Chapter 27
TWENTY-SEVEN
MINA
The dead dove lay at my feet. Its two fledglings cooed a few feet away from me, hidden in the landscaping.
It was our fault. The mother dove had made a nest on the sitting-room windowsill.
When the weather allowed it, we left the window open and sprinkled birdseed out for her.
She’d gotten used to humans. It would have been easy for someone to walk up and snatch her from that nest.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered. I went into the garage and found a small shovel. I dug a hole next to the rose bushes and buried her. All the while, her fledglings stayed nearby.
I had to tell someone. The ribbon around the dove’s neck was deliberate. She hadn’t just been felled by someone’s barn cat. She was strangled. Placed where I would find her.
Complicit. My dove.
I could no longer explain everything away. Someone was goading me. Someone wanted to send a message.
I went inside. Tossing my keys on the kitchen counter, I pulled out my phone. Who should I call? Roy? 911?
Slowly, I looked through the house. Nothing was out of place.
The French doors to the workout room stood ajar.
I’d left them that way this morning. Lock would have closed them if he were home.
He also would have re-stacked the weight plates on the north wall.
I’d left a ten-pounder and a twenty-five-pounder leaning against the mirrored east wall.
I put them back on their bars, walked out, and locked the doors behind me.
Lock was gone. If he’d been here in my absence, he never would have left the room in that minimal amount of disarray. He never chastised me for things like that. He simply put things back in the order he needed and moved on.
The dove couldn’t be his doing. The mere presence of something so unclean would have been intolerable to him.
I found myself back in the garage. I opened the garbage bin next to the door. It was empty. The plastic liner had been taken out. That too was unlike Lock. He would have replaced the liner immediately.
Had I done it and forgotten? Had someone been through our garbage?
It started to rain. I walked outside anyway. In my bare feet, I walked down the driveway. By the time I got there, my clothes were soaked through. My hair stuck to my head. I shivered from the cold.
I opened each tote. All the bags were neatly tied. I threw them on the ground, spilling the contents.
I don’t know what I was looking for. What had been in that garbage someone had so hastily disposed of?
But there was nothing. Just the normal things we threw away. Empty food cartons. Styrofoam. All the things we couldn’t recycle.
This was ludicrous. What had I hoped to accomplish? As best I could, I stuffed the trash back into the cans. I was filthy now. The rain washed away some of it as I walked back up to the garage with the speed and gait of a zombie.
I closed the door behind me. Rage poured through me and I kicked the empty garbage can across the floor.
Then I saw it. It had rolled to its side underneath the workbench Lock built along the far wall. Surely he hadn’t left it there. It should be in the utility shed in its proper space on the proper shelf.
But it wasn’t. Slowly, I walked over to the bench, stooped down, and picked up the paint can.
It was empty, the lid stuck shut with dried paint. But when I turned it over and read the small sticker on the top, my stomach twisted. Cerise Afterglow. The same color used to paint my car.
I felt a drumbeat between my ears. The air tasted like metal. I dropped the can and walked into the house.
My phone rang on the kitchen counter.
Lock’s ringtone.
I picked up my phone as it rang again, Lock’s contact photo filling the screen.
It was one of my favorites. I’d taken it a few months ago when he wasn’t aware.
He sat on a deck chair overlooking the water.
The wind blew his hair straight back. His eyes shone with mirth. I’d said something that made him laugh.
I hovered my index finger over the screen. Then I did something I’d never done in the two years and five months since I’d known him.
I declined the call.