So this wasn’t an arrest house call. This was something else.
“Please,” she said, mirroring his manners. “Come in.”
They went into the living room. She sat in the wingback chair and Treloar sat on the couch.
“I’m here to give you some news,” he said. “We’ve recovered a body from Tuttle Creek Lake that matches the description of your husband.”
Nessa doubled over. It was as if he’d just pitched a brick into her midsection, knocking the air out of her.
John couldn’t be dead. He was too real. His imprint on her life and the world was too deep, too DNA--altering. She knew that other widows—-ex--widows? What would she call herself?—-probably had that same phantom limb feeling, that itch that couldn’t be scratched because it was separated from her but still somehow connected, through fiber and sinew, soul and spirit, body and bone.
She stood, trying to remember how to inhale, then found herself walking in a tight circle. She wanted Treloar to reach out with a comforting hand so she could break the bones in his fingers and then tear his eyes from their sockets. She was desperate to inflict pain both on someone else and on herself, because if she let her brain wrap around the thought it was circling, she would fall down a hole and never stop falling.
As if thought caused action, she dropped to the ground, her head smacking the coffee table, the exquisite agony of it giving expression to what she couldn’t put into words.
She rose to her hands and knees and smashed her head into the coffee table again.
Treloar’s hands were on her shoulders, struggling to restrain her, to keep her from crushing her own skull like a melon.
John was dead, and now knowing this, she was dead too. He’d been pulled from the lake, but she was still down there, tangled in the trees beneath the surface of the water by the cove. And she’d never surface again.
It was as if she’d always known he was dead, since the beginning, and all her railing and fist shaking at him and his imagined abuse of her had only served to beat back the truth, to delay her recognition of the fact that she couldn’t live without him.
She couldn’t live.
She couldn’t, didn’t want to, wanted to shut her eyes and sink beneath the surface of the water forever.
“Mrs. Donati,” Treloar said from a far distance, from the other side of a chasm that had opened up in the world and that she’d never be able to cross again.
What seemed to be many hours later but was probably only minutes, Nessa reentered her body. Her head pulsated and she came to herself in the middle of whatever Treloar had been saying while she’d been away.
“The storm on Saturday night knocked a -couple of the tethered boats loose,” he said, “and they were just trashed over in the cove. The wind was so strong it must have shoved the boats into those submerged trees and actually broken some of the branches, because the body floated up to the surface. He must have been trapped.”
She took a deep breath. She was coming out of an acid trip, the worst one imaginable. And she was the soccer mom again, composed, calm, normal.
Sweet denial blossomed in her head. It wasn’t John.
She gazed at Treloar, feeling a detached sense of pity for him. “So you’re saying that John is dead,” she said, and was overcome with the urge to laugh. Poor guy. He just didn’t know any better.
“If it’s him, then yes,” Treloar said. “Now, it’s procedure to request that a family member view a photo of the deceased for identification purposes, but the . . . body has been in the water for quite a while, so it’s unrecognizable.”
She further came back to herself, the impulse to laugh extinguished. “Was he . . . shot?”
His eyes ticked away from her. “An autopsy is being performed right now. We should know the cause of death soon. We’ll need Mr. Donati’s dental records.”
“You have DNA though, right?” Nessa said.
“That’s right, but it takes much longer. If we got his dental records, it would speed things up considerably.”
She nodded, trying to breathe, her hand pressed against her chest to prevent her heart from bursting through her skin.
“Can you call today and get those records couriered over to us?”
“Yes,” she finally said.
Once again, her worldview had shifted. Once again, she was having to adjust to a new reality. How many times could a person do this without losing her fucking mind?
“Mrs. Donati,” Treloar said. “I need to let you know that this is being treated as a homicide. I know that’s no surprise, but you’re most likely going to be arrested. Probably on Friday.”
The bottom dropped out of her stomach. “Are you supposed to be telling me this?”
“No,” he said, looking away from her. “But you’ve been through a lot lately, and I wanted to make sure you had the chance to make arrangements for your son before it happens. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
She nodded. “Thank you, Detective.”
“Do you have an attorney?”
“No. But I’ll get one.”