The Rome Affair. Laura Caldwell

      Contents

      Acknowledgments

      Prologue

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

      Chapter 9

      Chapter 10

      Chapter 11

      Chapter 12

      Chapter 13

      Chapter 14

      Chapter 15

      Chapter 16

      Chapter 17

      Chapter 18

      Chapter 19

      Chapter 20

      Chapter 21

      Chapter 22

      Chapter 23

      Coming Next Month

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      Thank you to my editor, Margaret O’Neill Marbury, my agent, Maureen Walters, and the crew at MIRA—Donna Hayes, Dianne Moggy, Loriana Sacilotto, Katherine Orr, Craig Swinwood, Sarah Rundle, Don Lucey, Steph Campbell, Margie Miller, Rebecca Soukis, Carolyn Flear, Kathy Lodge, Dave Carley, Gordy Giohl, Erica Mohr and Andi Richman.

      Thanks to everyone who read the book—

       Christi Caldwell, Katie Caldwell Kuhn, Kelly Harden, Clare Toohey, Mary Jennings Dean, Pam Carroll, Karen Uhlman, Joan Posch, Dustin O’Regan, Beth Kaveny, Jane Jacobi Mawicke, Ted McNabola and Kris Verdeck.

      Thanks also to those who helped me with my tireless questions about murder prosecutions, including Detective Kevin Armbruster, criminal defense attorney Catharine O’Daniel, former prosecutor James Lydon and former police officer Giovanna Long.

      Most of all, thank you, thank you, thank you to Jason Billups.

      Prologue

      She sees lights. Lights in the sky—stars, she corrects herself—and lights from beautiful apartments with accomplished people inside. She is close to those people right now, very close, but she wonders if any of them will notice her dying.

      She has never been the type to imagine her own death. In fact, she has felt immune to it, as if death was something that happened to other people. She always assumed there was time.

      But there is precious little time left. It has been only an instant since it started, and she knows there are maybe one or two such moments left.

      And strangely, there is relief.

      1

      I understand now that innocence is relative. I know that the night before I left for Rome, I felt jaded. After all we’d been through, I thought I’d aged somehow and lost my sparkle. I only wish I’d grasped then that the fall from innocence was a very long one.

      “Why do you want to go to Italy with Kit?”

      Nick sat on the bed and watched through the bathroom doorway as I went about my nighttime ministrations—cleanser, toner, moisturizer, eye cream. Why I used all this crap, I wasn’t sure.

      “I have a pitch at that architectural firm, and you can’t go because of work,” I answered. I leaned toward the mirror and dabbed cream around my left eye.

      “You’ve hardly seen Kit in years,” Nick said.

      “You don’t have to see a friend to be a friend.”

      Although Kit had been a bridesmaid in our wedding four years ago, she’d moved to California shortly after to try her hand at acting. We didn’t talk every week, or even every month, but we never lost the bond best girlfriends have. After a few years of escalating credit-card debt and many failed auditions, Kit was back in Chicago, and I was more grateful than ever to have her near. At thirty-five, most of my friends were moms—what I thought I’d be, too—and they were no longer available for nights at wine bars, let alone trips to Rome.

      “Why are you so worked up about this?” I asked Nick.

      “I’m not, Rachel. I’m just curious.”

      But my husband, Dr. Nick Blakely, was worked up. I could tell from the way he ran his fingers through his curly, close-clipped hair and rubbed at the spot between his eyes. He was also acting overly casual. His tie was loosened after a long day seeing patients, and he leaned back with one hand on the creamy ivory sheets of our bed, but there was a stiffness to the way he held himself.

      “You have to be careful in Italy,” he continued. “Especially with the guys.”

      “Is that right?” This came out sounding a bit like a taunt, and I let it hang in the air.

      How strange that after all the therapy, after all the crying and the repiecing of our relationship, it was Nick who worried about me, as if retribution lay in wait around a corner somewhere.

      “Nick, I’ve traveled to Rome before. I lived in Italy.”

      “You were twelve when you lived there with your family, and it was for six months. And since then you’ve always traveled with me. Now it’s just you and Kit. I mean, I’m glad you’re going with someone, but you still have to be careful,” Nick said. “There are all sorts of guys who love to prey on American women.”

      “I am quite sure I can handle the Italian men,” I said.

      I took a second’s pleasure in the stricken look that flitted across his face, but even now, I hated to see him hurt.

      “Nick,” I said, moving to the bed and sitting on his lap. “You don’t have to worry about me.”

      On Saturday, Nick dropped Kit and me at O’Hare airport. The arrival gates were mobbed with cars and cabs, all with doors and trunks ajar. The May air was balmy, with sudden gusts of wind that sent stray papers floating into the air.

      “Golden Girl,” Nick murmured, hugging me fiercely.

      That nickname of mine had started with Kit. “Golden Child,” she used to call me when we were growing up. It was mostly based on my last name—Goldin—but it was also because I was an only child of relatively affluent parents, and I had, quite simply, enjoyed a very nice time of it. I knew that was true, even when I was young.

      When I met Nick at an art-gallery party in Chicago’s Bucktown neighborhood, he immediately began calling me Golden Girl. Again there was my name, and Nick said he saw a gold light in my pale green eyes, too.

      When we got married, despite changing my name to Blakely, I felt so lucky and so special I thought I would be the Golden Wife. I thought I’d have the Golden Life.

      So far, it hadn’t turned out exactly like that.

      I hugged Nick back, thinking that it was usually he who went away on business trips, leaving me at home, saying little prayers that the paper he had to present would go smoothly, that he was sleeping okay and not drinking too much or eating too poorly. But I was ready for some girls’ time with Kit. Now it was his turn.

      Nick finally let me go but held one of my hands in his. He looked at Kit. “Have a nice time,” he said formally.

      Nearly everyone talked to Kit that way since she’d returned