A Share in Death

Through her fingers she said, “You have to understand. I thought I’d made a perfect life for myself. I was smart, capable, respected. I’d been lucky enough to find work that I loved.” Hannah raised her head. “People usually think I didn’t have a chance to marry. The old sexually deprived spinster stereotype. God!” she said bitterly. “You’d think we’d grown past that, but we haven’t. Women are still judged first as a commodity, a man’s appendage. If you don’t have a man you don’t measure up. Simple. As for

 

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sex”—she gave a harsh laugh—“sex is easy. It’s marriage that terrified me. Losing control.” Hannah pushed her cup forward with her fingertips and looked out the French door. “My parents ordered every aspect of my life, what I ate, what I wore, how I cut my hair, who I saw, even what I thought. The one step I might have taken for myself they … took out of my hands. So I swore I would never let anybody else do that to me. Can you understand that?”

 

“Yes,” Kincaid said softly, “I think so.”

“So I went along for years, captain of my own ship and all that, and then suddenly this last year it all began to seem so empty. Oh, I had lovers all right, but no one with hooks in my life. Maybe,” she sighed, and Kincaid felt some of her tension relax, “I am suffering from menopausal dementia, some hormonal imbalance. But it doesn’t feel that way.” She spoke now more to herself than to Kincaid, her gaze unfocused. “There’s no wholeness, no connection. It feels…” The flow of words stopped. Hannah fell silent for a moment, then focused clearly on Kincaid. “I’ve done it again, haven’t I? Just like that first night, and you thought I’d bored you with my life story then. I’m sorry.”

“Hannah, what does this have to do with Patrick Rennie?”

She chewed her lip, then took a deep breath before she spoke. “I can’t tell you. Not yet. But I will—” She cut off the beginning of his protest. “No, I want you to know. But first I have to explain some things to Patrick. Then you can tell me whether I need a shrink or a solicitor.” She smiled at him with a touch of the humorous directness he’d first found so appealing. “I promise I will tell you. Afterwards.”

“All right.” Kincaid leaned back in his chair and pushed away his plate with its congealing egg.