Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Ifinished it.”
I toss the journal into Bennett’s lap later that evening, the worn leather landing with a soft thud against his thigh as he sits stretched out on the couch, half-focused on whatever he’s reading.
The house is quiet in that heavy, end-of-day way, the kind of quiet that should feel peaceful but doesn’t quite land that way anymore.
“So what’d you find out, Nancy Drew?” he asks, glancing over with a sideways grin that feels too light for the weight of everything sitting between us.
I roll my eyes, though the gesture lacks any real heat.
“Nothing the police would care about. It’s all circumstantial, isn’t that what they say?
” I sink into the chair across from him, tucking one leg beneath me as I try to organize the pieces in my head.
“Whitney was convinced Phillip was cheating on her the last few months. She found a private flight log to the Bahamas and then went digging through their credit card statements. He spent a long weekend at the same resort they honeymooned at.”
“Maybe he needed a break from work,” Bennett says, though his attention has already drifted back to the page in front of him.
“The dinners were for two,” I reply, watching him closely.
“Maybe he brought a business associate.”
I let out a quiet breath, something between disbelief and irritation. “To a romantic, all-inclusive couples resort?” I shake my head. “Please don’t be na?ve.”
He grunts softly, finally lowering the magazine just enough to look at me. “So all she really had was a hunch?”
“A woman’s instinct is rarely wrong,” I say, though even to my own ears it sounds thinner than it should.
“Did you pick that up from Oprah?” he asks, a faint smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
A short laugh escapes me before I can stop it, unexpected and sharp in the otherwise still room.
“I’ll have you know that woman practically raised me,” I say, leaning back slightly as the memory slips in uninvited.
“Every day after school it was Oprah, Dr. Phil, whatever was on. Someone had to teach me empathy. It definitely wasn’t Kathy Williams.”
The image comes back clearer than I expect, Kathy sprawled across the couch, one leg crossed over the other, a drink in hand before the sun had fully gone down, her attention fixed on the television while everything else in the house quietly fell apart around her.
Feelings were something to be numbed, not explored, something to be swallowed down and ignored until they stopped making noise.
By the time I turned eighteen, leaving felt less like a choice and more like survival.
I pull myself back to the present, clearing my throat lightly. “Whitney also found the increased life insurance and the boat policy, but we already knew about that.”
Bennett lifts the journal from his lap and flips through it casually, his fingers brushing over pages that feel far too dangerous to be handled that lightly. My chest tightens as I watch him, a sudden, irrational urge rising to snatch it back before he stumbles onto something he shouldn’t see.
It isn’t that I’ve ever deliberately kept things from him.
I just never told him about that night.
The memory presses in quietly, familiar and unwelcome, and I force it back down where it belongs.
The past is the past, I told myself for years.
Whitney would never tell Phillip, and I would never tell anyone else.
That was the agreement, spoken or not. What we did, what she did for me, stays between us. It was the least I could do.
I tell Bennett everything.
Just not this.
Never this.
He lives his life in straight lines, in rules and boundaries that don’t bend, while so much of mine has always existed somewhere in between.
I’ve spent most of my life feeling split, never entirely one thing or the other, never fully belonging anywhere.
Not with my family, not in the world I grew up in, not in the one I stepped into later.
Not until Whitney.
She made it feel simple, like belonging didn’t have to be earned or explained, like it could just exist.
“Well,” Bennett says after a moment, flipping another page in his magazine as if none of this carries any real urgency, “what now?”
I reach forward and take the journal back from him, holding it a little tighter than necessary as I tuck it against my side. “I don’t know,” I admit, though the answer feels closer than I let on.
“Maybe it’s time to call in Scooby and the gang,” he says lightly.
I don’t laugh this time.
He thinks he’s diffusing the tension, but it only sharpens it for me, the casualness of it grating in a way I can’t quite ignore.
My frustration has settled into something quieter now, something steadier and more dangerous, a slow-burning resolve that feels far more permanent than the anger that came before it.
There’s another thing I haven’t told him.
The nightmare.
The image of Phillip at my feet, the sound of my own laughter cutting through the dark in a way that didn’t feel entirely unfamiliar.
I tell myself it’s grief, that it’s the natural result of losing someone so suddenly, of reading those journals night after night until the lines between past and present start to blur.
But it doesn’t feel like just that.
It feels like something else is waking up.
Something I thought I left behind.
“Shit,” I murmur, my attention snapping toward the window as a flash of hot pink catches my eye through the hedges. “Chrissy’s outside.”
Bennett’s eyebrows lift slightly, but he doesn’t move, just turns another page as if the information doesn’t require anything further from him. The detachment in it lands differently this time, heavier than it should, and for the first time a thought slips in that I don’t particularly like.
If it had been me, if I had been the one who died, would he be sitting there the same way now?
Reading.
Shrugging.
Moving on.
“Well,” I say slowly, already standing, the decision forming as naturally as breathing, “I guess there’s only one thing to do.”
“Oh yeah?” he hums, not looking up. “And what’s that?”
“Invite her to brunch,” I reply, the words settling into place with a certainty that feels almost inevitable.
I don’t wait for his reaction.
By the time he looks up, I’m already moving, crossing the room and stepping out into the fading light, my pace steady and deliberate as I head toward the neighboring yard.
Chrissy comes into clearer view with every step, bright and out of place against the carefully curated backdrop of everything Whitney built, and something tightens in my chest, something sharper than grief, more focused than anger.
If Phillip won’t talk, then she will.
And I intend to make sure of it.