Don't Cry Now by Joy Fielding

disturbing sounds and images: Joan’s voice on the phone that morning; Joan’s body at the kitchen table in the house on Lombard Street; the gaping hole in the middle of her chest; Joan’s bedroom; Joan’s scrapbook; her brother’s name in Joan’s address book; the insurance policy with its damned double indemnity clause; a life brutally extinguished; two motherless children. Why? What did any of it mean?
    â€œI’ll be awake all night,” Bonnie moaned, crawling back into bed, and closing her eyes. In the next instant, she was asleep.
    Â 
    In Bonnie’s dream, she was standing in front of her high school class, about to hand out their final exams. “This is a difficult test,” she was telling her students, peering across their bewildered faces, “so I hope you’re prepared.”
    She moved quickly among the rows of desks, dropping an exam paper in front of each student, hearing assorted groans and giggles. Looking up, she realized that someone had decorated the room for Halloween, as one would a kindergarten class, with large cutouts of witches balancing on broomsticks; silhouettes of black cats with their backs arched; orange pumpkins with horrific faces, their eyes large empty black holes. “You can start as soon as I finish handing these out,” she told her students, concentrating on the task at hand. There was loud laughter. “Would someone mind telling me what’s so funny?” she asked.
    Haze pushed himself away from his desk and sauntered toward her. “I have a message for you from your father,” he said, a hand-rolled cigarette falling from his shirt pocket to the floor.
    â€œNo smoking in this room,” Bonnie reminded him.
    â€œHe says you’ve been a bad girl,” Haze told her, looking toward the window, Bonnie’s eyes following his gaze, seeing a large cutout of a boa constrictor woven through the old-style, thick venetian blinds.
    â€œNo,” Bonnie protested. “I’m a good girl.”
    The fire alarm suddenly sounded, students bolting for the door, knocking Bonnie down in their rush to escape, trampling her under their heavy boots. “Somebody help me,” Bonnie called after them, torn and bloody, as the cutout of the snake dropped to the floor and bounced to life, slithering toward her, its mouth opening in a chilling hundred-and-eighty-degree angle, as the fire alarm continued its shrill cry.
    Bonnie bolted up in bed, arms stretched out protectively, the alarm still ringing in her ears.
    It was the phone.
    â€œJesus,” she said, trying to calm the rapid beating of her heart with a series of deep breaths. She reached across her sleeping husband and grabbed for the phone, noting the time on the clock radio. Almost two A.M. “Hello?” Her voice was husky, hovering between panic and indignation.
    â€œI understand you were asking about me.”
    â€œNick?” Bonnie leaned back against the headboard, feeling vaguely sick to her stomach, inadvertently dragging the phone wire across her husband’s face. Rod stirred and opened his eyes.
    â€œWhat can I do for you, Bonnie?”
    He either didn’t know or didn’t care that it was the middle of the night, Bonnie thought, picturing her younger brother as he spoke, his dirty blond hair falling across his close-set green eyes and small delicate nose, a nose that seemed altogether wrong for the rest of his tough-guy face. His voice was the same as always—a mixture of charm and impudence. She remembered how he used to make her laugh, wondered at what precise moment the laughter had ceased.
    â€œI didn’t realize you were out of jail.”
    â€œYou should call more often.”
    â€œYou’re living with Dad?”
    â€œCondition of my parole. Is there a point to this conversation?”
    â€œJoan Wheeler was murdered today,” Bonnie said, and waited for his response.
    â€œIs that supposed to mean