Chapter 33 Willow Morrow
Willow Morrow
“The Morrows have always had their accounts with First Hope Bank, and while I can’t disclose any confidential details about their finances, I can tell you that Willow Morrow had a meeting with me a few days before her so-called ‘disappearance,’ and I never had any doubt that she left on her own accord, without any foul play, and with plenty of financial resources.
I would have told the cops that, if anyone had ever asked me. But they didn’t.”
As soon as Katie disappeared upstairs, Willow moved. After setting down the wedding photo, she took a rapid tour of the downstairs, checking the rooms and refamiliarizing herself with the space.
Some things had changed, some hadn’t. There was a new vanity in the powder room and a new hanging chandelier in the dining hall.
There was also a complete lack of clutter.
Every room looked magazine ready, and she kept opening drawers and closets, looking for the mountain of stuff that was surely hidden somewhere.
It wasn’t—at least not in any of the hiding places on the first floor.
Even the garage, which now had motion-activated lights that illuminated when you entered the seven-car bay, was perfectly kept, with a pegboard on the wall, each of Mark’s tools outlined in paint so you could immediately see what, if anything, was missing.
Did Katie just clean all day, every day?
Was that what Mark liked about this woman?
Because Willow had to say, so far nothing stood out about the blonde.
Yes, she was pretty. And skinny. Too skinny, if you asked Willow, not that anyone was asking Willow about Mark’s new wife.
But she was a little scrawny, and Mark .
. . Willow tried not to think about what Mark had liked best about her body.
Definitely not a gap between her thighs or a tiny waist.
She checked the laundry room—a new giant blue washer-dryer set and the same dry-cleaning machine from before.
Next, the junk room.
Willow blinked at the big space, which had previously housed every item that didn’t have a logical place.
The last time she’d seen the room, the door barely opened and you had to squeeze in sideways.
It had held an inversion table, their Christmas tree, two perfectly good lamps that Willow had picked up from the side of the road and intended to donate to Goodwill, boxes of Halloween decorations, some extra luggage sets, a collection of cabinet-door samples from a kitchen remodel they’d abandoned, and about forty-nine hundred other things they had left in the room to die.
Now it was a wrapping room, and it pained her to admit that she both knew what that was and recognized it so quickly.
Willow had a photo of a room just like this one on her Pinterest board labeled Dream House, only this was better.
Forty or fifty rolls of wrapping paper; a folding table; cubbies with gift bows, bags, ribbon, and tissue paper.
Built-in cabinets with potential gifts all organized by occasion and price point.
She hovered in front of the selection, tempted to grab one of the Cire Trudon candles or maybe a small box of ornate stationery.
Speaking of which . . . Willow opened a few drawers and revealed dozens of cards, all organized by occasion, with stamps, pens, and monogrammed letterhead handy.
There was an address book and a calendar, and she scanned both, recognizing most of the names, though she’d never had any idea, nor had she given a damn, that Bethany and Trent’s anniversary was on March 16, or that Mark’s aunt’s birthday was on June 23.
Reluctantly, she flipped off the light and left the room, then stared at the door to the basement.
The basement had become Mark’s playground—where he had moved their evening activities after a neighbor called 9-1-1 after hearing screams in the middle of the night.
Down there, insulated by the ground, no one could hear anything.
Willow left that door closed and returned to the kitchen, anxious for another drink. She was uncapping the bottle of rum when she heard the sound of the garage-door alarm chime.
Mark was home.