Happily Never After. Kathleen O'Brien

His gun went off.”

      “I’m so sorry.” Kelly shut her eyes. “But are you sure? I mean, are you sure it was an accident?”

      “I guess you didn’t know him all that well. I lived with him for eight years. I knew him inside and out. He was a good man, but he drank too much, no reason to sugarcoat it. He had no business handling a gun, the condition he was in, but there was no stopping him when he had his mind made up.”

      Somehow Kelly got through the rest of the call, offering condolences and apologies for calling at such a terrible time. When she put the telephone down, her hands felt cold.

      Strangely numb, she picked up one of her rich green-glass leaves and held it to the light. The striations really were lovely. She hoped she’d got all the veins “growing” in the right direction.

      She remembered what her first stained-glass teacher had told her, all those years ago in the basement of the Mellon house. A gorgeous young French artist, Jean Laurent, had been hired to create a two-story St. George and the Dragon window to hang at the top of the Coeur Volé staircase.

      Kelly and Sophie had both instantly fallen in love. But while Sophie lusted after the Frenchman’s black hair and bulging shoulders, Kelly had fallen in love with the glass. The shining green of the dragon’s scales, and the rich, glowing red of his bleeding heart, the twining vines and billowing clouds behind St. George’s triumphant sword.

      Probably Jean had become Sophie’s lover. Kelly remembered odd absences, lingering glances. But he had also recognized Kelly’s passion and he had given her hours of his time.

      When you cut your leaves, he showed her, or created your clouds, you couldn’t just pick the prettiest spot on your sheet of glass. You had to pick the one that followed the correct lines and rhythms of life.

      Hair curled, leaves grew, shadows fell, and even dragons died, according to natural laws. Violate them in the glass, and the entire piece would always be vaguely unsatisfactory.

      She picked up a second leaf, twirling it slowly in her bandaged fingers.

      Natural laws.

      She picked up the picture in her other hand. Two of those smiling people were dead now. Did that follow the laws of nature? Two of ten was twenty percent. If you took any random group of ten relatively intelligent, well-to-do twenty-somethings… Would twenty percent of them be dead within ten years?

      The phone rang again.

      She dropped the picture but held on to the two leaves. She clicked the talk button.

      “Hello.”

      “Is this Kelly Ralston?”

      “Yes. Who is this?”

      “This is Phil Tammaro.”

      At first Kelly didn’t recognize the name. Tammaro? Did she know anyone named Tammaro?

      “I’m Dolly’s husband.”

      Oh, of course. She’d left a message there, after she’d finally tracked Dolly down through three completely different marriages, names and addresses.

      “Yes,” she said, eager to make up for not remembering. “Yes, Phil, thank you for calling me back.”

      “I just came in. I heard your message. I thought I’d better tell you—”

      His voice broke, and at the sound Kelly’s heart stopped.

      “—tell you about Dolly. You see, Dolly was in an accident. She—she’s dead.”

      TOM HAD BEEN LOOKING for Jacob more than an hour before it occurred to him to check the cemetery.

      It was a beautiful Saturday morning, still warm but with a crisp hint of fall. After the funeral, Jacob had asked Tom to stay in Cathedral Cove a few days. Jacob didn’t need to be alone right now, and since Tom wasn’t eager to get back to the whole stupid Coach O’Toole mess—not to mention the phone messages that would be waiting from an injured Darlene—he’d said yes.

      He’d let his office know he was taking a week of vacation time, which hadn’t gone down well with Bailey, but so what? Every vacation Tom had taken for the past five years had been a working trip, schmoozing some potential client or attending some business conference. They owed him.

      Besides, there wasn’t really any such thing as “getting away” if you had a cell phone and a laptop.

      Yesterday, Jacob had slept late, so Tom had spent all morning answering e-mails, issuing instructions to his paralegal and hand-holding a couple of clients who wanted to know why you had to notify everyone on the planet before you set a court date for a hearing.

      He assumed today would be the same. This morning, though, by the time he got off the phone, Jacob was gone. And he’d left his cell phone behind, which seemed to hint that he’d like to be alone.

      It had been a sticky moment. Tom didn’t want to crowd Jacob, who was free to go wherever he wanted. Tom wasn’t exactly the prison warden. But still…though Jacob seemed to be pulling himself together a little, it had been only a week since his wife had died. He was still fragile enough that Tom would rather keep an eye on him.

      Finally, just when Tom was starting to admit he was worried, he spotted Jacob’s car. It was pulled off the road, near the entrance to Edgewater Memorial Gardens.

      Great. Just perfect. Tom felt for Jacob, really he did. Losing Lillith had put the man through sheer hell. But to tell the truth, Tom had endured all the hair-tearing and teeth-gnashing he could take for a while.

      This definitely wasn’t how he handled his own challenges. His personal recipe for emotional recovery was a fourteen-hour workday followed by a run of maybe ten miles, or fifteen, or whatever it took to wear out every muscle and brain cell he had.

      Cemeteries were for wallowing, and he didn’t wallow. His own parents, who had died when he was in college, had been cremated and scattered at sea. Clean and sensible. No desolate angels clinging to crosses, no granite effigies, no gut-wrenching epitaphs. No tilted, weed-covered tombstones and withered flowers to remind you that, in the end, even love gets tired of grief and forgets to mourn.

      But what could he do? He couldn’t exactly call Jacob’s friend Joe and say, Hey, could you go get him? He’s in the cemetery, and I don’t do cemeteries.

      So, indulging himself in one heavy sigh, he parked his car and began walking around, looking for Jacob.

      This particular cemetery was a pleasant surprise. It was restrained, with no marble explosions of showy grief. Just neat rows of well-tended headstones, and comfortable benches under apple trees and spreading oaks.

      For a cemetery, it seemed strangely full of life. The trees were restless with chattering squirrels and noisy birds, and ahead of him on the path a young couple walked slowly hand in hand, as if this were just another pretty park.

      Off to his right, toward the river, a funeral service was in progress. A soft blue tent held a dozen mourners and a priest. The priest smiled at him as he passed. Smiling back seemed strange, so Tom merely nodded and walked on.

      To his left, where the cemetery blended comfortably into a neighborhood of old, charming, well-kept houses, Tom saw three little girls, maybe ten or eleven years old, playing among the trees. One girl had a sword made of an apple branch, and the other two wore crowns of tinfoil and Shasta daisies.

      Jacob sat on a bench very near the children, though he faced the other direction. Tom braced himself, took another deep breath, sat on the bench beside him.

      “Hey, buddy,” he said. “You had me a little worried there.”

      Jacob looked over at him. Just as Tom had feared, Jacob had been crying. But for the moment, at least, his red eyes were dry.

      “Sorry,” Jacob said. “I just felt like I had to come see her.”

      Tom glanced over at the lawn. Though he could tell where the freshly