My courtship with Riley was a frenzied whirl of sex and adventure, ingredients more addictive than heroin, at least until the high wears off.
Weekends away at whatever place we could afford, just for a different setting. Cheap hotels in the winter. Camping in the summer. Twice we even spent the night in our car, just because.
We moved in together after six months. He proposed after seven. I’d never met his family. He’d never met mine. I was swept away by a current I thought was called fate, but it turned out to be a riptide.
I should have known.
You know who did?
My father.
One month into our engagement, my father flew out to visit me in Chicago. He stayed at the Four Seasons, preferring that to the spare room in our apartment. Couldn’t blame him.
One dinner. That’s all it took.
One dinner at an expensive Italian restaurant on the Mile. I can even isolate the chunk of conversation where my father determined Riley wasn’t worthy of me. It went something like:
Dad: So, Rose tells me you’re an entrepreneur?
Riley: Yes, that’s right.
Dad: And what the fuck does that mean?
Riley (smiles): I’m cofounding a company that will bring clean-energy products to impoverished areas of Africa and Asia.
Dad: Clean-energy products in Africa? Jesus, son, those poor countries don’t even have power. They’ve got nothing, which means no pollution. You want the freshest breath of air you’ve ever tasted? Go stand in the middle of Burkina Faso and inhale. Probably give you an orgasm. They don’t need clean energy, Riley. They need energy.
Me: Dad.
Riley: That’s actually not true, and it’s more complica—
Dad: What’s your funding? How many months of burn do you have left? What’s your future income stream based on? Most importantly, what’s your exit strategy?
Riley tried. He answered all those questions, and looking back now, I can see how they didn’t explain what, in fact, his full plan was. But Riley cared about making the world better for people other than himself, something my father couldn’t comprehend. So I was more than pissed off when my father took me aside the next day and said, “Look, sweetheart, there’s no easy way to say this, but your guy is a fuck-all. I’ve seen the type before. He’s not as smart as he thinks he is, which is compounded by the fact that I think he’s probably lazy. I’m guessing you’ve told him how much money I have?”
Then came the argument, the one that began the moment I left home for school. Logan Yates’s money traveled only within a certain radius and for a designated time period. He was quite willing to pay for tuition and a comfortable lifestyle when my sister and I went away for college, but we were expected to return to Bury after school. Work for him, or at least be close to him. My father’s idea of family was based on proximity, never love.
Cora returned to Bury. I didn’t, knowing that I’d rather be destitute than return to that place.
My funding was cut. Black vs. white. Right vs. wrong. Yates vs. the world. My father exists in absolutes.
“Dad,” I replied to him, “it doesn’t matter how much money you have. I don’t see any of it. And that’s not important anyway.”
“No?” I remember the smug, knowing look on his face. “You’re still in my will, and you know you’ll always have a place back in Bury if you want to be…more comfortable. I’m guessing your man knows that. Maybe he’s just biding time, hoping I’ll kick it in the near future.”
“You’re so frustra—”
“Prenup. Just have him sign a prenup. If you get any money from me, he’s not entitled to it in the event…you know…he does what a typical fuck-all does. Which is fuck it all up.”
I stormed away.
My father went back to Bury.
Riley and I married, and we never had a prenup. My father and my sister came to the wedding, which was a very inexpensive affair at a DoubleTree hotel in the Chicago suburbs. My sister drank and looked bored the whole time, and my father wore a just-you-wait look on his face for most of the night. During the father-daughter dance, he predicted I’d come home to Bury, eventually. He was as sure of this as Riley was about his eventual greatness. I told him he couldn’t be more wrong.
That was thirteen years ago.
Turns out he was right.
Eleven
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
September 8
Two days ago, Detective Colin Pearson had walked out of his sergeant’s office, trying to suppress a smile. Smiling might jinx things.
He’d laid out his case against Rose Yates to Sergeant Al Brennan, Colin’s direct supervisor in the Special Investigations Unit. Brennan was a fiftyish fireplug of a man who wore a scowl as his default expression. Colin hadn’t been too hopeful; asking for travel funds from a tight budget to cross state lines and interview a person of interest was never an easy sell.
Colin had learned over the years to keep requests like this straightforward and to the point. No flowery language.
He’d outlined to the sergeant how thirty-nine-year-old Riley McKay died due to an overdose of diazepam, zolpidem, and alcohol. McKay commonly took both meds to help him sleep, but they were not prescribed to be taken in combination, certainly not with alcohol, and definitely not at the high levels of his final ingestion.
There were no
