Chapter 15
Chapter
Fifteen
Kelly had tried all the usual tricks to fall back asleep.
She’d counted sheep, she’d focused on her breathing, and had even tried the old standby of imagining herself on a peaceful beach.
Nothing worked. Not when her brain insisted on replaying every conversation, every interaction with Lori in those final weeks, searching for clues she might have missed.
Which is why she found herself padding down the hallway in bare feet to the kitchen, where she could hear Ben speaking softly, along with the murmured sounds from the television that glowed in the corner of the living room.
Dressed casually in sweatpants and a t-shirt, he was sitting at the kitchen island with his cellphone pressed against his ear, his laptop open on the counter.
Kelly stopped at the kitchen entrance, feeling a bit like an intruder. Ben was having a private conversation, and she shouldn't eavesdrop.
Eavesdropping is wrong. I shouldn’t do it.
But she couldn’t seem to make her feet move from where she was rooted to the floor either.
"I will," she heard him say. "Good night, Dad."
He'd been talking to his father. He’d mentioned that he was going to ask his dad for help finding the former coroner. She simply hadn’t thought he’d call tonight.
She cleared her throat, taking a few steps into the kitchen, letting him know she was up and awake. He startled slightly when he saw her, his eyes widening in surprise.
"I thought you were asleep," he said.
"I was," she replied, crossing her arms across her chest. "For a while, anyway. I couldn’t get back to sleep. What’s your story?"
“I don’t need a lot of sleep. I’m one of those annoying people who only need four or five hours a night.”
Of course. Because he was perfect.
“That is annoying.”
She could feel the weight of his gaze, knowing he was going to ask a few questions.
"My brain won't shut up,” she admitted, beating him to the punch. “So many questions, so few answers.”
"I know that feeling."
"I heard you talking. Sorry if I interrupted."
"You didn't. I was just finishing a call with my dad. He might be able to help us track down Whitfield."
"That's great," Kelly said, though her tone lacked enthusiasm.
Finding Whitfield meant potentially confirming that Lori had been pregnant, which opened a whole new realm of painful possibilities. However, she wasn’t all that sure about Whitfield’s cooperation. He’d been proud of the fact that he was stubborn and contrary all of his life.
Ben studied her for a moment longer, then seemed to come to a decision.
"Since we're both up, how about some hot chocolate? It's not just any hot chocolate either. It's my grandmother's recipe. Guaranteed to solve at least 30% of life's problems."
"Only 30%?" she laughed,
"Well, it won't solve murder or corruption, but it does wonders for sleeplessness and troubled thoughts." He was already moving to the refrigerator, pulling out milk. "Have a seat. This won't take long."
Kelly slid onto one of the barstools at the kitchen counter, watching as Ben moved with unexpected efficiency around the kitchen. He set a saucepan on the stove, poured in milk, and reached into the cabinet for what looked like real cocoa, not the powdered mix she would have expected.
"Your grandmother taught you to make hot chocolate?" she asked, genuinely curious.
Ben didn't strike her as someone who spent much time in kitchens learning family recipes. As a matter of fact, he didn’t look like someone who spent time in kitchens at all. He looked like he ate all his dinners at fancy New York restaurants with supermodels as his dinner companions.
Even dressed down, he was far too good-looking for simply hanging around the house on a Friday night. He ought to be wearing a tuxedo at a movie premiere or something like that.
"She did," he confirmed, spooning cocoa and then sugar into the warming milk. "My grandma believed that hot chocolate could fix most troubles, at least temporarily. She used to make it for us whenever we had nightmares or bad days at school."
"She sounds wonderful."
"She was." His expression softened with memory. "She always said that what chocolate couldn’t cure, a good Elvis song would. My grandparents were huge Elvis Presley fans. And when I say huge, I mean it. I’m talking yearly trips to Graceland and an Elvis Presley memorabilia room in their house.”
It was the most personal thing he'd shared with her since they'd met. Kelly found herself oddly touched by this glimpse into his past, into the formation of the man standing before her.
“Do you like Elvis, too?”
“I do, although not with as much vigor as they did. But those vacations to Graceland were great. My siblings and I had an awesome time.”
Ben added a pinch of salt, a dash of vanilla, and a hint of cinnamon to the mixture, stirring gently as the rich scent of chocolate filled the kitchen.
