CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Brett
One Year Ago
I hadn’t planned on going into work the day after returning from Toronto, especially not after the most exciting Christmas I can remember, and especially not on New Year’s Eve, but a half-day isn’t going to kill me.
In fact, I was so excited to leave for the holiday, I forgot to sign a pile of forms on my desk. New hires, badge access, clearances—all last minute, as usual. It looks like the pile has grown since I was last there. One hour of scribbling my name 50 times and I’m out the door, back into the wind tunnel that is the parking lot. When I get to my car, I see a text from Barrett.
BARRETT (4:09PM): When I told Anna your single days are over, she choked on a Christmas cookie. It was a gingerbread man.
If Barrett was in town, she’d be coming out with us tonight, but she’s still in Kentucky visiting her cousin, Anna. I start the ignition and type a response.
ME (4:12PM): Of course it was. Which part?
Coasting over the rolling hills and winding through the country roads, I still need to decide what to wear tonight. The Well reminds me of my favorite bar in college, where Barrett, Katie, Emma, and I posted up every Friday night, the reliable standby in case any other plan turned into a disappointment. Except this place is at the edge of the suburbs, out in the cornfields, instead of a 40-minute drive into the city. I can’t even remember what clothes I own. I need to walk into my closet and stare at the rack for a good 10 minutes.
As soon as I pull around the curve in the driveway, I see a car I don’t recognize. Bowen’s truck is gone, which I expect, but a silver Ford Escape is parked on his side of the gravel. I pull in next to it and cut the engine, peering through my windows to see if anyone is around.
The car is empty.
I get out and slowly walk past it to the front door, hurrying up to the porch to get out of the wind. When I reach for the doorknob, I find that it’s unlocked. I swing the door open and peek inside the house.
Silence.
The house also looks empty, just as I left it a couple hours earlier. For some reason, I don’t feel like there’s a home robbery in progress. And if someone were trying to hide and ambush me, they’re doing a shitty job of it by parking right in front of the house where the Ring camera can see them.
When I step through the door, I come to a stop in the foyer and just listen. All I can hear is the hum of the refrigerator and the heat kick off a minute later. I look over my shoulder at the silver SUV sitting in the driveway, still empty and out of place. Then I make for the bedroom, taking out my phone as I enter the dark hallway. I can’t remember Bowen mentioning that anyone was coming over.
No sooner does my thumb touch my screen than I glance up and let out a terrified scream, “ Jesus Christ! ” I jump back spastically, grabbing my chest.
A second scream fills the tiny hallway, piercing my eardrums. Suddenly, I find myself standing face to face in the bedroom doorway with Hannah.
“ Fuck , you scared me,” she snaps with irritation, brushing her hair behind her ear.
“I scared you? ” I scoff.
At first, Hannah doesn’t respond until she notices that I’m eyeing her suspiciously. Then she immediately smiles and lets out a sigh of relief.
She nods to the bedroom, “Hildy and Jay are out of town, so I said I’d come by and check on Waylon,” she explains, moving past me as if to dismiss any concern.
“Oh…thanks…” I turn to follow her back down the hall into the living room, my hands shaking so bad that I have to clench them into fists.
Shouldn’t Hildy have mentioned this to one of us? Maybe not if she thought we’d still be gone, but the fact that Hannah just popped out of our bedroom makes me think she should have… she fucking should have. I try to settle myself down in the time it takes to reach the living room, also still acutely aware that this woman creeping around my house doesn’t even seem to like me.
“So, any fun plans tonight?” I ask as the phrase, you catch more flies with honey than vinegar , comes to mind .
“Yeah,” Hannah calls over her shoulder as she arrives at the front door, “meeting Hildy, Jay, and Bo at the Well.”
“Then I guess I’ll see you there.”
“Oh!” She spins around in surprise, “You’re going?”
Is she for real?
“Yeah.” I might as well be Patrick Swayze in Ghost , as much as Hannah is trying to pretend that I don’t exist.
She turns the knob and steps out onto the porch, “See you later then!” she calls over her shoulder, slamming the door.
I stare at the door in bewilderment for a few seconds before I’m interrupted by a familiar jingle. Following the sound, I look over at the basement stairs in time to see Waylon lumbering up the last two steps. He shuffles past me into the living room on his way to his dog bed next to the fireplace. I glance back at the bedroom in confusion.
