The Self-Made Widow

1

DEREK Goode rarely had pleasant dreams anymore. Between stress at work, stress at home, and stress about stress, he had been very stressed. His partnership track at the firm had been derailed. Even though his side project had generated much more revenue than he’d expected, now he was worried it would all blow up on him. Molly had been mad at him all summer, but he’d been too afraid to ask why. Henry hadn’t made the premier soccer team, and Brett had started to display blatantly effeminate inclinations. For Derek, surprisingly, that had become a source of tremendous pride, though for Molly, unsurprisingly, a source of tremendous anxiety.

All things considered, when Derek went to sleep that night, it was understandable that his subconscious would be working overtime. His dream started off in quite a pleasant manner. It was a perfectly crisp summer day. No kids in the house. He wondered if it was even his house, since there were empty glasses left on the kitchen island and one couch pillow seemed slightly askew, which Molly would never allow.

He opened the stainless-steel refrigerator to find it completely filled with Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Ale. He grabbed one, then a second, and strolled into the backyard. Curiously, Molly was digging a hole in the walking garden. More curiously, she was wearing a black string bikini. She hadn’t worn a bikini since she’d gotten pregnant with their oldest, Henry.

Thirty-eight and after two kids, in a dream or out, she looked great. Runner’s body, flat abs, and her breasts were pre-kids. It was his dream, so he rolled with it. Her body glistened with sweat and her lean, tight legs were smeared with topsoil. She looked incredibly sexy. That was the thing about Molly: cold as ice, but hot as hell.

Derek shielded his eyes from the strong sun. The light was ridiculously bright.

He asked, What are you doing?

Digging a hole, she said.

What for?

She didn’t respond, but when she thrust the spade into the ground again, Derek clutched at his chest.

Molly dug into the ground again and he collapsed to his knees. He tried to get her to stop, but the words came out garbled.

She looked at him.

She smiled.

She went in for a third shovelful. He gasped for breath, but none came.

Did people breathe in dreams? Derek wondered.

Molly dug the shovel one more time, with greater force. She slowly twisted the shaft so that the blade ground into the dirt with a sickening scrape. To Derek, it felt like her every move was twisting his chest into knots.

He thought about the boys and how unfair this would be to them.

He wished he could see them again, but the sun was too blinding.

Wow, he muttered. That light is really bright.

And then Derek Goode died.

■   ■   ■

IT WAS 7:20 a.m. when West Windsor Police Department patrol officers Michelle Wu and Niket Patel pulled into the Windsor Ridge complex to address the 911 call. The paramedics had arrived moments before them. Emily and Ethan Phillips were entering the house. The twins had been born and raised in town and had joined the coincidentally named Twin W First Aid Squad while they were in college.

There was a third car in the driveway that led to a three-bay garage. Michelle assumed the husband and wife kept their cars inside, and their children weren’t old enough to drive. Had Molly Goode called someone before she called the paramedics? More people in the house meant more emotion to deal with, and Officer Wu despised human emotion.

I hope I don’t have to string up a perimeter, muttered Niket, a joke between them alluding to the murder of a gas station attendant last year in which he had spectacularly lost a wrestling match with a roll of crime-scene tape.

Pretty sure it’ll be natural causes, Michelle replied, to Niket’s great relief.

They were greeted at the front door by a woman with a Cheshire smile. It looked sincere but also entirely inappropriate for the moment. She had shellacked blond hair, with large, inviting eyes. Michelle was unnerved, less because of the woman’s warmth and more because the officer recognized her. But from where?

I’m Crystal Burns, she said. I’m Molly’s best friend. She’s upstairs with the paramedics.

Officer Wu noted that Molly Goode’s two sons were sitting in the kitchen. The younger boy cried as his older brother consoled him. The house was immaculate. Practically sterile. As she mounted the half-turn stairs, Michelle caught a ray of sunshine coming through the foyer window and couldn’t see a single particle of dust floating in the air.

They stepped past Molly, who stood by the entrance to the master bedroom, tissue in hand but not a tear in her eye. Michelle noted a flash of tentative recognition in Niket’s eyes. Molly looked as familiar to the two patrol officers as Crystal had.