"That smells amazing," Kelly admitted. “I don’t remember the last time I had homemade hot chocolate.”
"Grandma said the secret ingredient was snow outside, but we’re going to have to do our best without that tonight," Ben chuckled, pouring the steaming liquid into two mugs and handing one to Kelly. “And I promise to replace whatever we’ve used to make this before we leave. I’m just glad we bought milk.
I have a feeling your friend might like hot chocolate, too, based on the ingredients in her pantry. ”
She wrapped her hands around it gratefully, inhaling the complex aroma before taking a careful sip.
The chocolate was rich and velvety, and not too sweet. It was miles better than the powdered mix she had in a cabinet at home.
"This is really good," she murmured, taking another sip.
Ben leaned against the counter across from her, his own mug cradled in his hands.
"Want to talk about what's keeping you up?"
Kelly stared down into her mug, watching the steam curl upward. "It's Lori," she said finally. "I can't stop thinking about what you said. About her maybe being pregnant."
"It's just a theory," Ben reminded her gently. "We don't know for sure."
"It kind of makes sense," Kelly said, her voice barely above a whisper. "The signs were there. I just didn't see them. Or maybe I didn't want to see them."
"You can't blame yourself for that."
"Can't I?" She looked up at him, tears burning her eyes. "She was my best friend. We were supposed to tell each other everything."
Ben set his mug down and rounded the counter, taking the stool next to her. Not touching, but close enough that she could feel the warmth radiating from him.
"People keep secrets. Even from those they love most. Sometimes, especially from them."
"I know. I just never thought Lori would keep something like that from me. I didn’t have any secrets from her."
"Everything? Really?" Ben asked, his voice gentle but pointed. "There's nothing you didn't tell her?"
"I—" Kelly started, then stopped, her rebuttal dying on her lips as memories surfaced.
She took another sip of hot chocolate, buying herself time to think.
"I guess there were some things," she admitted reluctantly. "But they were small things."
"I never told her how much I resented my parents sometimes," Kelly continued, her voice low.
"How incredibly painful it was to always be measured against Rob and found wanting. How much I was looking forward to leaving Bergen after graduation. I mean…I told her, but I sort of held back on how deliriously happy I was to be leaving.”
The last admission felt particularly significant in retrospect.
"Lori loved it here," Kelly explained. "She couldn't understand why anyone would want to leave. When I'd talk about college applications to places far away, she'd get this hurt look. Eventually, I just stopped mentioning it."
Ben nodded, understanding in his eyes. "So you protected her feelings by keeping certain truths to yourself."
"I guess I did. But that's different. Those were just my complaints, my plans. Not something life-altering like a pregnancy."
"Different scale, same principle," Ben said, finishing his hot chocolate. "We all decide what to share and what to keep private, even with the people closest to us."
“What have you kept secret?”
She didn’t have a clue why she’d asked the question. If he hadn’t told anyone else, he wasn’t going to tell her.
“If you really want to know, I haven’t told my parents that my business closed,” he replied after a long silence.
“You mentioned that.”
Kind of. He certainly hadn’t given any details, but to be fair, she hadn’t sought them out. It wasn’t any of her business.
“They would have been fine about it,” Ben explained. “But they would have had questions, and I don’t have any answers right now. I don’t want to have to admit that to them.”
“Will they think less of you?”
While Ben hadn’t told her lots of things about his parents, what she’d heard didn’t sound judgmental at all.
“No, but I think less of myself. They’re going to ask me what I’m going to do now, and I don’t know yet. Maybe that’s how Lori felt, too. She knew you would have questions, and she didn’t have any answers.”
“I would have helped her find the answers.”
“I know, and my parents would help me. But when you’re that young, you sometimes don’t know that it’s okay not to have those answers.”
“Ben, it’s okay not to have those answers.”
It felt important to say it to him.
“My business is gone. One day it was there, and then the next it wasn’t.
I feel…I feel a little bit like a failure, even though I didn’t do anything to close the business.
One of my partners decided to join a commune.
So we closed the business. It wasn’t my fault, but damn, it sure feels like one.
Lori may have felt like she failed. That’s a hard thing to admit. ”
Kelly's mug was nearly empty, the rich chocolate leaving a comforting warmth in her chest despite the uncomfortable conversation.
“Thank you for telling me that. You didn’t have to, but I think I might understand why she did it a bit more.”