What the…
Maybe she was looking for Waylon when I arrived…maybe. I still can’t shake the feeling that Hannah shouldn’t have been where she was when I walked in, but there’s nothing I can do about it right now. But I’m definitely telling Bowen about it when he gets home.
In the meantime, I try to distract myself by focusing on picking out an outfit for tonight. I decide high-waist flares are a safe choice, but I still need a shirt. When I throw open the closet door and step inside to flip on the light, I notice something white on the carpet. It looks like a folded piece of paper laying beneath Bowen’s winter coat and sherpa-lined flannel jacket.
Stooping down to pick it up, I realize it’s a 4 x 6 photo that’s folded in half. When I open it, my eyes round with amusement. Bowen is sitting at a desk—the same kind in every high school in America—leaning back in his chair. He’s wearing a white long-sleeve Adidas t-shirt and his dark eyes are averted, smiling at something out of frame. Hannah’s leaning forward over the desk behind him, her arm looped around his shoulders while she presses her cheek against his temple and smiles at the camera.
The photo is old, worn and creased from being loose and held too much. It looks like it belongs with the pictures I found in the basement. But what’s it doing up here in the middle of the closet? Maybe Hannah wasn’t in here looking for Waylon…
I let out an irritated breath and roll my eyes. Am I really that surprised? I secretly witnessed the fallout between Hannah and her boyfriend at the wedding after he essentially accused her of being in love with Bowen. Whatever’s going on with her, Hannah has some serious boundary issues that are now spilling out onto my closet floor.
It’s still sitting there a couple hours later after Bowen gets home and I’m finishing getting dressed for the evening .
He tugs his scuffed brown Redwing boot onto his right foot and lets it drop to the floor with a thud, “Damn,” he rests his elbows on his knees and looks up at me from the edge of the bed.
I stop in the bathroom doorway as I finish tying the knot of my light pink wrap top, “What?”
“If I’d known you were going to look like this , I’d have just kept you here for myself.”
I shoot him a playful look and adjust my jeans. He doesn’t look half bad, himself. Then again, he looks good even when he comes home covered in dirt clods and grass stains. I think it’s his dark hair and dark eyes. Even now, he’s not wearing anything special, just a pair of jeans and a black long-sleeve tee, but the sharp, clean contrast against his smooth skin gives him an air of timeless sophistication.
“We could just stay home,” I grin facetiously, making my way to my vanity across from the bed.
“I mean,” Bowen stands up and walks up behind me, looking at my reflection, “since you’re already dressed and all…” he leans over my shoulder and kisses me on the neck, then turns and disappears into the bathroom to splash water and product through his hair.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” I reach back into the closet and pull out the folded photo, dropping it on the edge of the bathroom vanity.
Bowen picks it up and looks at it for a few moments, “Why do you have this really old picture of me?”
I cast him an amused look, “I found it on the closet floor.”
Bowen stares at me, perplexed, then he cracks a smile like he’s waiting for the punchline, “The closet? I didn’t even know this existed.” He flips the photo over again to examine both sides, then screws up his face, “I look like a prick.”
“I don’t know where it came from,” I snicker, “but I know who left it here.”
It’s subtle, but Bowen’s demeanor changes. The implication that someone other than he or I was in the bedroom closet puts him on alert.
“When I got home today, I came back to the bedroom and Hannah was here. She scared the hell out of me.” Bowen furrows his brow slightly as I continue, “She said Hildy and Jay were out of town, so she came by to feed Waylon. But she acted like he was in the bedroom when he was actually downstairs. She left pretty quickly after I ran into her. The whole thing was really weird.”
Bowen’s eyes wander across the bedroom in thought. Before, he acted like I was messing with him, but now, it looks like he’s trying to make sense of what happened.
“Yeah,” he finally says, “I don’t know what the fuck this is.” He tosses the photo back onto the bathroom counter with an exasperated sigh, “I’ll figure it out. ”
Accepting his response for the time being, I return to my vanity and open the fourth drawer on the right. But when I look inside, I give pause.
“Bowen, have you seen my—” I stop myself, knowing he wouldn’t recognize anything in these drawers, so why am I asking?
