The call came at 2:17 PM on Wednesday, just as Clara was folding Jimmy's laundry in the living room. She almost didn't answer—the number was unfamiliar, and she'd been avoiding calls from the credit card company about Eddie's latest Home Depot splurge. But something made her pick up on the fourth ring.
"Mrs. Malone?" The voice was professional, careful. "This is Dr. Patricia Williams at Millhaven General Hospital. I need you to come in immediately. Your husband and son have been in an accident."
The laundry basket slipped from Clara's hands, spilling Jimmy's school clothes across the carpet. "What kind of accident? Are they—how bad is it?"
"Ma'am, I really need you to come in. Are you able to drive, or should I send someone to get you?"
Clara's legs felt unsteady, but she was already reaching for her keys. "I'm coming. I'm coming right now."
The drive to the hospital passed in a blur of red lights and half-coherent prayers. Clara found herself making bargains with a God she hadn't spoken to in years—take her instead, let them be okay, she'd be a better wife, a better mother, she'd end things with Adam, she'd do anything.
The emergency room doors slid open with mechanical efficiency, revealing a chaos of medical professionals, worried families, and the sharp smell of disinfectant that made Clara's stomach lurch. She stumbled to the reception desk, where a tired-looking nurse with kind eyes took her information and led her to a small room with uncomfortable chairs and boxes of tissues strategically placed on every surface.
Dr. Williams appeared five minutes later—a middle-aged Black woman with silver-streaked hair and the kind of steady presence that Clara desperately needed. She sat down across from Clara, her hands folded carefully in her lap.
"Mrs. Malone, I'm very sorry to have to tell you this. Your husband was killed instantly in the collision. He wouldn't have felt any pain."
The words hit Clara like physical blows. She heard herself make a sound—something between a gasp and a wail—but it felt like it was coming from someone else.
"Jimmy?" she managed to whisper.
Dr. Williams's expression grew even more grave. "Your son was critically injured. He's in surgery now. The next few hours will be crucial."
Clara doubled over, clutching her stomach as if she could hold herself together through sheer force of will. This couldn't be happening. Yesterday they were eating tacos and arguing about geometry homework. This morning she'd kissed Jimmy goodbye and told him to remember his permission slip.
"What happened?" she asked when she could speak again. "How did this happen?"
"A hit-and-run collision at the intersection of Oak Street and Riverside Drive. Your husband's truck was struck by another vehicle at high speed. The other driver fled the scene, but witnesses got a partial license plate."
Oak and Riverside. Clara knew that intersection—it was right by the ice cream shop where she'd taken Jimmy for his thirteenth birthday last month. They'd sat outside eating sundaes while Eddie complained that the portions were too big and Jimmy had laughed with chocolate sauce on his chin.
"I need to see him," Clara said, standing on unsteady legs. "I need to see Jimmy."
Dr. Williams gently guided her back to the chair. "He's still in surgery, Mrs. Malone. It's going to be several more hours. Is there someone I can call for you? Family member or friend who can be with you?"
Clara's mind went blank. Eddie's mother, Elizabeth, lived in Florida now. Her own parents had been dead for eight years. The only person she could think of was Adam, but calling him would mean explaining why Eddie and Jimmy had been together in the middle of the afternoon, why they'd been at that intersection, why she hadn't been with them.
"My mother-in-law," she said finally. "Elizabeth Malone. She's in Tampa, but she'll want to know."
The next six hours passed in fragments. Elizabeth's voice on the phone, breaking apart as Clara tried to explain what little she knew. The waiting room filling and emptying with other people's emergencies while Clara sat frozen in the same chair, clutching a cup of coffee that had gone cold hours ago. Adam appearing at some point—Maria had seen the news and insisted he come—his face gray with shock and guilt.
"Jesus, Clara. I'm so sorry. If there's anything—anything at all—"
She couldn't look at him. Couldn't bear the way his presence reminded her of all the time she'd wasted wishing for a different life when the life she'd had was about to be torn away completely.
At 8:43 PM, Dr. Williams returned. Clara knew from her expression before she said a word.
"I'm very sorry, Mrs. Malone. We did everything we could, but Jimmy's injuries were too severe. He passed away about ten minutes ago."