The paramedics were inspecting Derek Goode’s body. He lay in his bed, his hands frozen where he had clutched at his chest. His eyes remained wide open, staring to the ceiling. Heart attack was Michelle’s first thought. He wore a faded Creed T-shirt from their 1999 Human Clay tour, which Michelle assumed he would never have worn had he known he’d be dying in it. Plaid boxer shorts and white ankle socks completed the regrettable shroud ensemble.

He had been a handsome man, tall with brushed-back brown hair that was graying at the temples. He was in good shape. Both of the Goodes were.

Michelle eyed Molly, who wore an Alala Essential long-sleeve workout shirt and Vuori Performance jogging pants. That was almost two hundred bucks’ worth of workout clothes just to greet the paramedics. That was on the high end of unnecessary, even by the standards of West Windsor, New Jersey.

Molly Goode was pristine. Loose auburn hair, uncolored, bounced in a bob at her shoulder. She still had freckles, which gave her features a youthful glow that contrasted with her stern demeanor. She was five feet seven, thin and taut. It was clear Molly exercised quite a lot. Michelle thought, No hidden bag of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups in this one’s night table drawer.

I’m sorry for your loss, Michelle said.

Ethan Phillips said, Patient is nonviable. We have to call the medical examiner.

I didn’t hear anything, Molly said. I woke up at six forty-five to get the kids ready for school and I thought he was still sleeping. I heard his alarm go off from the kitchen at seven. When it didn’t stop, I came up to see why and—and he was . . . he was . . . She hesitated.

When Emily Phillips caught Michelle’s glance, the paramedic said, Rigidity has set in. I’d estimate time of death was about—she looked to her brother—four hours ago?

Give or take thirty minutes, her brother confirmed.

Give or take, Emily agreed.

The doorbell rang. Crystal’s loud voice echoed from the foyer as she let someone in. Michelle peeked out from the bedroom over the foyer railing. Another woman had arrived. Short, thin, with tightly cropped wavy brown hair and a raspy voice. Michelle recognized her, too.

And then she remembered where she knew these women from.

Shit, she thought.

Molly, Bri is here, Crystal called out, her voice echoing.

Excuse me, said Molly as she went downstairs to greet Brianne Singer.

Niket had also come to the same realization as Michelle, saying, Those three women . . . ?

Yes, Michelle replied with dread in her voice.

The doorbell rang again.

With unintentionally synchronized timing, Michelle and Niket turned to look at each other.

Incapable of ignoring the bug-eyed fear on the cops’ faces, Ethan asked, What’s wrong?

The front door opened to the piercing wails of a crying baby. Lungs capable of rattling the three-thousand-dollar foyer chandelier blasted their noise through the house.

Veshya kee santaan, Patel cursed in Hindi.

They could see her downstairs.

Her.

Andrea Stern.

She held her eleven-month-old baby and a diaper bag with her right arm. Completely indifferent to the child’s howling, she hugged Molly with her free arm. Her curly dark hair was shorter and less enraged than the last time Michelle and Niket had seen her. From a circumference standpoint, Andrea had deflated about 85 percent from the size she had been during her pregnancy. Michelle quickly did the math and couldn’t reconcile how the woman had given birth to a fifty-pound baby.

Andrea whispered something into Molly’s ear. Molly nodded.

Michelle Wu took a step back as Andrea, still carrying the fleshy foghorn, made her way up the stairs. She entered the bedroom, nodding politely—no, sarcastically—at Wu and Patel.

Officers, Andrea said in a sweet, lilting voice that fought against its native Queens accent.

Remaining indifferent to the child’s incessant wailing, Andrea stopped just inside the door frame and scanned the room. She absorbed every detail. The position of the covers. Derek’s frozen posture. The alarm clock on his side of the bed. The master bathroom door was open, so she could see the double-sink counter, where everything was arranged in a strict, regimented manner.

The baby kept crying. Michelle noted it was another girl. That made four girls and one very outnumbered boy.

The paramedic siblings looked uncertain as to what was going on. By now, nearly everyone in the sister towns of West Windsor–Plainsboro knew who Andrea Stern was. Besides having solved the murder of Satku Sasmal and having severely damaged the reputations of the West Windsor Police Department and township administration, she also had become a monthlong global viral sensation. A video of her water breaking in the middle of the heavily attended news conference last fall had made the rounds, exploding on Twitter before going through several TikTok variations. It had been entertaining though hollow revenge for those who had blamed Andrea for shattering the illusion of their storybook suburban lives.

