A Perfect Husband by Aphrodite Jones Read Free Book Online Page A

would serve her sister’s memory. She needed to do that for her sister. She needed to remain strong. Fighting back tears in her eyes, Candace wrote her sister a loving eulogy. That was another thing she had hoped Michael, the novelist, would have undertaken. But he hadn’t. Michael was at such a loss for words, he couldn’t put his grief on paper.
    Candace wasn’t sure about how she could handle all these people. Kathleen’s children were devastated, her mom was sick at heart, and if that wasn’t bad enough, Michael had become absolutely useless. He was basically hiding out in his house, refusing to face the world. Still, Candace knew that the family would manage, somehow, in the midst of such grief, to pull things together.
    Unfortunately, there had been no advance planning on the part of Kathleen concerning her death. There was no cemetery plot chosen, there were no instructions about burial or cremation. And there was no last will and testament. Once the eulogy was written, Candace had to find the strength to look in the phone book and contact a funeral home. The rest of the family would be arriving, the arrangements needed to be in place. She wished Kathleen had left some instructions, something that would have reflected her own wishes, but nothing of that kind existed. Everything was falling on Candace’s shoulders.
    Once Candace contacted the local funeral director, however, things became a bit easier. The people at the funeral home were gracious and full of respect for Kathleen; they were full of remorse for the family. They were such nice folks, the people in Durham. It seemed everyone was so kindhearted in North Carolina. There was all that Southern charm, all that grace of yesteryear. And as Candace became more entrenched with the funeral arrangements, she almost completely forgot about her grief.
    It was still a difficult time for her, the whole funeral and wake process—especially because she had no one in the family to run things by—but Candace had put off her own grieving, really, without even having realized it. The death investigation was clouding everyone’s minds. The newspeople were snooping around. Their lives weren’t private anymore. And then, Michael and his sons were so caught up in their anger at the police. They were furious that the Durham police were trying to make news out of Kathleen’s death. In the Petersons’ minds, it was all a publicity stunt by the Durham police, who had no regard for the family’s feelings at all.
    The Petersons were still outraged by the fact that the police had taken over their home. The police had spent almost two days executing their search warrants. In all those hours, in all the panic surrounding Kathleen’s death, Michael and his sons had felt such outrage. The police were checking all of their cars, cops were rummaging through everything they owned. The Cedar Street mansion had been turned upside down, yet there wasn’t anything to find.
    With Michael finally free to move about the house again, Candace had made a point to go back to see him on Tuesday morning. By then, Candace and the rest of the family, including Caitlin, Margaret, and Martha, were all staying in Durham at the Washington Duke, a ritzy hotel on the Duke campus, not far from the Forest Hills home. Kathleen’s family had been given a floor of suites there, compliments of the management, to make the first few nights of their suffering just a little less difficult.
    It was a godsend, actually, that Kathleen’s family was tucked away at a hotel, because over on Cedar Street, Michael was so upset, so beside himself with grief, there was really no reasoning with him. Candace had gone to his home to talk to Michael about making the final funeral arrangements. A short while after she got there, Candace noticed a couple of maintenance workers had been let into the house. They had plywood and other supplies, and Candace figured that