I open and close each drawer, searching, but knowing the earrings I’m looking for won’t be there because I never put them anywhere else. Studs go in the second drawer down, hoops go in the third, and dangly ones go in the fourth. There are three pairs of dangly earrings, and now there are only two.
Bowen appears behind me, “Seen your what?”
I stare into the drawer, unable to make sense of it, “A pair of my earrings are gone.”
“Which ones?”
“The little gold hoops with the stars hanging off them.”
“Were they here after you moved in?”
“Yes, they were here,” I pause, “and now they’re not.”
“You could’ve put them somewhere else.”
I shoot him a side-eye, “Bowen, I only have nine pairs of earrings.”
I’m not excessive when it comes to accessories. I find what works and stick with it.
“Fair,” he smiles and then shakes his head, “I don’t know, babe.”
I let out a groan and shut the drawer. Maybe they fell out in a bag or suitcase. I’ll have to check all of them later to make sure. Meantime, I open the third drawer and take out a pair of thin gold hoops. I fasten them into my earlobes and step in front of the full-length mirror in the corner of the bedroom.
This’ll have to do.
●●●
The teal sapphire on my engagement ring is the perfect size to spin around my finger with my thumb. That’s what I do, continuously, from the time we sit down at a coveted table in the middle of the bar until I finally shoot a look at Bowen. I cover my mouth with the side of my hand, when do we tell them? I mouth to him.
Everyone else at the table—Hildy, Jay, Hannah, and four other friends of Hildy’s—are blithely unaware of what lays in my lap beneath the lacquered wooden table gouged with years of intoxicated pummeling. Bowen glances around the table, the muscles in his cheeks twitching with amusement.
“Hildy!” Bowen suddenly calls across the table.
“What?” she shouts back obnoxiously, mimicking him.
“Brett and I are getting married!” he hollers back over the roar of the crowded bar.
That’ll do it .
Hildy jerks her head up. Her smile is gone and her mouth agape. Jay is still talking to the couple sitting next to him. Hannah, however, is staring at Bowen. Her mouth is half open and she’s so still that I can see each breath she takes as her chest rises and falls between the plunging neckline of her blue blouse.
Hildy slams her palm down and leans across the table, a wild look in her eyes, “ What? ”
I clasp my hands over my mouth as I stifle a laugh. Hildy studies my face for a moment before something catches her eye. Her jaw drops as she zeroes in on the teal sapphire with the gold band.
She smacks Jay in the arm, “She has a ring!” Hildy shouts at him.
Jay flinches and shoots her an annoyed look.
“She has a ring!” Hildy repeats, pointing across the table at me.
Jay follows her direction and slowly raises his eyebrows when he sees it.
“Oh my god!” Hildy shrieks and leaps from her seat. She runs around the table and throws her arms around me, collapsing onto my lap, “Let me see!”
I lift my hand and Hildy grabs it, jerking my finger up to her eye. She scoffs in surprise and goes silent. Her face relaxes as she examines the ring, rotating my finger from side to side. After a minute, she gently sets my hand back down, speechless. It’s not like her. Usually, she’s yelling something in a dramatic display—positive or negative doesn’t matter. Now, she’s looking at me like she has no clue what to say.
“Are you OK?” I chuckle.
“Yeah!” she chirps, finding her voice, “I’m just like… wow! ” She rubs her fingers across her hairline, “Congratulations!”
Hildy throws her arms around my shoulders and it feels like I’m being squeezed by a python. She lingers there, not letting go, and when I glance at Bowen over Hildy’s shoulder, he just gives a shrug. Apparently, he also didn’t expect Hildy to be so overwhelmed with emotion.
Hildy reaches across the table for her glass and downs the rest of her beer. She suddenly straightens up, her eyebrows arching like she’s just thought of something. She smacks her palm on the table again to get everyone’s attention as she swallows.
“Hold on, hold on, hold on!” She waves her hands over the table, “So, when’s the big day?”
“Well…” I begin, brushing a strand of hair behind my ear.
“She has to finish writing her book first,” Bowen interjects, “it’s a whole dowry thing. She sells the book, makes millions, and pays me back for helping her level up.”
“Yes,” I roll my eyes so far back I think they’re going to detach from my head, “exactly.”
Then I glance across the table at Hannah. She hasn’t said a word since Bowen made his announcement. She gazes around the bar, stone faced, for a few minutes before grabbing her coat and her purse. She stands up and leaves, making her way to the front and hurrying past the bouncers at the glass doors.
