My Murder

also by katie williams Tell the Machine Goodnight young adult novels The Space Between Trees Absent Riverhead Books An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC penguinrandomhouse.com Copyright © 2023 by Katie Williams Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader. Riverhead and the R colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Williams, Katie, 1978– author. Title: My murder / Katie Williams. Description: Hardcover. | New York : Riverhead Books, 2023. Identifiers: LCCN 2022039803 (print) | LCCN 2022039804 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593543764 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593543788 (ebook) Classification: LCC PS3623.I558265 M9 2023 (print) | LCC PS3623.I558265 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022039803 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022039804 International edition ISBN: 9780593714690 Cover design: Grace Han Cover illustration: Giselle Dekel Book design by Meighan Cavanaugh, adapted for ebook by Maggie Hunt This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. pid_prh_6.0_143736954_c0_r0 Contents Cover Also by Katie Williams Title Page Copyright Dedication Chapter 1 Strangers Chapter 2 Birthday Chapter 3 Crime Scenes Chapter 4 Early Chapter 5 The Room Chapter 6 Silas Chapter 7 Hawk Chapter 8 Dads Chapter 9 Searchers Chapter 10 Running Chapter 11 Mystery Woman Chapter 12 Gulp Chapter 13 Some Things Silas Has Done Chapter 14 Pregnancy Chapter 15 Leaving Chapter 16 Staying Chapter 17 Unhappiness Chapter 18 Murder Mystery Chapter 19 Odd Chapter 20 The Plan Chapter 21 Returning Chapter 22 Acknowledgments About the Author _143736954_ For Fia and Frank, I’d clone you if I could 1 I was supposed to be getting dressed for the party, the first since my murder. Instead, I was messing around with the shower drain, which was running at a creep, leaving the inside of the tub scaled with soap and peppered with dirt. So I wasn’t dressed, not a shoe, not an earring, not a panty. I was naked, in fact, and crouched in the tub, sending an unwound hanger down the drain after a wad of another woman’s hair. The hanger scratched the wall of the drain, scratched again, but then (gotcha!) sank into something soft. “I have pants!” Silas called through the door. At his voice, the hanger twisted in my fingers, the end of it surfacing with a small puff of drain gunk. I cursed. “Now socks!” he called. I sent the hanger down again. Was it silly to feel sorry for the bathtub, holding all of that water, letting all of that water run through it? Surely after all the washing that went on inside it, the poor thing might hope to be left clean. “I’m tying my tie,” Silas said. “It’ll take one minute. Two.” This was Silas. This has always been Silas. When we’re late, he’ll announce each of his preparations as he makes them. He becomes a ticking clock of toiletry, my husband. “I’m just stepping out of the shower!” I called back. Actually, I’d done no such thing. But I almost had it now. I could feel the small suck of resistance as I pulled the hanger up and out. And there it was, a dark knot of hair, glistening in its placenta of soap. It was the size of a mouse. I poked the hair with the end of the hanger. This was my hair. This wasn’t my hair. This was her hair. A knock. Silas opened the door before I could answer. “Wheeze? You okay in here?” He never used to do that, barge in on me. But I decided I’d leave it alone, at least now, at least for tonight, because I knew how he worried, always worried. And he was careful, so very careful, like I was a glass of water filled to the brim that he must carry from room to room, searching in vain for the person who’d asked for a drink. But then there were these other times when his worry made him not careful at all, the opposite of careful in fact, like just now with the door. Silas leaned in farther. It took him a minute to spot me in the tub with my gobbet of drain hair. What else was there to say but: “Yuck.” “It’s not my hair,” I told him. And it wasn’t. The minute I’d gotten home from the hospital, I’d gone to the stylist and had her cut my long hair down to the nape. A woman cutting off all her hair to demonstrate how her life has changed. A cliché? Sure. But that wasn’t why I’d done it. I’d done it because I loved the feel of air on my neck. “Not mine, either.” Silas ran a hand over his head and showed me his teeth. Once upon a time, Silas’s hair had been long enough to brush his shoulders, long enough to stop up a drain, long enough to fall in my face during sex. Now he wore it short, and if you stood in a certain spot, in a certain light, you could see the glisten of his pate. “It’s her hair,” I told him. “Your first wife’s. What an animal she must have been! Did she even own a brush?” Silas pushed a smile onto his lips. I knew he didn’t like my jokes about his “first wife,” but I couldn’t help myself. I’d stop as soon as I could help myself. “Okay,” he said. “Good job. But do you think . . . ?” “I know, I know, I’m about to get