously, do I look okay in this?”
“Perfect,” he said.
Jessica rolled her eyes. “I don’t even know why I ask.”
James did not consider himself a particularly introspective man. He certainly wasn’t a religious one, having no faith in a higher power. Still, he had always tried to do the right thing. He’d be the first to admit that he wasn’t perfect in that regard, but all things considered, he thought he’d more or less walked the line. It was not an easy thing to do in his profession, where most art dealers believed that if you weren’t cheating someone—the buyers, the sellers, the artists, the IRS—you weren’t trying hard enough.
Much to James’s surprise, keeping to the straight and narrow had led him to unhappiness, and only after detouring had he found the contentment he’d previously thought unattainable.
He owed all his happiness to Jessica, but at times he felt like a thief. As if he had stolen the happiness meant for someone else, and at any moment he might be apprehended and forced to give it back. That was why, like any good criminal, he took care to keep his haul out of public view.
It was for that reason that James had initially expressed concern when Jessica proposed this party. Gathering everyone they knew for the purpose of celebrating their first anniversary seemed like tempting fate.
“You know my view,” James said. “You can have either a big wedding or a happy marriage, but not both.”
The line had become a recurring joke between them. At first to justify James’s resistance to a big wedding, then to explain to friends and family why they’d elected to elope.
Regardless of whether there actually was any relation between the number of guests invited to watch nuptials and the happiness of the marriage to follow, James could not deny that after their elopement, their first year together had been nothing but pure bliss. Before Jessica, he had imagined happiness in the form of exotic trips and grand romantic gestures. But in reality, it was the smallest moments that he had come to cherish most: the way Jessica talked about the characters in novels as if they were friends and how she could throw her whole body into a laugh brought on by something he found only mildly amusing.
“Nothing over the top,” Jessica had assured him about the anniversary party. “Fifty people, no more. No sit-down meal. We’ll cater in some low-key food. Sushi, maybe. Or even just order in some pizzas.”
James had responded to this request the way he did to most things Jessica asked of him. He’d agreed. Which was why he was now staring with a big idiot grin on his face at his bride of a year and four days wearing her wedding dress.
For his own attire, James had decided to follow Jessica’s lead and wear the suit he had donned to get married, a navy crepe that he’d had custom-made for the occasion. It was a tad lightweight for late January in New York, but he didn’t intend to leave the apartment tonight. He’d briefly considered pairing the suit with a different tie than he’d worn at the wedding, but in the end, he reached for the same solid silver Kiton sevenfold that had served him so well the first time.
James’s father had been killed in a car accident, going on fifteen years ago now. For months after, James had considered how the world would be different if his father had not been driving across that intersection at exactly the same moment the truck had entered it. What if his father had been delayed even thirty seconds before getting behind the wheel? What if he hadn’t made a light ten blocks north? Or if the truck driver had started his journey five minutes later? All the infinite variables that could have been different. But because none of them were, his father was dead.
Afterward, people said it was meant to be. That nothing could have been done to change it. It was no one’s fault. Some things were beyond anyone’s control.
For years he wondered if that were true. If the world actually worked that way, with the onslaught of sudden inalterable cataclysmic events.
And then he met Jessica. And he finally believed.
The same way that fifteen years earlier nothing could have been done to change his father’s fate, Jessica’s entry into his life was similarly preordained, and he was powerless to alter it.
Despite her husband’s repeated assurances, Jessica still couldn’t help but wonder if her dress was too much for a house party. She had initially justified the garment’s exorbitant price tag with the thought that, because it wasn’t so wedding-y, she’d get more than one use out of it. In reality, few occasions were appropriate for a knee-length off-white silk dress. She