Andrea was an investigative savant who should have been an FBI profiler but had ended up becoming a baby-making machine. While still in high school, she had solved the case of Emily Browning, missing in South Brunswick for twenty years. In college, Andrea had cracked New York City’s notorious Morana serial killer case. She had also gotten pregnant before graduating, which had derailed her goal of working for the FBI.

Over the past year, she had become a semi-regular fixture at police headquarters as Detectives Rossi and Garmin had taken to requesting her advice on several cases. Even the mayor, who happened to be Officer Michelle Wu’s mother, had asked for Andrea’s input on administrative matters a few times.

Now, just as she had the first time the officers had met her, Andrea Stern was performing what the media had come to call panoramic immersion. The small, annoying woman visualized the moment of Derek’s death, capturing a mental image of the events as they had unfolded while retaining a photographic memory of the most minute details in the room.

The first time Michelle had seen Andrea do this—at the gas station where Satku had been killed—had unnerved her. This time, the officer was thankful as Andrea snapped out of it quickly and looked at her baby with a bemused, gentle smile.

Hey, JoJo, she cooed. You smell like fifty pounds of shit in a five-pound bag.

She spun the crying baby onto the bed right next to Derek’s body. She slung the diaper bag so that it practically landed on the supine corpse. She removed the baby’s diaper, which smelled like a Taco Bell had relieved its bowels in the middle of another Taco Bell. She removed wipes and a fresh diaper. Then, as if by prestidigitation, she cleaned and changed the baby with such speed that Michelle needed a slow-motion replay to confirm it had actually happened.

That was a super-stinky poop, Andrea baby-talked.

The baby stopped crying.

Stern slid her arm through the diaper bag strap and, in a pirouetting motion, scooped up the baby with the same arm. JoJo giggled. Michelle guessed that by the fifth child, spastic grace just became muscle memory.

Andrea looked at Wu and Patel.

Has anyone been in the bedroom since you arrived?

They shook their heads in unison.

Did you touch anything on either of their nightstands or in the bathroom?

They shook their heads again.

Did you call the medical examiner?

They nodded.

She smiled at the cops. Look how much better you guys are getting at this.

2

TWELVE minutes later, the Mercer County medical examiner’s van arrived. Two men from the coroner’s office spoke briefly with Molly. Pretending to be engaged with Brianne and Crystal in an effort to keep Henry and Brett distracted, Andrea had one eye on Molly the entire time. Andrea could tell that not a tear had been shed, but that was to be expected. Molly was rigidly, almost pathologically in control of everything in her life, especially her emotions. Andrea noted a small sore on her friend’s lip, which hadn’t been there when she’d last seen her, the previous week. Had Molly bitten her lip? A concession to the anxiety she must be internalizing?

Andrea had been friends with the other members of the club she secretly called the Cellulitists for about three years. She still thought it was very pithy to combine the word cellulite with elitists to come up with her private hashtag. She wasn’t sure how to properly pronounce the composite word and rarely said it aloud. They had all met because their lives overlapped due to their children’s school or recreational activities. None of the three women were the types Andrea normally would have befriended; then again, she had never really befriended any types throughout her entire life.

Crystal Burns was the gossip of the group, perpetually working her phone like an old line operator from a 1920s movie. She lived by the adage that knowledge is power, but in her case, it was the power to validate her self-worth. She was indescribably insecure, but also incredibly competent. Wanting to know something about everything meant she rarely knew much about anything, so the gossip too often amounted to ephemeral suburban hot air. And yet Crystal was also genuinely warm and caring, and would do anything for anyone anytime they needed it. Andrea sometimes suspected that she was kind for selfish reasons, but the fact remained that Crystal was the glue that held the group together.

Brianne Singer was the closest thing Andrea had to a real friend among the group. She was an interesting contradiction: feisty but timid, nurturing but selfish. Brianne was smart, but she was intellectually lazy, mostly as a result of all the years spent being intellectually lazy. She was selectively fierce and passionate about certain topics, but rarely informed enough to hold her own in an argument.

