Chapter 23
TWENTY-THREE
Lock hired a driver to bring us home. He needn’t have bothered. I was stone cold sober.
Cooked up some story about how it was a symbol of how much he cared for them… I had no idea Lock was still doing that. Or that anyone would fall for it… I’m sure it was different with you…
“You were great tonight,” Lock said as the driver slowly pulled around the circle. They both tried to get to my door, but I opened it and got out on my own, brushing past them. I left Lock to say goodnight to the driver and give him a generous tip.
I braced myself against the door and slipped off my heels. I left them where they dropped and worked on taking off my earrings. Lock was a few steps behind me. I heard him close the garage door as I headed up the stairs.
I stood at the entrance to my closet. Lock came and unzipped my dress. “You really were amazing.” He kissed the nape of my neck as my dress pooled at my feet. I stepped out of it. “They couldn’t stop looking at you. You blew them away. You always do.”
I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t even think about my political future or any of the people I’d met tonight. I could only think about Piper’s comments. About the Frères Célestes. About the ribbon itself.
“You okay? You’ve barely said two words since we got in the car.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “I’m just tired. I need to decompress. Grab a shower. I’ll come to bed in a while.”
Lock gave me a curious look, but didn’t seem upset. I pulled my robe off the hook and slipped into it. As I tried to walk out of the closet, Lock stopped me, lightly gripping my forearms.
“Hey,” he said. “Come here. I love you. Don’t be too long.” He kissed me.
“I love you too,” I said as I moved past him and headed back downstairs. I went to the kitchen, not sure what I wanted there. Certainly not anything else to eat. I was too keyed up, nearly crawling out of my own skin.
Lock had given the ribbon to many women. Red Silk Romeo. It was a calling card! Or was Piper lying? What motive could she possibly have? Although, the moment I thought about it, I knew.
She wanted to upset me in exactly the way she had. I slipped off my smartwatch and tossed it on the counter. The ribbon slipped further down my wrist.
Did she want to make me jealous? She was talking about girls Lock dated when he was in college, more than a decade before I met him. Why on earth would Piper think that would unsettle me? It had. But not for the reason she thought.
I found myself walking into Lock’s study.
Eli was more the type who would solicit women through a dating app.
He was cheating on Piper right under her nose.
Lock warned me when he first introduced me to him that Eli had a roving eye.
Lock said Eli indulged Piper’s pyramid scheme of the month to keep her out of his hair.
Even tonight, I saw Eli leave the ballroom a minute or two after Anne Bowling had.
For all anyone knew, they’d had a tryst in the cloakroom.
I combed the bookshelves. I knew they were all here. I found them on the third shelf, just above my head. I pulled the small stool from the corner and climbed up.
Another of Lock’s old-fashioned habits… he still printed out photographs and put them in albums. I was grateful for it. It had given me a way to get a glimpse of who Lock was before he came into my life.
But there were no baby pictures. If Olivia and his father had ever taken them, they hadn’t been preserved.
There were two whole albums devoted to Bennett, but not Lock.
Whenever I asked him about it, Lock got that hardened expression and I let it drop.
Olivia had probably burned them after Bennett died as another way of punishing her surviving son.
Of making him feel like he should have been the one who drowned.
After flipping through a few of the albums, I found the ones I wanted.
The first contained photos from Lock’s college days.
Piper and Eli were in so many of them. Laughing.
Looking young, happy, carefree. Lock had a couple of girlfriends in some of them.
Three that I counted. One he’d told me about.
Emily Twomey, a biology major from Utah.
They dated for almost six months. Piper once told me it was the longest romantic relationship he had had before me.
In the photo, Emily had one arm around Lock. Her hand rested on his shoulder. Peeking out of her sleeve was a jeweled tennis bracelet, not a ribbon. I didn’t know if that made me relieved or angry.
I put the book down and picked up a more recent one. It was six years ago. The first fundraiser gala Lock had thrown for Bennett’s Place.
I found a group shot of Lock, Eli, and Piper standing together in formal wear. Piper beamed up at Lock while Eli had his arm around her. Lock had brought a date that night. She was pretty with a chic blonde pixie cut. She wore a strapless dress. There was nothing on her wrists.
