Chapter 11 Olivia
Olivia
Ityped her name into the search bar. My fingers felt stiff, clumsy on the keys, like I was typing in a foreign language.
Lucia Vance Real Estate.
I hit enter.
The results loaded with a speed that felt cruel. Her company website was the first hit—a sleek, monochromatic design with a banner photo of a house balanced over the hillside. All glass and steel and warm, expensive light.
I clicked About.
The page refreshed, and there she was.
Lucia Vance.
She wasn't just beautiful. She was striking in a way that made you feel immediately underdressed.
She had high, sharp cheekbones and dark eyes that stared directly into the camera lens with a predatory confidence.
Her hair was glossy and black, swept over one shoulder in a wave that probably took forty minutes to style but looked effortless.
She wore a white silk blouse, the top button undone—professional, but suggesting a life that didn't end at 5:00 PM.
I stared at the pixels, feeling a hollow ache spread through my chest.
I had expected her to be young, someone who looked like a mistake. But Lucia Vance looked like an upgrade, sharp and already finished with the world’s doubts.
This was the woman Ryan had been seeing, the one he had driven toward on the night he died, leaving me and all our dreams behind.
I opened a new tab and found her Instagram.
The profile was public. Of course it was. Real estate agents lived on visibility; privacy didn't sell houses.
I began the scroll. It was a masochistic slide through a life that looked technicolor compared to my own gray existence. Staged living rooms with mid-century furniture. "Just Sold" signs in front of colonials. Drone shots of roof decks at sunset.
I stopped on a photo from six months ago. July.
Lucia on a beach. She was wearing a black bikini, her body lean and tanned, saltwater drying on her skin. She was looking away from the camera, laughing at something, her neck arched. The ocean behind her was an impossible, filtered blue.
Caption: Santorini, you were perfect.
I imagined Ryan looking at this photo.
He had certainly seen it. Maybe while he was sitting in his truck at a job site, or in the bathroom while the shower ran. Maybe he was lying in bed next to me, the phone angled away, staring at the curve of her neck while I slept.
I imagined his thumb hovering over the heart icon, his fingers pinching the screen as he zoomed in.
I scrolled further, faster now, hunting for pain. Lucia at a vineyard, holding a glass of rosé. Lucia hiking in expensive, branded gear. Lucia at a rooftop bar in a black dress that clung to her ribs.
She looked happy and whole. A woman who had never spent a Friday night scrubbing lasagna off a Pyrex dish.
I clicked back to her company page, needing a location. A geography to pin the betrayal to.
Her bio listed her headquarters: Northampton, Massachusetts.
Two hours west.
Ryan had been driving west. Toward the Berkshires, the city.
I sat back, the kitchen island digging into my spine. My hands were shaking so hard they vibrated against the table.
He had built an entire emotional architecture with this woman. And she lived two hours away. Did they meet halfway? Did he drive to her on those "late site visits"? Or did she come here, walking the streets of my city, eating in our restaurants?
A knock at the front door made me jump.
I walked to the hallway, leaving the laptop open on the counter. Through the frosted glass panel, I could see a broad-shouldered silhouette, work boots visible at the bottom.
Ben.
I opened the door, wrapping my arms around my torso as the cold air rushed in.
He was still wearing the same Carhartt jacket from last night, the canvas dark with grease stains.
The drywall dust was still there, settled into the creases of his jeans, but he looked more awake now.
More alert. His hair was damp, like he'd showered but hadn't bothered to dry it properly.
"You didn't call," he said.
"I know."
"I thought—" He stopped, shaking his head. "Can I come in?"
I stepped back, pulling the door wider.
"Kitchen," I said, already turning back. I walked back to the counter where the laptop still sat open, Lucia's face frozen on the screen. Ben appeared in the doorway and stopped.
He took one look at me—at the laptop, at my pale face—and his expression crumpled.
"Liv," he said quietly.
I didn't say anything. I couldn't. I just turned the laptop toward him, the plastic scraping against the granite.
He walked closer, bringing the smell of winter air and sawdust with him. He leaned over the counter, eyes scanning the screen. I watched him take Lucia in—the bikini, the smile, the radiance.
His jaw tightened, a muscle jumping in his cheek.
"Jesus," he muttered.