And then there was Molly Goode. The woman all other women were jealous of. Always put together, but never in a way that flaunted it. Molly was in better shape than you and better dressed than you, her hair was better than yours, and so were her manners. Even her grace in knowing she was better than you was better than the grace you tried to show in knowing she was better than you.

This morning, on what Andrea had to assume was one of the worst of Molly Goode’s life, she looked as upset by her husband’s death as she might have been by running late for a class at YogaSoul.

The doorbell rang again. Molly greeted Detectives Vince Rossi and Charlie Garmin. They saw Andrea over Molly’s shoulder and nodded politely.

With Garmin supervising, the coroner’s assistants bagged Derek’s body upstairs. Rossi walked over to Andrea. She didn’t need eyes in the back of her head to know her friends were all watching the exchange.

Her relationship with the Cellulitists, never warm and fuzzy to begin with, had become more distant since the revelation of her notorious past. Friends, apparently, aren’t supposed to keep it a secret that they have a Wikipedia page under their maiden name. But at least that cat was now out of the bag, since someone had edited her entry and added her married name.

Please don’t tell me you have a theory? Rossi smiled grimly.

She smiled. Not yet.

Andrea knew that Rossi liked her, but he was also wary of her, as any cop a few years short of their full pension would be. She looked at the glimmer of tension behind his eyes. Andrea knew he was weighing if even she could find a way to turn a heart attack into a murder investigation.

She watched as the ME and the twin paramedics came down the stairs first, trailed by the coroner’s assistants bringing Derek down in a body bag strapped to a stretcher. Patrol Officers Wu and Patel left the house with the paramedics. Andrea glanced over her shoulder at her friends. Crystal buried Brett’s face to her chest to shield him. Brianne placed a comforting hand on Henry’s shoulder as he watched his father being taken away forever. He was in middle school and was trying hard not to break down, but he looked like he’d been hollowed out from the inside.

Molly took it all in with icy detachment.

You are kidding, right? said Rossi softly. About the theory?

Sure, Andrea replied. I’m just kidding.

The ME, an Asian woman who worked out of Trenton, signed a form on a clipboard for the surly, burly Garmin, who then went over to his partner. She thinks it was a heart attack.

Damn young for that, muttered Rossi.

According to the wife and the meds in the bathroom cabinet, he had a heart condition, said Garmin, looking at the clipboard. Atrioventricular septal defect. Congenital.

Rossi cast a glance at Andrea, waiting for her to drop a bomb on that conclusion.

She said, I didn’t know about it.

Rossi nodded, thankful for the limited drama. Unexpected deaths tended to drag a lot of uncontrollable crying out of the families and friends, but this one had almost been downright convivial. The detectives spoke briefly to Molly, explaining to her what the next steps would be, and then they left.

The front door closed.

Andrea wondered for a moment: What would this feel like if it happened to her? After all she had been through in her marriage, what would she do if Jeff died on the way home from work?

Molly came to her and spoke in a soft voice so the others wouldn’t hear. Can you prevent them from performing an autopsy?

Why would they want to? asked Andrea, but her brain said, Why wouldn’t you want them to?

Because of his age, I gather, Molly said. The men who took him said the medical examiner would talk to Derek’s doctors and confirm his prescriptions before making a decision.

If he had a heart condition, then his doctors will confirm it, so I doubt they’d do an autopsy, Andrea said.

Molly hesitated, biting her lip so that her teeth scraped the edge of the cold sore. With a slight choke, she said, The thought of him being cut apart just to find what we already know.

Andrea put a gentle hand on her friend’s shoulder, sensing a vulnerability Molly rarely showed. She said, I’ll see what I can do.

■   ■   ■

BY TEN A.M., Andrea had lugged a fidgeting Josephine into the West Windsor Police Station. The kid was trying hard to walk these days, which meant she was getting impossible to carry. Each of Andrea’s children had started walking earlier in progression than the previous model, and JoJo was keeping that streak alive.

Ruth, the oldest, hadn’t walked until she was sixteen months. They thought she had motor-neural paralysis, but it turned out she just knew that the second she started walking her responsibilities in life would increase.

Elijah started at thirteen months, but then he’d mostly sat down for the next ten years.

