LITMIR.BIZ

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Rayna up and carried her to the kitchen table.

      “Daddy gone?” she asked.

      Sitting on a chair, I cradled Rayna on my lap. I pressed my lips to the top of her head, inhaling her clean scent. She was so innocent, so fragile. And I had to destroy her world.

      “Oh, baby.” I closed my eyes and sighed before continuing. “Daddy is…”

      Dead.

      No, not dead. I couldn’t say dead. She wouldn’t understand what that meant, anyway.

      I wracked my brain for something appropriate to say. “Daddy is…gone away. He didn’t want to leave, but he had to. And now he’s in a place called heaven.” I paused. Rayna was listening intently. “The thing about heaven is that when you go there, you can’t come back. It’s a very beautiful place, with lots of pretty waterfalls and animals. So it’s a place where Daddy is very happy. It’s just that, since he’s there now, he won’t be coming back here. When people go to heaven, they stay there forever. Which means we won’t be seeing Daddy again.” I ran my hands over Rayna’s hair. “But we can’t be sad, because Daddy is happy there. It’s just that we’re going to miss him very much.”

      I steeled myself, waiting for Rayna’s tears, but she did something I didn’t expect. She wriggled out of my arms, then looked up at me and said, “Circle cereal.”

      “You’re hungry?”

      She nodded.

      “And you want circle cereal?”

      “Circle cereal!” she agreed enthusiastically.

      That was her way of describing Cheerios. I stood up. “All right, then. Let’s get you some cereal.”

      She ran to the cupboard ahead of me. My daughter hardly ever walked. If she wasn’t running, she was skipping. If she wasn’t skipping, she was galloping.

      My sweet baby, I thought as I watched her. She’d just lost the father she adored, and she didn’t understand.

      I guess it was a blessing.

      At precisely eight o’clock, the telephone rang. I plucked the receiver off the kitchen wall and put it to my ear. “Hello?”

      “Vanessa Cain, this is Dean Musselman with CNN. I was wondering if I could schedule—”

      “No comment,” I quipped, and hung up.

      Dean’s call was only the first of many—six more from reporters, and three from acquaintances who’d heard the story and were calling to offer condolences. Soon, the constantly ringing phone had my head pounding. I took the receiver off the hook and went to the bathroom to down another Advil.

      Then I got my cell phone from my bedroom, turned it on and dialed Carla’s number.

      “Carla,” I said, relieved when she answered.

      “Sweetie,” she said warmly. “How are you doing?”

      “I’ve been better,” I replied. Then added, “Understatement of the century.”

      “I’m so sorry.”

      “It’s not your fault,” I told her. “Please don’t apologize.” I finally understood why some people hated pity after they’d suffered a tragedy. It left you feeling even more helpless in the wake of their sadness.

      “Will you be home today?” I asked.

      “Yeah. Why? You want to do something? Maybe take the girls to the park?”

      “Actually, I was hoping that you could watch Rayna, same as always.”

      “Watch Rayna?” she repeated, sounding surprised.

      “Yeah. I’m gonna head to the office.”

      “You’re joking.”

      “I’m not.”

      “Your boss expects you to go to the office today?” Carla asked, and I’d never heard her sound more mortified. “You know what, that woman is a total—”

      “It’s not her,” I interjected. “It’s me. I want to go to work.”

      There was a pregnant pause, and I could easily picture Carla’s face—her mouth slightly ajar, her eyes narrowed in confusion.

      “This was your idea?”

      “I can’t stay here,” I said. “Stay here all day and think about what happened. Plus, have you looked outside your window? With the Jerry Springer media circus downstairs, how long before our building becomes a new South Beach attraction? And how long will it be before the reporters get brave and come knocking on my door? No, I’ll be far better off at work, away from all this.”

      “If you’re sure,” Carla said, but she didn’t sound convinced that I was making the right decision.

      I groaned softly. “I have no clue what’s right. I’ve never been in this situation before. I don’t know what the protocol is.”

      “I’m just worried about you, that’s all.”

      “I know. And you’re probably wondering how I can even consider going to the office. But if I stay home and see Eli everywhere, what good am I going to be to Rayna? Not to mention the endless phone calls from the reporters, which is only making all of this worse.”

      “I’m not judging you,” Carla said. “Obviously, you have to do what you feel is best. And you know I’ll be here as I am every day, more than happy to babysit Rayna.”

      “Thank you, Carla. You’re the best.”

      “Anytime.”

      Fifteen minutes later, I dropped Rayna off at Carla’s place on the second floor and returned to my apartment to get dressed. My head still throbbed, and when I walked into my bedroom, all I wanted to do was collapse onto the king-size bed and let sleep take me away from my problems. It was tempting, but I feared that if I lay down, I’d spend the day in a catatonic state of depression, and that would get me absolutely nowhere.

      So I drank a second cup of coffee, dressed in a smart blazer and skirt, and headed out of my apartment.

      I was halfway down the elevator when the realization struck me that I had to drive out of the parking lot, and that the media likely had every conceivable exit or entry point of the building covered. And by now, I was certain they knew what I looked like.

      Sunglasses wouldn’t cut it.

      I made my way back to up to my apartment, where I found a colorful scarf in my closet that I’d purchased at a boutique on Ocean Drive, but had never worn. One of those impulse buys that had made perfect sense at the time, but not the morning after.

      Well, it would be put to good use today. The media might snap off shots of me and get video footage as I drove away, but at least they wouldn’t be able to see my face.

      “Why does it matter?” I asked myself as I opened the door to my car minutes later. It wasn’t like I had anything to hide. These reporters weren’t hounding me because they secretly thought I’d murdered Eli. So what if they caught me looking grief-stricken, or less than perfect? Wasn’t that par for the course when a person suffered a devastating and public loss such as I had?

      As I planted myself behind the wheel of my car and started the engine, it instantly dawned on me the reason I was so mortified at being seen on TV.

      Shame.

      Sure, Eli’s cheating wasn’t my fault, but people could be tremendously cruel. They could—and would—form judgments of me without even knowing a single thing about me. They’d say, for example, that I was a pathetically hopeless romantic who should have known better. Or worse, that I was a gold digger for being involved with a man who’d been a well-paid athlete.

      I didn’t even want to imagine what Eli’s ex-wife would say about

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