The sound that came from Clara's throat was inhuman. She felt Adam's arms around her, holding her up as her legs gave out completely, but she was drowning in a grief so vast and consuming that she couldn't breathe around it. Her baby. Her beautiful, laughing, thirteen-year-old baby who'd been worried about math tests and girls named Ashley and whether he'd make varsity next year.
"I want to see him," she said when she could form words again. "Please. I need to see him."
They let her sit with Jimmy's body for twenty minutes. He looked smaller than she remembered, pale and still under the harsh hospital lights. Someone had cleaned the blood from his face, but there were bandages everywhere, evidence of the medical team's futile battle to save him.
Clara held his cold hand and whispered all the things she should have said more often when he was alive. How proud she was of his kindness, his sense of humor, the way he still kissed her goodnight even though his friends would have made fun of him for it. How sorry she was for every time she'd been too tired or distracted to really listen when he tried to tell her about his day.
When they finally made her leave, Adam drove her home in her car while Maria followed in theirs. The house felt like a museum of the life Clara had lost—Jimmy's backpack still by the front door, Eddie's coffee mug still in the sink from that morning, the permission slip for Thursday's field trip still attached to the refrigerator with a magnet shaped like a baseball.
Maria made tea and answered the phone when it rang, fielding calls from neighbors and Eddie's coworkers who'd heard the news. Adam sat beside Clara on the couch, not touching her but close enough that she could feel the warmth of his presence. The guilt was still there—would always be there now—but it was buried under the crushing weight of loss.
"The police want to talk to you tomorrow," Adam said quietly. "About the accident. They have some leads on the other driver."
Clara nodded, though she couldn't imagine caring about anything as abstract as justice right now. Eddie and Jimmy were gone. Nothing the police did could bring them back.
It wasn't until much later, after Adam and Maria had gone home and Clara was lying in her empty bed staring at the ceiling, that she realized she hadn't asked the most important question: why had Eddie and Jimmy been together at 2:00 on a Wednesday afternoon? Eddie should have been at work. Jimmy should have been in school.
But those questions would have to wait until morning. Right now, Clara could barely remember how to breathe.
Three blocks away, Detective Frank Doyle was standing in the intersection of Oak and Riverside, studying the skid marks and debris scattered across the asphalt. At fifty-two, Frank had worked hundreds of traffic fatalities, but something about this scene bothered him. The pattern of damage, the physics of the collision—it didn't quite add up.
"What do you think, Detective?" Officer Luis Mendez crouched beside a piece of chrome that had been torn from the striking vehicle. "Looks like a late-model luxury car. BMW, maybe Mercedes."
Frank nodded, making notes in his weathered notebook. "Speed had to be at least sixty, maybe seventy. In a thirty-five zone, middle of the day. Either the driver was drunk, distracted, or in one hell of a hurry."
"Any word on the partial plate?"
"Running it through the system now. Should have something by morning." Frank looked up at the traffic light, then at the position where Eddie Malone's pickup had been struck. "Tell me something, Luis. You see anything weird about this accident?"
The younger officer frowned, considering. "Weird how?"
"Malone was making a left turn. Had a green arrow, according to witnesses. The other car ran a red light at high speed and T-boned him. But look at the impact point." Frank gestured to the debris pattern. "The damage is concentrated on the passenger side of Malone's truck. If someone was just running a red light, wouldn't they hit more toward the front or back?"
Luis studied the scene with fresh eyes. "You think it was intentional?"
"I think we need to be very thorough with this investigation. Two people are dead, including a kid. We owe them that much."
Frank had no way of knowing that his thoroughness would soon put him at odds with his own department, or that the partial license plate would lead to a black Mercedes registered to Vivienne Russo—a woman with connections powerful enough to make evidence disappear and witnesses recant their statements.
But that revelation was still hours away. For now, Frank Doyle was just a cop doing his job, trying to make sense of a tragedy that had shattered one family and set in motion events that would ultimately tear apart the corrupt foundations of an entire city.
Vivienne Russo sat in her walk-in closet, methodically cleaning blood from underneath her manicured fingernails with a small silver file. Her hands were steady, her expression calm. She'd already disposed of her clothes from earlier—the Chanel suit was burning in the industrial incinerator at one of Clive's construction sites, along with her shoes and handbag.
The Mercedes was more problematic. The front end was damaged beyond quick repair, and there were traces of paint from the pickup truck embedded in her bumper. But Clive had people who specialized in making cars disappear, and by morning, the vehicle would be stripped and scattered across three different scrapyards.