For a moment I think she left, but she didn’t. Of course she didn’t. I can see her through the front window, leaning against one of the columns under the overhang and lighting up a cigarette.
“Oh, hey!” I pat Hildy’s arm, “I was going to ask you something.”
Hildy looks relieved for me to change the subject, having finally composed herself.
“Did you ask Hannah to stop by the house today to take care of Waylon?”
“Mm, no,” Hildy shakes her head, “she came over and fed our dogs today because we stayed last night at Jay’s grandparents. But you all got back yesterday, right? Oh, God, ” her eyes bug out in alarm, “was I supposed to come by today?”
“No, no, no!” I laugh, shaking my head, “We came back yesterday. I must’ve overheard her talking about your house and I just got confused.”
Relief washes over her face and she seems satisfied with that answer.
Bowen turns his attention back to us and smacks Hildy on the back, “What do you guys want—another beer? A shot? A Xanax?”
Hildy sniffs and takes a deep breath as she rises from my lap, “I’ll go with you,” she says as she shoves Bowen in the shoulder and follows him to the bar.
He and Hildy stand at the bar for a minute while the bartender sets down drinks in front of them. Bowen says something to Hildy and she starts gathering the bottles in her hands while he turns and heads in the other direction toward the restrooms. But instead of turning down the hallway, he veers to the right along the front windows and disappears out the glass doors. I scan the windows, following him until he stops in front of Hannah. She must be on her second cigarette by now. I crane my neck to see them through the crowd as Bowen says something to her and she looks up at him with a pained expression, one hand clasping the front of her long camel peacoat closed.
I stand up and walk in the same direction, weaving through the crowd until I get to the restrooms. I stop at the hallway, lingering next to the window, concealed by the crowd. Despite her frosty response, Hannah isn’t too offended to not stub out her cigarette on the concrete and follow Bowen across the parking lot. From my vantage point, I can see them walk between two cars and stop next to Hannah’s vehicle. Or, rather, I can see Bowen stop next to her vehicle. Hannah’s standing opposite Bowen, but she’s too short for me to see past the back hatch. It’s dim, but there’s enough residual light from the parking lot for me to see that Bowen is speaking.
It plays out like a silent movie; Hannah’s facing away from me and he’s standing opposite to her so I can see his face but not hers. I can’t hear what he’s saying, but I see his mouth moving. The first minute, Bowen looks calm, but serious. However, with each passing second, his face changes, becoming more and more irate. It’s around this time I wish I could read lips.
Bowen glares at Hannah, his mouth moving faster and faster. He throws his head to the side, leans forward as he speaks, and furrows his brow in disdain. In a way, he doesn’t look like himself. I’ve never seen Bowen angry at anyone. Granted, I don’t mind so much right now because I hope he’s letting her have it for sneaking around our house. I don’t know what Hannah is saying, only that she’s shaking her head and seems to be brushing off his aggressive posture.
Finally, the conversation appears to wind down. Bowen scowls at her in silence for a few moments and then says something quickly, nodding toward the bar. When Hannah turns around, her face is a chaotic mixture of contempt and distress. She storms back across the parking lot, her hands shoved in her coat pockets. Bowen follows her at a distance, and as he gets closer, I notice his demeanor changes again. He strolls across the asphalt like nothing happened, looking the same as when he left our table.
I wait for both of them to sit back down before I return. When I sit down next to Bowen, he slides one of the beers in front of me and raises his glass. I pick it up and clink the edge of mine against his before he downs a quarter of the glass.
I raise my eyebrows and lean against his shoulder, “Are you OK?” I chuckle.
Bowen drapes his arm around my neck, pulling me closer, “Don’t I look OK?” He flashes a smile.
I glance across the table at Hannah, now immersed in conversation with Hildy, “You do now.”
Bowen knows immediately who I’m referring to, but he’s unaware I saw what happened in the parking lot.
He settles his sights on Hannah and he raises his voice, “She’s acting like a fucking baby and needs to grow up.” He’s looking at her, but speaking to me.
My muscles tense, anticipating an awkward moment that never comes. Even if Hannah did hear Bowen’s snipe, she doesn’t let it show.
Bowen turns back to me, his mouth curling into a half-smile, “I told you I’d figure it out.”