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effect.
    ‘June?’
    Her fingers were numbing, the bones of her hand slowly de-gloved. She felt her breath catch, and panic filled her – not because the time was here, but because she still had not asked him the question.
    ‘What is it?’ He sat on the edge of the bed, his leg touching hers. ‘June?’ His voice was raised. ‘Should I call an ambulance?’
    She looked at his hand holding hers. His square fingers. His thick wrists. There were age spots now. She could see the blue veins under his skin.
    The first time June held Richard’s hand, her stomach had tickled, her heart had jumped, and she’d finally understood Austen and Brontë and every silly sonnet she’d ever studied.
    Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds .
    This was the feeling she wanted to take with her – not the horror of the last twenty years. Not the sight of her daughter lying dead. Not the questions about how much Grace knew, how much she had suffered. Not Danielle Parson, the pretty young girl who could only make it through the day with the help of heroin.
    June wanted that feeling the first time she had held her child. She wanted that bliss from her wedding day, the first time Richard had made love to her. There were happy times in this home. There were birthdays and surprise parties and Thanksgivings and wonderful Christmases. There was warmth and love. There was Grace.
    ‘Grace,’ Richard said, as if he could read her mind. Or perhaps she had said the word, so sweet on her lips. The smell of her shampoo. The way her tiny clothes felt in June’s hand. Her socks were impossibly small. June had pressed them to her mouth one day, kissing them, thinking of kissing her daughter’s feet.
    Richard cleared his throat. His tone was low. ‘You want the truth.’
    June tried to shake her head, but her muscles were gone, her brain disconnecting from the stem, nerve impulses wandering down vacant paths. It washere. It was so close. She was not going to find religion this late in the game, but she wanted lightness to be the last thing in her heart, not the darkness his words promised to bring.
    ‘It’s true,’ he told her, as if she didn’t know this already. ‘It’s true what Danielle said.’
    June forced out a groan of air. Valentine’s Day cards. Birthday balloons. Mother’s Day breakfasts. Crayon drawings hanging on the refrigerator. Skinned knees that needed to be kissed. Monsters that were chased away by a hug and a gentle stroke of hair.
    ‘Grace saw us.’
    June tried to shake her head. She didn’t need to hear it from his mouth. She didn’t need to take his confession to her grave. Let her have this one thing. Let her have at least a moment of peace.
    He leaned in closer. She could feel the heat from his mouth. ‘Can you hear me, wife?’
    She had no more breath. Her lungs froze. Her heart lurched to a stop.
    ‘Can you hear me?’ he repeated.
    June’s eyes would not close. This was the last minute, second, millisecond. She was not breathing. Her heart was still. Her brain whirred and whirred, seconds from burning itself out.
    Richard’s voice came to her down the long tunnel. ‘Grace didn’t kill herself because she caught me fucking Danielle.’ His tongue caught between his teeth. There was a smile on his lips. ‘She did it because she was jealous.’

Read on for an extract from Karin Slaughter’s new bestseller, available now …
Broken
    When the body of a young woman is discovered deep beneath the icy waters of Lake Grant, a note left under a rock by the shore points to suicide. But within minutes, it becomes clear that this is no suicide. It’s a brutal, cold-blooded murder.
    All too soon, former Grant County medical examiner Sara Linton – home for Thanksgiving after a long absence – finds herself unwittingly drawn into the case. The chief suspect is desperate to see her, but when she arrives at the local police station she is met with a horrifying sight – he lies dead in his cell, the words