“Mina?”
I jumped. The album fell out of my lap and hit the floor. Several pictures fluttered out.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I’m just… I was…”
He came further into the room and saw what I’d been holding. He stooped down and picked up the photos—the one of him, the blonde, and Eli and Piper had fallen face down. He stared at it.
“What were you looking for?”
My emotions bubbled just below the surface. My blood was lava. I didn’t know how I could hold all of this in much longer.
Lock rose to his full height. The concern in his eyes speared through me.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing…”
“Stop it,” he said, his tone sharp. “You’ve been acting strange for hours. For weeks. Is it your car? Baby, we’re going to find out who did it. If it will make you feel better, I’ll hire private security to shadow you for a while. I know it’ll make me feel better.”
“No. I don’t want that.”
“You have to let me protect you.”
“I’m not in danger,” I said.
“Then what?”
I couldn’t take it. For weeks I’d walked around in fear. In doubt.
“Mina! You’re not okay. Dammit, I know you. Tell me what it is. Have you been threatened again?”
“NO! It’s not that. It’s this!”
Something broke inside of me. I couldn’t hold it all in anymore. I thrust out my wrist and pulled on the red ribbon. Lock’s eyes widened in confusion.
“Piper told me,” I said.
“Told you what?”
“In the powder room tonight. She saw my ribbon. She told me you gave them out frequently. They called you Red Silk Romeo. And this is connected to the case I’m… I’m not supposed to be telling you about. Some maniac has been hurting women, and this is all we have to identify him.”
“What are you saying?”
“Lock, you have to admit this would be a pretty wild coincidence for another woman to have a ribbon like this.”
“Mina, you’re not making sense?” he said. “You think I’m a serial killer?”
“That’s not what I’m saying. I don’t know what I’m saying. I just know that it doesn’t make sense. And the Frères Célestes. It was at a crime scene we searched. How is that possible?”
He staggered backward as if he’d just been hit with a wrecking ball. “This is ridiculous. I think you’re seeing things that aren’t there? This has been too much for you. I shouldn’t have pushed you. Do you hear how crazy you sound?”
It felt like a punch to the gut.
“I know what I know,” I said. “I know what I saw.”
Lock closed his eyes, then opened them, as if he were resetting himself. “I’m sorry. I’m not doubting you. All these things. Mina, I don’t understand why you’re doing this to me. To us. Have I ever given you any reason to think I could be… It’s a ribbon, Mina,” he said more calmly.
“You’ve given away many,” I said. “How many?”
“I didn’t keep track,” he said, his voice flat. “I didn’t know I’d be cross-examined on it.”
“Five? Ten?” My wheels started to spin. If he’d given these ribbons to other women, one of them could have told someone and then…
“Mina,” he said. “Look at me.”
I did. His eyes were filled with despair.
“Whatever you think this is. It’s not about me.
You know me. You know us. Maybe you should take some time off.
You’ve been under so much stress. You haven’t had a day off in what?
Over a year? And with everything we’re going through.
Dr. Wexler said that medication could add to your stress. Your moods.”
“Please don’t do that. Do not tell me you think this is my hormones.”
“I’m not. Baby, I’m sorry. I’m just… this is out of nowhere.
You think I have something to do with whatever case your task force is investigating.
Come on. You have to hear how bizarre that sounds.
Please just come to bed. We can talk about all this later.
You know I’m off to New York tomorrow. Please don’t make me have to leave you for a week when things are like this between us.
It was a good night tonight. For you… but also for Bennett. ”
My heart dropped to the floor. Bennett. I felt like a jerk.
I stood there and watched as Lock was forced to confront a giant image of his dead brother.
He had dedicated a statue in his honor. It was twenty-five years to the day from when Bennett Manning drowned.
Whatever my fears, it was selfish of me to bring it up right now. Tonight.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “You’re right. We can talk about this later. I just want to go to bed.”
Lock’s face stayed hard. I’d hurt him with my insensitivity about his brother.
But I just couldn’t bring myself to try and smooth it over.
Maybe him leaving for a week was just the thing I needed to get my head straight.
