The Real Mrs. Price by J. D. Mason

hadn’t had the courage to repeat what she’d seen to anybody. Shou Shou wasn’t just anyone, though. And if anyone could help Marlowe to make clear what she thought she saw in those bones, it was Shou Shou.
    Marlowe took a deep breath and gathered her courage. “I saw the devil,” she said weakly. “They showed him coming for me.”
    Shou Shou nodded and curled the corners of her full lips. “I figured.”
    â€œWhy me, Shou? I’m already being punished for marrying Eddie. My life is a mess, and more of a mess is the last thing I need. I wish I hadn’t read them.”
    â€œThen he’d sneak up on you, and you wouldn’t be ready for him.”
    â€œHe did sneak up on me,” she said dismally.
    Her aunt leaned forward. “You already seen him? He here?”
    â€œHe showed up at my house,” she told her. “Even crossed my barrier line, Shou.” Marlowe felt absolutely helpless against him, and Shou Shou had to have heard it in her voice.
    â€œOh, baby,” she said sorrowfully. Shou Shou shook her head. “Are you sure it was him, Marlowe? Are you most certainly sure? More sure than you ever been about anything?”
    â€œI’ve never been so sure about anything in my life, Auntie. I felt it as soon as I saw him.”
    Marlowe recalled the tall, dark, handsome monster standing in her yard and hovering over her like a storm cloud. She worked as hard as she could to fight back tears. “How come I couldn’t have gotten warning about Eddie? If I’d known then what I know now about him, I wouldn’t be in this mess.”
    â€œOh, you had your warning,” her aunt said irritably. All that sympathy was gone as soon as it’d come. “You had plenty, but you chose to do what you wanted to do anyhow.”
    Marlowe became angry. “How, you say?”
    â€œYou felt it. Remember you was breaking up with him before he took you to Vegas. Remember you thought something about him wasn’t right. Next thing I know, you come back wearing a ring and calling yourself Marlowe Price ’stead of Brown. I think you knew. But I think you can’t help how you are. Just like Merrilyn couldn’t help who she was.”
    â€œI’m not like her,” Marlowe retorted. Her mother had spent more time out of their lives than in it. She hardly even knew the woman, but she knew enough to argue being anything like her. “Besides, you said she was possessed.”
    â€œI said she was haunted. Not possessed. There’s a difference.”
    â€œWell, I ain’t like her.”
    â€œYou ain’t haunted but sure as hell are like her. Follow your heart all around the world like it’s got you on a leash. Never using your head. Never listening to your instinct. Instinct is always true. It’s never false. But you choose to ignore it, same way she did.”
    She was right. Marlowe had only been seeing Eddie for a few months when she realized that she didn’t love him. Not like she thought she should. He was handsome and sweet and funny, but he was absent. Even when they were together, he never seemed to be really present. Now she understood why. He was married and who knows what else he was. He was most certainly a murderer.
    â€œI let him talk me into taking that trip,” she said, disappointed.
    â€œHe saw your weakness and played on it,” her aunt said. “He saw you was lonesome. He saw you was lost.”
    â€œWhy marry me, though, when he was married already? Why not get a divorce first?”
    â€œWho the hell knows, child? Men do what they do for all kinds of dumb reasons, mostly pussy.”
    Marlowe was shocked. “Auntie!” She didn’t even know that Shou Shou knew that word.
    â€œWhat? It’s the truth,” she said, holding her cup between two dainty hands. “Men to ass is like bees to honey. You grown. You know that.”
    He made her feel like she was