I Don't Forgive You

on Arleigh Road. Apparently, the whole neighborhood is abuzz.”
“What’s police-related?” Cole asks.
“Buddy, go get dressed for church,” Mark says, and after the obligatory whining, Cole heads upstairs.
Mark comes around the counter and kisses the top of my head. “How you doing this morning? Any better?”
“I guess I’m okay. Just groggy.” I stand up and take my plate to the sink. My phone and Mark’s both ping at the same time.
“What now?” he asks and grabs his phone.
I look up to see his expression turn sour.
“What is it?” I ask, but he does not look up from his phone. “Mark, you’re scaring me.”
“Apparently, it wasn’t a break-in. The police thing over on Arleigh—somebody died.”
The word hovers in my mind for a millisecond before clicking into place.
Someone in our neighborhood has died. I wonder if it was the older woman with the long, gray braids around the corner who feeds the raccoons. She always looked so frail.
“Oh my god,” I say. “That’s awful. Did we know the person?”
“Actually, yeah.” Mark turns the phone toward me so I can see the screen. “You did know him.”
I squint at the image. It’s small, but I can easily make out the familiar face.
I’m looking right at Rob the Wine Guy.

 8
“Robert Avery,” Mark says, pulling the phone back and staring at it intently.
His tone is even and cool. I can’t read his emotions at all. Inside, my thoughts swirl as I try to piece together everything I know.
“That is so crazy,” I whisper. I am frozen in place, not sure what I am supposed to think or feel. I barely know the guy, and what I do know of him is not positive. But he’s dead. And that means shifting my frame of mind. Whatever happened last night is irrelevant now.
“At least now we know the guy’s name,” Mark says.
“Do you know what happened?” I ask. “Was it natural causes? An accident?”
He squints at the phone. “Nope. That’s all the message says. But I’m sure as soon as Daisy and Leah find out, we’ll all know.”
The doorbell rings, a tinny ding-dong-ding that echoes through the house. A small shriek escapes me.
“You okay?” Mark asks.
“I’m freaked out, honestly. I mean, aren’t you?”
The doorbell shrills again. “We should get that. It’s probably Caitlin.”
I step over Cole’s pink hoodie with the faux fur collar and five mismatched shoes. My son’s penchant for pink has exploded in the past few months, bourgeoning from an occasional splash of rose to an all-out obsession. At first, it was just a preference, but lately, he gets hysterical if he doesn’t have at least one pink thing on. We’ve decided on a more hands-off approach, chalking his demands up to possible anxiety caused by the move. That means bits and bobs of bubble gum pink all throughout the house, as if a Disney princess exploded into tiny pieces in our home.
I open the front door to Caitlin and immediately position my body to block her view of our dining room.
“Oh! You’re still in your pajamas. Are you sick, Allie?”
“Nope.” I cross my arms over myself, realizing I am still wearing Mark’s old T-shirt. “Just lazy.”
“Well, happy Sunday!” Caitlin says.
“You, too!” I force myself to put Rob Avery’s death out of my mind and plaster on a big smile.
Cole runs past me, clutching a poker, and thrusts it at Caitlin. “Aaargh, matey,” he says.
Caitlin throws her hands up in mock terror. Cole takes the poker and leaps onto the lawn, stabbing at the air.
“So I see you’ve been putting my housewarming present to good use.” When we first moved in, Caitlin presented us with a monogrammed set of hand-forged brass-and-iron fire tools. “I mean, they’re sort of an heirloom, not really a toy. But hey, whatever works for you.”
Caitlin adjusts her wide, navy-blue headband, which matches her navy-blue dress. Over it she’s wearing an unbelted trench coat, looking every bit the female lead of an Alfred Hitchcock movie.
“As soon as it gets chilly enough for a fire, I am sure we’ll put them to good use,” I say.
She bends down and picks up the poker, where Cole has abandoned it for a try at climbing the dogwood tree. Caitlin traces a manicured finger over the R on the handle of the poker. Caitlin would brand the whole world with an R if she could. Lucky for her, she married Charles Robideaux and did not have to change any of her monogrammed belongings. I wonder if his initials played a role in her accepting his proposal.
“I’ll take it inside.” I take the poker from her. “Do you want to come in and wait? Cup of coffee?”
Caitlin turns to look at Cole, who is a blur of pink and khaki as he jumps up and down trying to grab hold of the dogwood’s lowest-hanging branch.
“He really does love pink, doesn’t he?” Above, the sky is a milky-white, threatening rain.
“Nothing wrong with that,” I say, keeping my voice light. Cole’s preference for traditionally “girl” things seems to rankle Mark’s side of the family. A few weeks ago, Mark told them in no uncertain terms to butt out, but clearly Caitlin has trouble doing that. “In France, pink is a boy’s color,” I add.
“Oh, Allie. You’re silly. We’re not in France, we’re in America.” I’m not sure whether Caitlin is being precise or purposefully obtuse. I give her the benefit of the doubt and decide it’s precision, a quality that runs in her family. Like her brother, Caitlin is a lawyer. Whereas Mark works in arbitration, Caitlin is at one of the D.C. area’s top divorce firms. “Anyway, I thought it might be nice if he wore navy. Like Mark and me.”
I don’t ask how she knows what color her brother will be wearing to church, because I’m not sure I want to know. St. Edmund’s, a gloomy Gothic building less than a mile away that straddles the line between D.C. and Maryland, is one of the few remaining Episcopal churches in the region that won’t consecrate gay marriage