When I was with him, Lock sometimes eclipsed my own thoughts.
I started toward the door. As Lock reluctantly followed me, the photograph I’d held of him, Piper, and Eli fluttered to the ground.
Piper’s eyes seemed to follow me as we walked out of the room.
My sleep was restless, filled with more nightmares of suffocating, of falling through space and reaching for something I could never quite grasp.
When I woke, drenched in sweat, the bed was empty beside me.
Lock’s luggage was lined up next to the bedroom door.
I got out of bed and found him standing in front of the full-length mirror, working on his tie.
It was one of my favorites. The blue one with a tiny, golden thread woven throughout.
“Here, let me.” Lock turned and moved his hands out of the way as I tightened his Windsor knot. I smoothed it down over his crisp white dress shirt. He pulled away.
“Can you help with these?” he said, holding up one of his sleeves.
He dropped a gold cufflink into my palm.
They were a gift from me. I had his jeweler design them using our initials, L and M, intertwined.
He’d done it in such a way that they looked like an infinity symbol unless you knew the secret.
I fastened the first one. Lock reached into his pocket to pull out the other one. Instead, he frowned. He checked the other pocket.
“I put both of them in my pocket. I must have dropped one.”
“I’ll check your closet,” I said.
“There’s no time,” he said abruptly. “I’m running late, I’ll wear a different pair.”
He pulled off the other cufflink and dropped it into my hand.
Then he stormed off into his closet. I stared at his single cufflink as I heard him slam one of his dresser doors.
When he came back out, he brushed past me.
I knew what he was waiting for. He wanted me to apologize for everything I’d said last night.
I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t be the one to fix everything this time.
“I’ll find the other one,” I said. “You should go.”
He nodded, then paused, staring at me. Waiting for me to say what he expected once more. When he realized I wouldn’t, he gave me a pained expression that tugged at my heart.
“When I get home,” he said.
“We’ll talk,” I finished for him.
“Mina… I… I love you.”
I nodded. I loved him too. But I couldn’t say it back. I knew I’d fall apart if I did.
His eyes were filled with agony, but he turned, grabbed his luggage, and left me.
I sat on the bed for a moment, staring at his cufflink. I waited until I heard the front door close. A moment after that, I heard the car pulling away. Only then did I move. Tossing the cufflink in my hand and catching it, I went into Lock’s closet.
Lock had far more clothes than I did. All of his ties had separate small drawers in a large center cabinet.
Every item in here was arranged by color, even his boxer briefs.
He kept them folded with precision in a set of drawers on the east wall.
His designer suits hung exactly one-half inch apart from each other.
He had his shirts delivered from the dry cleaner every week, pressed and folded with cardboard as if he’d just brought them back from the store.
I went to the low dresser in the center of the closet and pulled out the small drawer with divider inserts. He owned four pairs of cufflinks, ten watches, and several rings. One square space was empty. I picked up the insert and looked underneath.
I knelt down, running my fingers through the plush blue carpet. Lock had it replaced every other year along with the other carpeting downstairs.
I went back out to the main room and checked the tops of every dresser. Lock kept his mostly clear save for a small wooden box with a red velvet lining. He kept a small pistol inside of it.
I scanned the carpet but saw nothing. I went down on my knees to look under the bed.
Nothing there either. I almost stood up, but something caught my eye under my side of the bed.
I reached for it and pulled out a blue envelope.
It had been opened at one end, cut neatly.
It had no postage. I sat on the bed and flipped the envelope over.
I could feel a card inside. Written on the front in purple ink and small block letters, it read “Matt.”
Matt.
I shook my head as if I could clear my vision.
Matt.
I tipped the envelope sideways, so the card fell out of the slit. No bigger than a thank-you card. White with a metallic purple border. I read it.
I miss you already. Tonight was amazing.
You were right. I feel like I’ve known you my whole life.
Thank you for trusting me. I’m not scared of who you are.
I want to see you again too. Soon. Just tell me when and where.
I hope it’s not too forward of me to say that.
I can’t wait. We’ll talk soon. C… your dove.
I couldn’t breathe.
Matt. Dove.
Matt Woodson. This couldn’t be what I thought it was.