LITMIR.BIZ

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her ankles, rubbing and purring loudly. “All right, mighty huntress. Even the best mousers have off days.” She picked the calico off the floor and whispered into a pointed, flicking ear, “You’re still the fairest of them all, you know.”

      The cat, snow white with only a few patches of orange and black, had been named Marilyn after Marilyn Monroe by Jillian’s mother.

      “She’s just so beautiful. She has a Hollywood quality, don’t you think?” Linnie White had gushed upon delivering the eight-week-old kitten to her youngest daughter. “I tell you, I saw her and couldn’t resist. Let’s name her Marilyn.”

      “Wouldn’t Norma Jean be a little more…I don’t know…subtle…or intellectual? Kind of an inside joke?” Jillian had offered.

      “Well, for God’s sake, Jillian, it’s a cat, for crying out loud. Who needs subtle and intellectual?”

      “I’m not sure I even want a cat.”

      “Of course you do.” Linnie had handed Jillian the adorable little bit of fluff and the tiny thing had shown the insight to look up at Jillian with wide green eyes and purr wildly, as if Jillian were some kind of savior. Upon being held closer to Jillian’s neck, the kitten had kneaded her with those petite paws and that was, as they say, that. Jillian had fallen instantly in love. Her no-animals decree was null and void. “Oh God, she’s already working me,” she’d said, knowing she’d been snared. Jillian could have protested to the ends of the earth, but she’d begun bonding with the little feline immediately. Even though she’d never been a “cat person,” and even though, after the death of her old, blind dog, another rescued animal from the pound, Jillian had sworn off animals, none of that mattered when Marilyn purred against her neck.

      “That’s what cats do. Work you,” Linnie had agreed, smugly satisfied that Jillian was hooked by the kitten and there would be no returning the little calico to the Humane Society shelter. “And it’s why they’re so much like husbands.”

      “Fine, fine, Marilyn can stay. Just don’t go to the ex-husband pound and bring me one back, okay?”

      Linnie smiled. “Funny girl. Didn’t I tell you not to marry Mason, huh? I distinctly remember mentioning something about you not being over Aaron when you took up with him.”

      “Mom, Aaron was dead four years when I married Mason.”

      “He was missing for four years. And you always suspected something else was going on with Aaron before he disappeared.”

      “So did the police. But it’s ancient history now,” Jillian reminded her, not wanting to think what her ex had done, how he’d set her up, how she’d been hounded after his death.

      Linnie had clearly wanted to say more, but for once had thought better of it. “So stick with cats for a while.”

      “Oh, I will,” Jillian had agreed. “Believe me.”

      “No men?”

      “No, Mom, no men. Not for a long, long time.”

      And so the cat had stayed, and so far, Jillian had kept her vow. Which didn’t answer the burning question: who was calling her at the crack of dawn? No, make that before dawn.

      She took a sip of coffee, set a squirming Marilyn onto the ground and was about to walk up the stairs to her bedroom when her cell, still in her hand, jangled.

      She answered before the second ring. “Hello?”

      “He’s alive,” a reedy, paper-thin voice whispered.

      “Pardon?”

      “He’s alive.”

      “Who? Who’s alive? Who is this?”

      “Your husband. He’s alive.”

      “I know he’s alive. And by the way, he’s my ex.” She knew Mason Rivers was very much alive and still driving a BMW, practicing law and most likely cheating on his most recent wife. Lots of women wished him dead, but Mason was just too damned egotistical to die. “Who is this?”

      “Not your ex.”

      “I’m hanging up,” Jillian said after a moment. A cold sensation was climbing up the back of her neck as she stared out the kitchen window at the gray waters of the lake. Her own pale reflection in the glass looked frightened. “Who are you?”

      Click.

      The phone went dead and as she stared at it she saw that her hand was shaking. Trembling. Her throat as dry as dust.

      Aaron. Whoever was on the other end of the phone was telling her…warning her…that Aaron was alive? What the hell was that all about? And it wasn’t true!

      But they never found his body, did they?

      You never quit believing that someday he would walk back through your front door to explain how he’d left you alone after he’d embezzled all that money. After the police had suspected you were in on the plot to steal over half a million dollars in funds from people who had invested with him, trusted him.

      “Oh God,” she whispered and dropped the phone, sending it clattering across the tile floor. Tears welled in her eyes and her heart was pounding as she slumped against the side of the sink. Aaron was dead. As in forever. An accident while on that damned hiking trip in Suriname. Just because his body had never been recovered from the rain forests of South America didn’t mean he was alive.

      And then she was angry. Infuriated with whomever had called her. She hated practical jokes. Hated them. Aaron was dead and gone and had been for years.

      With an effort, she calmed herself down slowly. Marilyn was staring at her in an unnerving way and it sent a funny little chill down Jillian’s spine.

      “He’s dead,” she told the cat firmly. For an answer, Marilyn uneasily flicked her tail and scurried back out the cat door. Jillian was left staring after her…and wondering.

      Chapter Three

      “Rise and shine,” Regan Pescoli ordered from the open doorway of her son’s bedroom. Posters of grunge and heavy metal bands battled for space on the walls and ceiling with oversized pictures of pro basketball players. Clothes, DVDs and dishes, complete with the dried-on remains of spaghetti or pizza, littered the floor, desk and top of the small television. In a word, the ten-by-ten room in the basement was a sty.

      No response from the huge lump in the middle of the futon he’d claimed as his bed.

      “Hey, Jeremy, did you hear me? It’s time to get up for school.”

      This time she heard a grunt.

      “You know you’re not out of the woods yet. One more tardy and Mr. Quasdorff is going to—”

      “I don’t give a…a rat’s ass what Quasdorff will do!” her son declared, throwing back the covers. Glaring at the ceiling, he looked so much like her first husband, Regan felt as if she’d been kicked in the gut. “He’s so damned gay!”

      “I wouldn’t be spouting that off. Especially to his wife and kids.”

      Jeremy rolled morosely out of bed and Cisco, their mottled terrier of some kind, hopped onto the floor. Cisco was ten and graying but still thought he was a puppy. “I could use a little privacy,” Jeremy groused, all six feet two of him. Regan sipped her coffee and didn’t move. “I get it, Mom, okay?”

      “And give your sister a ride to junior high.”

      “I know.” He glanced at her with eyes still filled with sleep and she saw only a glimmer of the happy-go-lucky kid he’d once been. Now, he was trying to grow a soul patch, scraggly, uneven whiskers, a darker spot on his chin, and talking about getting tattoos and piercings despite her protests that he wait at least until he was eighteen.

      If only his father were still alive. If only Joe hadn’t been a hero and died in the line of duty. If

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