I answered.
“Is this the wife of Daniel Marsh?”
The way the woman said “wife,” not “his wife,” not “Mrs. Marsh.”
Something in my stomach dropped before she said another word.
“This is she,” I said. “Who is this?”
“My name is Officer Denise Pratt, Rowanville PD. Ma’am, I need you to sit down.”
I did not sit down. I gripped the edge of the counter so hard my knuckles went white.
“Your husband was found unresponsive this evening at a residence on Larch Court. Paramedics attempted resuscitation. He was pronounced dead at 9:12 p.m. I’m very sorry.”
Larch Court.
I didn’t recognize the address. I would spend the next four days wishing I still didn’t.
My daughter, Zoe, was seven. She was already in bed, one arm hanging off the mattress, her stuffed rabbit crushed under her cheek. I stood in her doorway for a long time before I called my sister.
Everything after that call moves in fragments in my memory. My sister Camille driving over at eleven at night in her pajamas. A detective’s voice, gentle in that practiced way. The word “cardiac arrest” said three times before it settled into my body as something real. And then, quietly, almost like an afterthought, the detective saying the address on Larch Court belonged to a woman named Renee Coleman.
“Do you know her?” the detective asked.
