“You don’t need to see this,” he said.

“See what? Is it Gabe? I want to see Gabe!” I began shaking with fear. “Please let me see Gabe. Please take me to him …” I would have begged Walter, if that’s what it took. I was already crying. I was already expecting what I would see.

Walter’s voice grew more commanding, like a father dominating a child. “Josie, just go into the house. Now.”

That’s when I forgot about begging. I forgot about everything. “I want to see my husband!” I screamed the words and flailed my arms to push Walter Freeman’s hand away, and ran for the circle of high caragana shrubs. I was beyond fear and sorrow. I wanted to know, I wanted to be with Gabe, Gabe needed me, we needed each other. We didn’t need Walter Freeman, who treated Gabe with disdain, and who once made a pass at me at a charity barbecue.

Two officers were erecting blue plastic sheeting around the bushes, an unnecessary shield because the growth was so thick that everything within their embrace was already invisible. A uniformed cop stood at the opening in the circle of shrubs facing our house. He was young with a bland face, the kind of cop that enrages me with their good looks and intransigence. He stepped in front of me, staring at me without blinking like some damned stone statue, like a granite robot.

“Is my husband in there, you son of a bitch?” I shrieked, and people behind the yellow tape snickered.

“You can’t go in, ma’am,” the cop replied.

“I’m his wife!” I seized the young cop’s shining black belt. It smelled of fresh shoe polish. Of course it would, because the kid was ambitious, the kid wanted to be promoted, the kid kept his belt shined, the kid was an asshole. “If my husband is in there, I want to see him!”

“Josie,” a voice behind me said. “Josie.”

I knew that voice. I released the young cop and turned to face Mel Holiday, Gabe’s detective partner. “Is it Gabe?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Mel said. “I just arrived.” Then: “I think so. One of the guys out front, in a cruiser, said …” Mel started over again. “He said it’s Gabe.”

“I want to see.” I kept my eyes closed. Maybe it would help to keep the tears in. “I need to see him, Mel.”

I felt Mel turn to look back at Walter Freeman, and heard Walter say, “Quickly.”

Mel pushed away to look at me, hands on my shoulders. “You don’t have to,” he began.

“Yes, I do.” I twisted out of his grip. “Yes, I do.”

The young cop stepped aside at a gesture from Mel, who returned his hand to my shoulder, keeping me from bursting through the opening in the shrubs. I saw the corner of the blanket first, the blanket we had purchased in Ixtapa on our honeymoon, its orange and green pattern lit by the flashlights of two police officers and two medical technicians in white coats. The blanket covered the area of sand enclosed within the circle of shrubs rising almost ten feet around it. One light lifted to shine on my face, then returned to the scene it had been illuminating: the naked body, the eyes open, the face calm, the head framed in an obscene pool of blood.

I screamed Gabe’s name as though he could hear me. Perhaps if I screamed loud enough, if I raged madly enough, he would rise from the blanket and duck his head like he did, and smile, asking me to be quiet, to speak softly. I could not believe that the man who had saved me, as I had saved him, was dead. But the child in me believed it, the one who always wanted to live on the beach strip, the one who had lain here with Gabe, both of us as naked as he was now but alive in the darkness, making love while voices passed on the sand along the water’s edge and on the lane behind the houses, while traffic raced noisily over the highway bridges and boats moved in silence through the canal.

I saw red, I saw anger, I saw blood beneath Gabe’s body, I saw two men in blue uniforms approach and felt someone seize my arms from behind. I gave up. Actually, my consciousness gave up and abandoned me.

3.

Glass, glass, glass. Stay away from broken glass. Don’t run with a glass in your hand. Never take glass containers to the beach. Glass in the sand beneath bare feet. I am a child on the beach. No, I am a woman on a sofa.

Glass, glass, glass. My arm ached. I wanted to throw up.

Oh, glass. And a man’s voice: “I think she’s awake.”

Open your eyes, I told myself. I did not want to.

Not glass. Lass. “Lass, lass, lass.” A voice like porridge. Warm, rich, soft. My neighbour Maude Blair was speaking to me. Fifty years out of Glasgow and she still wore her soft highland burr like a tartan, like a brooch in the shape of a thistle. Maude and her husband, Jock, are two of the few friends I have on the beach strip. Not “How are ya?” friends you pass on a walk or in the supermarket. I have many of those. I mean friends who know and care about you. They’re more difficult to find. The beach strip is made up of individuals who prefer to remain that way.

Maude was stroking my head, and when I opened my eyes she smiled at me but spoke to someone else, out of my view. “Aye, she’s fine now,” Maude said. “She’s awake. You’re awake and all right, aren’t you, lass?”

Two medical attendants entered from the kitchen. They looked purposeful, the way professionals do when they’re allowed to demonstrate their training and use their tools. They took my blood pressure, shone lights into my eyes, gave me a pill and some water, asked if I needed a blanket, and left, satisfied that they had practised on a living person.

I rose from the sofa, helped by Maude Blair. I stumbled into the kitchen and sat slumped in a chair, drained in the manner you have when your body’s supply of tears is exhausted. Nothing ached, but everything pained me.

“Should I be staying with you?” Maude asked. Her hands were touching my head, my shoulders, my arms, as though she wanted to assure herself or me that I wasn’t falling apart physically as much as I appeared to be mentally.

I hugged her to me, burying my face against the printed pattern of her dress, and permitted myself to wail while Maude patted the back of my head gently, saying, “There, there.”

When I sat back, I saw Jock, Maude’s husband, peering around Mel and two uniformed officers, all three making notes on small paper pads.

“We need to question Mrs. Marshall,” Mel said to Maude, then added “privately,” and Maude nodded and stood, looking from me to Jock and back again, dabbing at her eyes with a small lace-trimmed handkerchief. Jock raised a hand to me, then took Maude’s arm and walked toward the back door, into the garden.

Mel followed them, returned to speak to the two uniformed cops, who nodded and left, and sat facing me.

“Who did it?” I asked him.

Someone had brought coffee in paper cups and set several on the kitchen table. Mel placed one in front of me.

“He did. Gabe shot himself.”

“No, he didn’t.”

“Josie—”

“My husband did not shoot himself in the head. My husband did not tell me to meet him out there just so I could find him dead. My husband was not that mean or that selfish. I spoke to him, he called me on the telephone, he was fine, he was Gabe …”

“When did he call you?”

“An hour ago. Maybe more.”

“Where were you?”

“With Mother. Just down …” My throat tightened. “You know where she is.” I shook my head. My words emerged between sobs. “Gabe did not kill himself. Where was the gun? Why wasn’t it in his hand? How could he shoot himself without a gun in his hand?”

“The gun was there. He was kneeling when he shot himself. He fell to his left, his arm … when he died, all the muscles relaxed, Josie. That’s what happens. The arm drops, the gun is released. It was there on the blanket. The weapon does not always remain in the hands of a suicide, Josie. I’ve seen it a dozen times. The recoil, the kick of the gun—”