She'd been on her way home from her massage appointment when she'd seen them—the construction worker and his teenage son walking out of the ice cream shop on Riverside Drive. The same annoying family from the restaurant yesterday, still radiating that insufferable contentment. The boy had been laughing at something on his phone, completely oblivious to the world around him.
Vivienne hadn't planned to kill them. The decision had been spontaneous, born from a combination of opportunity and the rage that always simmered just beneath her composed surface. She'd accelerated through the red light without conscious thought, aiming for maximum damage.
The satisfaction had been immediate and intense. The sound of metal crushing metal, glass exploding, bodies thrown like rag dolls. In that moment, she'd felt more alive than she had in months.
Now, as she selected jewelry for tomorrow's charity breakfast, Vivienne felt nothing but mild annoyance at the inconvenience. She'd have to take Clive's Bentley until the Mercedes situation was resolved, and she preferred her own car. The Bentley's seats were too firm, and it smelled like Clive's cigars.
Her phone buzzed with a text from her husband: "Heard about an accident on Oak Street. Hope it doesn't affect traffic tomorrow."
Vivienne smiled as she typed back: "I'm sure the police will have it cleared up soon. You know how efficient they are."
She hit send and selected her pearl necklace for tomorrow's outfit. The one Clive had bought her for their fifth anniversary, back when he still tried to impress her with romantic gestures. Now he was too busy with his various criminal enterprises to pay attention to such details.
Which suited Vivienne perfectly. The less attention she received, the easier it was to indulge her particular hobbies without interference.
She was already planning her next selection. There was a family in Riverside Heights—a surgeon and his wife, with twin daughters who attended the same private school as some of Clive's business associates' children. They'd been featured in the society pages last month, posing for photos at a hospital fundraiser, all smiles and perfect teeth.
Vivienne had always found perfect families deeply offensive.
But that would have to wait. For now, she needed to focus on the immediate aftermath of today's entertainment. Clive's connections in the police department would ensure that the investigation remained properly focused—if it progressed at all. And the construction worker's widow would be too consumed with grief to ask inconvenient questions.
As Vivienne prepared for bed in her marble bathroom, she caught her reflection in the mirror. Her skin was flushed with satisfaction, her eyes bright with the afterglow of violence. She looked beautiful, radiant even.
Killing, she'd discovered years ago, was the most effective beauty treatment of all.
Clara woke at 3:17 AM to the sound of Jimmy calling for her. She was out of bed and halfway down the hallway before she remembered. The house was silent except for the hum of the refrigerator and the distant sound of a dog barking somewhere in the neighborhood.
She stood in the doorway of Jimmy's room, looking at his unmade bed, his desk still cluttered with homework he'd never finish, the poster of his favorite basketball player that Eddie had helped him hang crooked above his dresser. The room smelled like teenage boy—a combination of deodorant, dirty socks, and the pine air freshener he'd been experimenting with to impress girls.
Clara sank onto his bed and buried her face in his pillow, breathing in the last traces of her son's presence. The grief hit her in waves, each one threatening to pull her under completely. She'd lost her husband and her child in the space of a few terrible seconds, and she had no idea how she was supposed to survive it.
The house phone rang, jolting her back to the present. Clara stumbled to the kitchen and answered without checking the caller ID.
"Clara, honey, it's Elizabeth." Eddie's mother sounded exhausted, her voice thick with tears. "I'm at the airport in Tampa. I'll be there by nine in the morning."
"You didn't have to come," Clara said automatically, though the thought of facing the next few days alone terrified her.
"Of course I did. Eddie was my son, and Jimmy was my grandson. We're family, Clara. We take care of each other."
Family. Clara almost laughed at the irony. Yesterday she'd been ready to destroy her family for a few stolen hours with Adam. Now there was no family left to destroy.
After she hung up, Clara made coffee and sat at her kitchen table, staring out at the predawn darkness. Somewhere out there was the person who'd killed her husband and son. Someone who'd made a choice to flee the scene, to leave Eddie and Jimmy bleeding on the asphalt while they saved themselves.
For the first time since Dr. Williams had delivered the devastating news, Clara felt something other than grief. It was small and cold and sharp, like a sliver of ice in her chest.
It was rage.
And it was going to grow.