Under the Knife by Kelly Parsons
For my family: ever patient, generous, and supportive in my pursuit of two careers
Acknowledgments
Writing is not a solitary endeavor. Thanks as always to my agent, Al Zuckerman, whose wisdom and mentorship continue to raise my game every day; and to my editor, Jen Enderlin, for her astute critiques and sharp eye for clean prose.
Prologue
The man stood, alone, hands in the pockets of his dark suit, gazing down into the earthen maw that had just swallowed his wife.
He was a tall man, stooped at the shoulders. Slim, with a pinched nose, prominent ears, and thin lips. He had fine hair the color of dry sand, which was parted to the side in a precise and solemn manner that made him appear much younger than his forty-odd years, like a boy made up for a school picture. His hair twitched in the warm breeze. The grass he was standing on was even and green; the headstones were silver and white.
He looked up and squinted into the brilliant sky.
Isn’t it supposed to be raining?
In movies, and on TV shows, it always seemed to be raining during burials. But today, sun, sky, clouds, and breeze had colluded to produce a day breathtaking even by Southern California standards.
I wish the weather had been this nice on my daughter’s wedding day, he’d overheard one of the mourners murmur to her companion right before the start of the brief ceremony. One of Jenny’s friends. The CEO of a local biotechnology start-up. A very promising one. He was even considering acquiring a silent majority stake in it. She was an avid triathlete with brown, sinewy arms, mirrored sunglasses, and tiny breasts.
The triathlete was, he admitted, a shrewd businesswoman. He found it unlikely that her initial meeting with Jenny at a local gym, involving some sort of misunderstanding over a yoga mat, had occurred by chance. She had no doubt cultivated a relationship with Jenny to advance her company’s agenda with him. He’d voiced these suspicions to Jenny shortly after the friendship began.
Jenny, for whom glasses had never been half-empty, had laughed, and had told him to lighten up because he wasn’t that important, after all, and it wasn’t always about him.
She’d touched her forefinger to her lips, and stood on her tiptoes, and pressed her finger to his lips, the way she often did to signal that a particular topic was no longer open for discussion. That was that. Debate was closed, and he’d never again questioned, out loud, at least, the triathlete’s motives.
Her finger on his lips.
How he’d adored that simple gesture. The memory of it, its tactile echo—the gentle pressure on his skin, the slight ridges of Jenny’s fingertips catching faintly on his bottom lip as she pulled her finger away—was almost enough to make him smile.
Almost.
He personally couldn’t abide the triathlete. It wasn’t a female thing. He did business with women all the time. To a certain extent, he even preferred dealing with women rather than men. Or at least disliked it less. He appreciated the fact that most women weren’t fixated on some asinine alpha-male ritual du jour. Like kite surfing. Or rock climbing. Or golf. Even the fat ones played golf and boasted about it like it was some monumental athletic achievement. What a colossal waste of time.
So.
He didn’t dislike the triathlete because she was a woman. He simply didn’t like her. Which was of little consequence. There were lots of people he didn’t like. Besides, to make that kind of comment today, not ten feet from where Jenny lay …
Well.
He’d bitten his lip and ignored her.
For Jenny.
She’d been well liked. Most of her friends, and there had been a good many of them, had attended the service, greeting him with handshakes, and sympathetic shoulder pats, and a few stiff hugs.
How are you holding up? Such a tragedy. Taken before her time. She was so loved. She touched so many in the short time she had. She’ll be sorely missed.
He’d accepted their ministrations graciously enough, in his opinion. But he’d kept his distance during the service, standing alone, several feet away from the main group. He wanted nothing more to do with any of them. They were Jenny’s friends, not his. They’d attended the burial for her sake, certainly not out of any genuine concern for him. Their relationships with him were gossamer and transitive, established and maintained through Jenny. The same went for Jenny’s parents and brother, with whom he’d been cordial but who’d never known quite what to make of him. Now she was gone.
He himself didn’t have many friends. Not close ones. It was a truth that didn’t disturb him in the least. He viewed it with the objectivity of a scientist observing a squirming microbe under a laboratory microscope.
He withdrew his hands from his pockets and turned his attention from the sky back to Jenny’s grave.
Like a black hole, its darkness seemed to defy the shimmering day, sucking in the surrounding sunlight. Or perhaps repelling it. He stared hard into the opening, peering into the dimness. He could just make out his wife’s coffin, which gleamed the dull silver of a bullet.
He was seized with a wild urge to throw himself into the hole and grab the coffin; to pound on its cold, unyielding shell and scream his throat raw; to wrap his arms around it and hug it to his chest and wait for the indifferent earth to bury them both.
Because, really, what else mattered now?
Something moved in his peripheral vision.