Trust No One by Paul Cleave Read Free Book Online

Because you wanted to be a writer. Ever since you were a kid, telling stories is what you wanted to do. An English degree would help you tell those stories, and a psych degree would help you understand the characters. That’s where you met Sandra—in a room of people all wanting to learn what makes the mind tick. Your opening line to her was We need crazy people to make a living doing this. She laughed, it was a warm wonderful laugh that made you feel warm and wonderful inside, it was a smile that made the world melt away except for her. You can even remember what she was wearing—tight blue jeans with in-fashion holes in the legs and hems that looked like hedgehogs had fooled around on them, a sleeveless red top that matched the shade of her lipstick, and her blond hair was flowing down to her shoulders the way you’ve always liked it. But for the last ten years or so it’s always been in a ponytail, even at the dinner party where you said This is my wife— please fill in the blank. You went to the cinema that Friday night. Seeing a film may be a cliché for a first date, but it’s a good cliché. You went to see a Star Trek movie. She was a fan, and you told her you were a closet Trekkie, and she asked what else you were keeping in the closet. You told her your last girlfriend.
    Back then, of course, in your university days, you weren’t really a writer. You always suspected that the university education you were getting is what you would fall back on as your house filled up with rejection slips from the publishers. You wanted to be a writer from day one, but it was your mother who encouraged you to continue your education, her scoring point being what an English degree would do for your creativity. By the time you met Sandra, you had written a couple dozen short stories, but you didn’t dare show Sandra any of them until you’d been dating for a few months—and even then it was only after she assured you that she knew they were going to be just great, because you were just great. You were convinced if she read any of your stuff she would tell you it was good in a very vague Oh yeah, it’s good, I mean, sure . . . I’m sure people will like this, and by the way I can’t see you Friday night as I have to wash my hair / pick up a cousin from the airport / I’m getting a cold, don’t call me I’ll call you kind of way. What she did tell you was that your stories needed work. She told you that every character had to be perfectly flawed. She was the one who over the years convinced you to write a novel. THE novel. And that’s what you did. You wrote THE novel, and THE novel was awful and Sandra was kind enough to tell you. So then you wrote THE NEXT novel, and that was awful too—but not as awful, she told you, and you tried again. And again. It would be years later you finally put that university degree to good use and got it right, but during those years of study Sandra was tiring of psychology and was thinking of switching to law when she found out she was pregnant.
    Life changed then. A few days later you asked her to marry you, and at first she said no, that she didn’t want to marry you just because she was pregnant, but you convinced her that wasn’t why you were asking. Having her in your life was the most amazing thing, and any day without her would be full of heartache and despair. She said yes. You didn’t get married until after Eva was born—Eva was eighteen months old when you walked down the aisle. By then you were also no longer studying, but were renovating houses. Sandra was a stay-at-home mother until Eva started school, at which time she then went back to university and got her law degree, focusing on civil rights. By then you had written A Christmas Murder, which a year later would go on to become a bestseller and open up the world for you. Sandra got a job at a law firm, and then all these years later you got Alzheimer’s and had a big fight with her.
    Sandra is concerned, of