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Back We Were Killers Once Save as PDF
Chapters (65)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Notice
  3. Dedication
  4. One
  5. Two
  6. Three
  7. Four
  8. Five
  9. Six
  10. Seven
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Twelve
  16. Thirteen
  17. Fourteen
  18. Fifteen
  19. Sixteen
  20. Seventeen
  21. Eighteen
  22. Nineteen
  23. Twenty
  24. Twenty–one
  25. Twenty–two
  26. Twenty–three
  27. Twenty–four
  28. Twenty–five
  29. Twenty–six
  30. Twenty–seven
  31. Twenty–eight
  32. Twenty–nine
  33. Thirty
  34. Thirty–one
  35. Thirty–two
  36. Thirty–three
  37. Thirty–four
  38. Thirty–five
  39. Thirty–six
  40. Thirty–seven
  41. Thirty–eight
  42. Thirty–nine
  43. Forty
  44. Forty–one
  45. Forty–two
  46. Forty–three
  47. Forty–four
  48. Forty–five
  49. Forty–six
  50. Forty–seven
  51. Forty–eight
  52. Forty–nine
  53. Fifty
  54. Fifty–one
  55. Fifty–two
  56. Fifty–three
  57. Fifty–four
  58. Fifty–five
  59. Fifty–six
  60. Fifty–seven
  61. Author’s Note
  62. Acknowledgments
  63. Also by Becky Masterman
  64. About the Author
  65. Newsletter Sign-up

Carlo took his left hand away from mine that he’d been holding, and ran a line with one finger down my forehead. It felt as if I was being anointed. I wondered if he could feel the frowny line between my eyes. He said, “The Greeks believed the daemon wasn’t a monster from hell. It was an inspiring force inside of us. Something that drives us.”

Like I said, no telling where these conversations will go, especially when you sleep with a philosopher. I yawned. “This I did not know. Do you remember if we let the dogs out?”

“We did,” he said. “Our anniversary is coming up next month. What do you want?”

“Such a romantic,” I said. “I don’t—”

Light snoring. Smile. I had probably worn him out. Our intimacy was usually reciprocal, but I had been the aggressor that night, giving to him what and when I chose and taking what pleasure I wanted. He never said, but I thought this might be a different way for him. I liked to imagine his first wife as something of a prig, passive in bed.

I stayed awake a bit longer, thinking about how long I had left with this man whom I had married only a few years before. Ten, twenty. Thirty years? He had been married to Jane for twenty-five years. Could I beat Jane’s record? Was there such a thing as competitive marriage? If there was anything less than perfect it was the fear of losing Carlo after finding him at a time that some would call late in life. This makes sense. When you’re young, nothing gets the appreciation it deserves. Love, liberty, life itself is taken for granted. Youth has no sense of its mortality. Later in life, if you’re not still consumed with struggling to pay a mortgage and worried about the price of cat food, if you can actually retire, what you have more time for is brooding. Then things you didn’t have time to worry about before can prey on your mind more, not less. Sometimes that old-age-serenity thing is crap.

This brooding about the past and future does not just apply to your traditional insecure female. It applies also to a tough old broad who has righted countless wrongs and can still kill a man with her bare hands. It applies also to older men who never paid for the things they did, and become obsessed that someday they’ll be called to account.

All that aside, this story is mostly about my regret that I failed to preserve intact the one person I loved most in all the world, you sweet innocent Perfesser. Because even as we spoke that night about the past, it was presently coming for you. And I would discover that the one person I couldn’t save you from was myself.

Three