"She's beautiful." My voice sounded thin and brittle. "Isn't she?"
"Olivia—"
"Two hours away," I interrupted, tapping the screen. "Northampton. That's where she's based."
Ben pulled out the barstool next to me and sat down heavily. The wood creaked under his weight. He didn't look at the screen anymore; instead, he looked at me, his eyes searching my face for cracks.
"You called her," he said.
"This morning." I closed the laptop. I couldn't stand to look at her perfection for another second. "I told her."
Ben exhaled slowly, rubbing a hand over his face. The sound of his skin rasping against his stubble was loud in the quiet kitchen.
"How did she take it?"
"She cried, then hung up." I picked at a loose thread on my sleeve. "She didn't know, Ben. She thought he was just... missing. She thought he’d ghosted her."
The kitchen went quiet again.
"Have you eaten?" he asked.
"No."
"Slept?"
"A few hours. After you put me to bed." I glanced at him. "Thank you. For that. And for cleaning up."
He winced, shifting his gaze to the counter. "You were running on empty, Liv. I didn't want you waking up to a mess."
"I'm still empty," I said, standing up. The restless energy was back, a buzzing static under my skin. "But now I have a face. I know what she looks like. I know where she lives." I grabbed my car keys from the hook by the fridge. The metal bit into my palm. "I'm going to find her."
Ben stood up fast, the stool scraping loudly against the floor. He stepped into my path, a solid wall of canvas and concern.
"No," he said. "You're not."
"Get out of my way, Ben."
"Look at you," he said gently. He gestured to my hand, which was trembling around the keys. "You’re vibrating. You haven't eaten in a week. You're not driving two hours on black ice to ambush a woman who is also grieving."
"I don't care about her grief!" I snapped. The anger finally broke through, hot and sharp. "I want answers! I want to know why he picked her!"
"I know," he said, stepping closer. He put his hands on my shoulders.
The contact was shocking. His hands were warm and heavy. They grounded me instantly, stopping the vibration in my bones.
"I know," he repeated, his voice dropping low. "And we'll get the answers you need. But not like this. Not with you crashing a car because you're too exhausted to see the road."
I wanted to fight him. To scream. But the warmth of his hands on my shoulders was the only thing keeping me upright. The fight drained out of me, leaving me hollow again.
I slumped. "Then what do I do?"
"Let me call her," Ben said. "I’ll set it up. Somewhere neutral."
"She won't agree."
"She might." He released my shoulders and pulled out his phone. "She’ll want answers too."
I watched him dial the number from Ryan’s call log. I watched his face shift, smoothing out into a mask of polite neutrality.
"Hi," he said. "This is Ben Walsh. I'm a friend of Ryan's... Yes. His wife is here with me."
He paused, listening. His eyes flicked to me, then away, focusing on a spot on the wall.
"She wants to meet, Lucia. And I think you do too... Okay. When?"
He grabbed a pen from the counter, reaching past me. He scribbled on the back of the note he’d left this morning. The sound of the pen scratching on paper was sharp.
"Tomorrow? Two o'clock works. Where?"
He listened. His brow furrowed deeply, creating a line between his eyes I hadn't noticed before.
"Are you sure?" He looked down at the address he’d just written. "Okay. We'll be there."
He hung up and looked at me. The phone sat heavy in his hand.
"She'll meet you," he said. "Tomorrow at two PM."
Relief washed over me. "Where? Her office?"
Ben looked down at the note and hesitated.
"No."
"Where, Ben?"
"It's an address on Route 9," he said slowly. "472 Route 9. Past the reservoir."
The blood drained from my face.
"That's..." I couldn't finish the sentence.
"Yeah," Ben said grimly. "It's the road he died on."
"Why?" I whispered. "Why there?"
"She said it's a property. A project." He looked at me, his eyes dark with worry. "She said we'd understand when we got there."
I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature of the house.
Hadn’t Ryan been driving to her? What exactly was there on Route 9?
"I'll take you," Ben said. It wasn't an offer; it was a promise. "Alright? I'll be right there."
I looked at him, at the exhaustion in his eyes and the way he was standing between me and the door like a shield.
"Okay," I said.
And for the first time in a week, the house didn't feel quite so empty.