Carla Neggers
The Widow
The first book in the FBI series, 2006
To my mother, and to the memory of my father
CHAPTER 1
Abigail Browning squirted charcoal lighter fluid on the mound of papers she’d torn up and piled into her backyard grill.
She had more pages to go. Another two spiral notebooks.
She set her lighter fluid on the little wooden shelf next to the grill and picked up the top notebook from the plastic chair behind her. When she opened the cover, she tried not to look at her scrawled handwriting, as pained as the words she’d written, or at the stains of long-spent tears that had smeared the ink as she’d forced herself to recount the tragic story of her honeymoon.
Each journal-there were fourteen, two for each year of loss-began with the same litany of facts, as if the retelling itself might produce some new tidbit, some new insight she’d missed.
It’s the fourth day of my Maine honeymoon, and I’m napping on the couch in the front room of the cottage my husband inherited from his grandfather.
Two loud noises awaken me. Tools clattering to the floor in the back room. A hammer. Perhaps a crowbar. I’m startled, but also amused, because I’d spent the morning helping Chris repair a leak.
As I get up to investigate the noises, I think it must be an unwritten rule-newlyweds aren’t supposed to fix leaks on their honeymoon.
Abigail tore off that first page by itself and ripped it into quarters, setting them neatly atop her pile, the lighter fluid seeping into the cheap paper and old blue ink as if it were fresh tears.
Last night’s anonymous call had changed everything. She needed a cover story to explain her actions-what she planned to do next.