Sarah began at eleven months and was running at a full sprint about a week later.

Sadie at ten months, but that was just to reach the stroller so her mother could push her around.

JoJo began a standing furniture shuffle at nine months and Andrea had mostly spent the past four weeks trying to keep her from hurting herself while she stumbled about like a rubber-suited monster from a Power Rangers episode.

She greeted Tom Templeton, the desk sergeant. After months of visits, he still glared at Andrea like she was a live virus. If she had asked for Garmin and Rossi, he likely would have begrudgingly buzzed her in, but because she asked to see Preet Anand, the new chief of police, he made her wait for clearance.

A minute later, she was walking through the station house. Garmin and Rossi nodded to her as she approached them. Hoping Garmin might have a piece of bagel for her to teethe on, JoJo fussed when Andrea whisked her by. Frustrated, JoJo started her warm-up in anticipation of an Olympic gold-medal meltdown.

Garmin stretched out his massive paws and said, Hand her over before she forces us to draw our weapons.

Andrea smiled, always astounded how such a social lout could be so sweet with her baby. Charlie always said JoJo was good practice for when either of his two kids finally gave him grandkids.

JoJo was thrilled to play with the big teddy bear of a man. Rossi, as usual, was happy with whatever kept his partner quiet and kept Andrea moving along, which this did.

She walked toward Anand’s office. Though Mayor Wu had settled on Anand months earlier, the chief hadn’t been officially hired until August. He was young, in his early forties, forceful, commanding, and completely prepared for the job. Born and raised in Illinois, he had a master’s in criminology and had served in the military for five years and then with the Michigan State Police for almost ten. He was no stranger to systemic prejudice and consistently overcame it through sheer hard work and competence.

He checked all the boxes the mayor had needed to fill for a town that was 70 percent Asian and had been underrepresented on the police force for years.

Andrea had been impressed by Anand during the interview process. He might not have small town community policing experience, but he was an agile administrator, smoothly political when necessary, and a truthful boss, and he seemed a sincere family man, all qualities that played in West Windsor.

He greeted her at the entrance to his office and invited her in. She apologized for not having made an appointment.

This is about the death this morning? he asked. Garmin said you were a friend of the family. Heart attack?

Looks that way, she replied.

But . . . ?

No buts. She smiled. Just asking for the family if there will be an autopsy.

That’s up to the ME, said Anand, eyeing her with growing suspicion. You know that.

I do, she said. It’s just . . . Molly is wound pretty tight.

I get that, but it’s still up to the ME.

I know, she said. Maybe I’ll call Jiaying to take the pressure off you.

Name-dropping the mayor by first name might have worked on the usual rubes, but Andrea realized she had made a mistake when Anand handed her his phone.

If you don’t know her cell number from memory, it’s 609-555-1414, he said.

That won’t be necessary, she said.

I know Derek Goode donated five thousand dollars to Wu’s reelection last year, he said. And four the time before that. And three before that.

She put her hands up in surrender with a smile. Okay, I hear you. Subtlety didn’t work.

It might have, if you’d tried it. He smiled as his phone vibrated. Excuse me.

He listened more than he spoke. When he hung up, Anand said, And look at that, it was a card you didn’t even need to play. Medical examiner spoke to Goode’s doctor and cardiologist. His heart condition was legitimate. Described as ‘a ticking time bomb.’ She’s calling it natural causes. No autopsy.

Thank you, Andrea said.

She started to walk away when he said, Andrea, since we’re still getting to know each other, for the record, I’ve watched IEDs blow up my friends and I’ve been shot five times, with my vest stopping only three of those.

He let that sink in for a second.

You have to come at me with something much better than veiled threats to my job.

Filed for future reference, Chief, she said. Threats to your wife and kids it is, then. . . .

Worth a shot, he said.

She smiled.

But one shot is all you would get, he said.

Then he smiled.

She thought two things: this one might not be a pushover, and he had really nice teeth.

3

ON Friday morning, Derek’s memorial service was held at the First Presbyterian Church of Dutch Neck, where the Goodes had worshipped. The old white building had been certified by the Presbytery of New Brunswick in 1816. Though Andrea certainly wasn’t one for organized religion, she found a feeling of comfort inside the church, like the first sip of homemade soup.

