The Day Trader Read Online Free PDF Page B

have sworn were guilty as sin were innocent. Maintaining a certain distance allows me to see things for what they really are. To see people for who they really are.” He hesitates. “We’ll be talking a lot over the next few weeks, and I don’t want you to think I don’t appreciate what you’re going through. I do.”
    I stare at him for a few moments through the gathering dawn, wondering what initial impressions he’s already formed of me. “What does that mean?”
    “I may ask questions that make you uncomfortable or that you find offensive. I want you to remember that I’m just doing my job the best way I know how. Like you said, we all just want to find your wife’s killer.”
    As the sun’s rays crawl over the horizon, I stagger up the short stone walkway to my house—clutching Melanie’s pocketbook—aware that Reggie hasn’t driven away. Aware that he’s watching me and that he’s already begun his investigation.
     
     
    Melanie’s memorial service is a private affair, just as our wedding was. I had her body cremated, and now I’ve arranged this brief ceremony at a funeral home a few minutes from our house. The only people who attend are Melanie’s parents, her sister, an aunt who lives in southwestern Virginia, one of Melanie’s coworkers, and my friend Vincent Carlucci. No one from my family comes because there isn’t anyone. I’m an only child, both of my parents are dead, and my mother’s two sisters live in Atlanta. Too far for them to travel. Besides, like my mother, they never cared for Melanie. And I never knew any of my father’s relatives, so there wasn’t anyone from his side to invite.
    Melanie attended early Sunday services at a Catholic church near our house almost every week while I slept late. She’d been going for years, but suddenly stopped a few months ago. She never told me why. I would have held the memorial service at the church, but, in a way, I was afraid to talk to Father Dale, the priest there. She’d made such an abrupt break with her faith I was worried I’d find out something bad. So I held the service at the funeral home where I felt I would receive compassion from the proprietor, not judgment by association.
    I stand behind the lectern, a framed photograph of Melanie resting on an easel beside me. It was taken when she was in high school, and it’s amazing how little she’d changed. Her parents brought it today. It was the only one we had.
    I try hard to control my emotions as I prepare to say a few words to the mourners. In the hushed room, I try to think of anything but the good times we shared in the first few years of our marriage. It’s just too painful to remember those days. I think about my own father. It’s strange where the mind takes you sometimes.
    I’ve never known much about my father. I don’t know about his childhood, if he had brothers and sisters, or even where he originally came from. I tried to talk to him about all that once when I was twelve, but he told me to stop bothering him. He told me he just wanted to read his evening paper. He was a damn cold man who would leave home for two or three days every few months without even saying good-bye. My mother explained he had to travel for his job, but I have my doubts. He worked on an assembly line and I’ve never heard of any other factory workers who have to travel for their jobs. I finally asked Mother about all of that one Thanksgiving when I was home from college and we were alone in the kitchen together, but she had no answers. None she was willing to share with me anyway.
    It was clear to me at a very early age that my father didn’t have much interest in my life. I tried hard to get his attention, but nothing ever worked. I played high school football, played it pretty well in fact, but he never came to a single game. He never even asked me how my team was doing. He’d sit at the dinner table and stare at his plate while Mom asked me questions. The moment he finished eating he