To my grandfathers, Charles and John
CHAPTER ONE TRINA
She spotted him across the crowded room and knew instantly he was her mark for the night. The music vibrated through her body and mixed with the top-shelf gin they were serving to create a special kind of alchemy. Under the right circumstances, it translated into what for Trina served as courage. Under the wrong circumstances, it ruined lives—mainly hers, but other people’s too.
Tonight, she wasn’t sure yet which it would be.
He was different from her type. Trina usually liked them with a whiff of post-football fraternity brother, thick and meaty like a lamb chop. But this guy was long and lean, with a half-finished tattoo sleeve of roses and skulls on his right forearm and a glittery pink bow tie. In the dark of the banquet hall, his attempt at a beard read as a meager scrubby patch under his chin.
The DJ cued up “Dancing Queen” by ABBA, and Trina was almost swept into a swirl of pink organza as the bridesmaids swarmed the dance floor and made a circle around the bride.
He stayed at the bar, sipping on what looked like a vodka tonic, but turned to watch the gaggle of women link hands and belt out the chorus. Trina pulled at the tight fabric of her dress and smoothed it over her thighs. It was a royal blue that brought out the rich black of her hair, which she’d had blown out yesterday. She knew she looked good tonight. Under the kaleidoscope lights of the dance floor maybe she could even pass for vibrant. That’s why she loved weddings. Mood lighting and free booze and happy dreams rattling around everyone’s heads, if only for the day.
Hard living was forgiven with the temporary suspension of reality.
She finished her drink, set it on a nearby table, and made her way over to the bar. As she got closer, she realized he was younger than she’d originally thought. Probably ten years younger than her, maybe fifteen. Not that it mattered. She’d never see him after tonight.
She took the spot next to him, shifting her hip over to his side and purposefully making contact with his leg. Trina noticed he’d sweat through the armpits of his plaid shirt.
“Vodka tonic.” She leaned over the bar, pushing her cleavage together, and flipped out a hand to catch the bartender’s attention.
“Bride or groom?” he asked. She’d been expecting some kind of lame opener, and he didn’t disappoint.
Trina snatched the drink that appeared in front of her, turned around and leaned her elbows against the bar. In her head she tossed a coin.
“Groom,” she told him. “Old family friend. And you?”
He smiled, and Trina couldn’t deny how handsome he was despite the hipster vibe. “Bride. Childhood friend.”
Trina took another sip. She hated vodka—would have preferred gin—but this point in the evening depended on some basic mirroring.
“Enjoying your drink?” she asked.
“I am now.” Ick, she thought. She took another sip.
It was easy to get him dancing. She moved to the music, grinding against his leg while the DJ played Today’s Top Hits. His hands left wet smears on the fabric of her dress, and when he nuzzled up to her ear and asked if she wanted to get out of there, the sweat from his face left drops of moisture on her cheek.
She still told him yes.
Trina noticed some people, including a few twenty-somethings with primary colored cocktail dresses, casting nasty glances their way as they stumbled off the dance floor and out the door of the banquet hall. As he reached for her hand, telling her in sloppy half-speech that he’d rented a suite upstairs and she should really try these little special cookies they had in the minibar, she heard cheers echo out from the wedding guests. She pulled back on his arm, leaning into the doorway to see what was happening and catching the bride and groom as they delicately fed each other cake.
Trina smiled. She always liked that part.
He pulled her back in towards the hallway and kissed her hard. Trina had to fight not to recoil from his lips, which were surprisingly blubbery. She caught one of the dress brigade staring back at her from across the hall, judgment clear in her sunken eyes.
For one moment, Trina paused and considered what she was doing. She could leave. Just go and call an Uber and forget any of this ever happened. No one knew she was here. She didn’t even know this guy’s name, and he didn’t know hers. He’d barely remember her in the morning.
But she did go with him. She spent the night with him.
The night that would cleave her life into a beginning and an end.
Before the murder.
And after.
CHAPTER TWO TRINA
Trina woke in the morning, a complicated combination of sounds, tastes, and smells ricocheting around her head. She tried to open her eyes, but the light already streaming through her bedroom window made starbursts in her mind and so she groped for her phone blindly. She usually set it on the bedside table, but she’d crawled into her apartment during the early hours, casting everything off her body like a plane crash, and so now she had to sift through the wreckage.
Her phone buzzed again, insistent, and her head pounded.
She should have gone to the wedding at the Belamar instead of the Marriott. But she had been lazy and didn’t want to bother traveling across town when it was frigid out. Everyone knew the Belamar always skimped on the top shelf booze, which would have helped Trina drink less. Theoretically.
Really, she shouldn’t have gone to a Sunday night wedding in the first place. They were for couples who couldn’t afford the more expensive Saturday night bookings, and the crowd was always more subdued with Monday looming over the horizon. But sometimes the loneliness was the worst for Trina on Sundays, and she needed to go somewhere that felt alive, if only a cheaper version of it.
She tried to open her eyes again, pulling her hand as a shield against the light. Her clothes were strewn in a scattered line from the door of the bedroom to her bed, and she was wrapped in her comforter with only her bra and panties on. Trina thought she glimpsed her purse slouching next to one of her nude high heels.
Like an animal, she pulled herself halfway off the bed, balancing her arms over the floor but keeping her legs tightly knit in the covers, and triumphantly grabbed her purse and pulled it back under the safety of her duvet.
Trina screwed up her eyes to read the screen. It was him.
She’d let it go to voicemail.
She needed a glass of water desperately.
It was Monday morning, wasn’t it? Trina glanced at her phone. 9:23am, so yes, late for work but still morning. Thankfully. She had a meeting with her department head today. There were a few times in the past where she’d slept through an entire day after a particularly rough night out.
The bubble popped up indicating she had a new voicemail, and she hovered her thumb over it before discarding her phone and shifting back down into the covers. But the curiosity of why he was calling—again—mixed with a certain type of loneliness, tugged at the back of Trina’s mind, and so she pulled it out again and clicked the recording.
The voice, familiar to her, blasted out from the speaker, making her temples throb.
“I know you don’t want to hear from me, but I need to talk to you. Call me. It’s important. Please, Catriona. Call me.”
The recording ended, and Trina slowly rose from her bed, filled a glass of water from the kitchen sink, and plunged her phone into the water.
Then, and only then, did she fill a second glass and drink it down in one satisfying gulp.
Monday kept rolling in like a semi-truck, all angry clouds and a brittle wind lashing at Trina’s throat. She should have worn her warmer coat, but a guy she met at a Greek wedding a few weeks ago had vomited on it as they made their way to the back of his car, and she hadn’t taken the time to have it dry-cleaned yet. It was still sitting on a hook by her apartment door, and every time she walked by she caught a slight whiff of sick mixed with honey.
So she was wearing her shorter, thinner coat with the pink lining and fur-trimmed hood. Which was fine. Her legs were freezing, and she regretted choosing tights and a skirt today, but she needed to look put-together. Driving onto campus was always a hellhole, even with a faculty parking permit, and Trina had failed to account for delays in buses running from the extension lot to her building on campus. As a result, she was five minutes late for her meeting with her department head, and she showed up with bright cheeks, a runny nose, and her coat still wrapped around her. The meeting was for 11:30am, and there’s nothing quite like having a disciplinary meeting with your superior that lets them know you haven’t yet settled into work by the time many of your colleagues were eating lunch.
“Trina, sit down.” Her boss pushed a plastic Tupperware of salad to the side of her desk.
Liz Turley was really the best kind of department head. Charismatic, intelligent, a good communicator. Everybody in the department loved her, including Trina.
This meeting was going to be awful.