The walls were cast in soft yellow and white, the pews mahogany. Very modest decorations made sitting in this church feel less uncomfortable for her than sitting in the synagogue when Jeff dragged the family there for show. Maybe because she felt no pressure here? Though she was a very sporadic attendee, the members of Beth El knew that Andrea frowned on religion. The truth was, she just wanted the right to judge everything and everyone around her without fear of being judged herself.

The pastor wore a black gown with a yellow-and-white-striped stole. He was tall, with white hair, and spoke in a soft voice that still managed to resonate throughout the hall as he extolled the virtues of Derek Goode.

Andrea wished she could see more than the back of Molly’s head in order to gauge her reactions to the proceedings. Then she wondered why she had thought that. Molly was sitting in the front row next to her kids. Her brother-in-law, David, sat to her right with his wife, Deirdre, and their two children. Molly’s brother and sister sat in a different row.

Derek was a lawyer who worked with the elderly, managing their estates and helping them navigate the challenges of age and family security. An avid golfer who claimed a fifteen handicap, the pastor said to polite laughter from several people in the audience, including Jeff. An active member of the community, a recreation league soccer coach, and a parishioner in good standing of this church.

He went on for a few more minutes, all of which Andrea knew was mostly horseshit. Derek hadn’t been a dutiful husband to Molly, because Crystal had long ago gossiped about his affairs; he had been a soccer coach for one year; and most heinous of all, since Jeff always bragged about kicking Derek’s ass on the green, he wasn’t much of a golfer either.

Andrea just chalked it up to the platitudes necessary to ease people through the trauma of death. She saw death as a puzzle to solve rather than a life to celebrate, but the willful sugarcoating annoyed her. Derek and Molly didn’t have a fantasy marriage with wind chimes resonating as they pranced about a grassy field like a pharmaceutical commercial distracting you while the rapid-fire voiceover warned you about side effects like rectal bleeding. Their marriage had gone through the same daily shit as anyone else’s. Derek had been a party boy at work and a softy at home, but Molly made up for any softness on his part by being a hard-ass 24/7.

Maybe that’s what had originally attracted them to each other.

Derek had been a successful lawyer, but he was childish, which was ironic considering his clientele were all elderly. He had been knowingly imposing and forceful in that handsome white-privileged way that most tall, handsome frat bros had. But he was funny and charming, and he had always doted on his children.

On the other hand, Molly was as spontaneous as a cabinet. And ultimately, that’s what she was on the inside as well, a perfectly organized cabinet. Everything in its place and a place for everything. She had been a systems analyst for Wells Fargo before she gave birth to Henry. She was aware of her rigidity, and would joke about it with the Cellulitists but also casually dismiss it as a requirement of her upbringing.

Molly made monthly meal plans. She scheduled all her personal and social activities weeks in advance. She had six-month schedule organizers for her children, but assured everyone she was open to unexpected changes. Molly probably planned the days she would have sex and even the positions they would choose on those days.

Andrea realized she wasn’t judging Molly for that so much as herself. For someone whose mind was so keenly attentive, Andrea’s home life was a haphazard storm of daily drama over where to be, what not to forget, what had been forgotten, and where eggshells needed to be walked on.

Chaos had been her upbringing, but not her preferred default. Andrea’s calmness while standing in the middle of any storm was what had originally attracted Jeff to her. They both had analytical minds, he for numbers, she for people, but Andrea processed information with a studied reserve, while he tended to process in rushed bursts of accelerated activity.

She now studied Crystal Burns, who sat two pews in front of her. Her husband, Wendell, sat at her right, their kids, Malcolm and Brittany, to her left. All were the very model of proper decorum. Crystal had her children well trained, not through a regimen of stern repression, like Molly, but because her kids knew from a very early age that if they didn’t comport themselves, they’d be harangued about it for a never-ending span of time. And not never-ending in kid terms, but literally; Crystal’s ability to fixate never ended.

Wendell looked bored, but then he always looked that way: tired of life and tired of trying not to look tired. Andrea liked him well enough, but as he had worked for the same accounting company since he’d graduated college, drudgery had become embedded into every pore of his skin. Commute to New York, work, commute home, hear about the kids’ boring day at school, hear the same