Chapter Seven
Margo
London
She shouldn’t have come here.
Margo glanced up and down the quiet street, once, twice. Tension filled her limbs; her legs frozen. The urge to bolt was overwhelming, even as her feet propelled her forward.
She should have called first. Should have scheduled a meeting properly, over the phone or through email. She should have done this officially, considering there was nothing personal left between them.
Margo glanced up at the orange-red brick building, the occasional ivory stone interspersed along the edges. Three stories of windows stared back at her.
The fourth story was a rooftop garden, not much larger than the space in front, but impressive considering the cost of real estate in this part of London.
A black wrought iron railing traced the edges of the roof, the posts darting to the sky with arrow-like precision.
She used to stand behind that railing and look out over London, watch the sun go down, and ask herself how she’d gotten so lucky that this was her life.
A light was on in the front window.
Margo walked up the path to the front door.
She moved to pull her key out from her purse as she had done many times before, only to stop and remember that this was no longer her home, that she no longer had a key, no longer belonged here.
She pressed the buzzer anyway.
Ten seconds passed.
Twenty.
Thirty.
Margo counted her breaths, trying to steady the nerves rising inside her.
Just when she’d decided to leave, just as she took a step back, the heavy, black-lacquered door swung open.
A beautiful blonde woman stood on the other side of the threshold, dressed in an oversize sweatshirt Margo was intimately familiar with, her mile-long legs encased in a pair of black leggings.
The woman’s eyes widened as she took in Margo’s appearance.
Margo could only imagine how she looked.
Music drifted from the flat, and she recognized one of the songs instantly, knew the playlist it came from, remembered evenings like this with a glass of wine in hand.
This blonde woman, whoever she was, had stepped into Margo’s life—or at the very least, Margo’s past.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have come,” Margo blurted out, regretting the words as quickly as they left her mouth.
The sound of footsteps filled the hallway, and the woman turned, giving Margo the perfect excuse to escape, the opportunity to turn and head for the street, to leave Kensington and the past behind her.
But she didn’t.
Instead, she was frozen in time on the doorstep, helpless to do much of anything while she waited, waited—
He turned the corner from the kitchen, and his smile hit her first, slicing through her and cleaving her in two.
His gaze was on the woman, a concerned, “Sasha?” falling from his lips before his gaze cut to Margo.
If it hadn’t hurt so much, if it hadn’t been so horrible, she almost would have laughed at how comically awful his reaction was.
Hysteria bubbled up inside her. She wished she could unwind the last few hours, go back to that moment when she’d gotten on the Tube earlier this evening, blissfully unaware of all the ways her night was about to careen off the tracks.
He took a step forward, stumbling slightly before righting himself. It was so uncharacteristic of him that for a moment it almost jarred Margo from her own panic. The Luke she knew seemingly never took a wrong step.
“I’m sorry—I—” Margo fumbled with the right words.
What was there to say except that she had spectacularly screwed up in coming here?
“I need to talk to you,” she finished, the truth tumbling out from her.
She could feel the weight of Luke’s stare as he took in her appearance and belatedly realized she should have cleaned herself up.
He closed the distance between them in a few quick strides. “Are you alright? You’re bleeding.”
Suddenly, he was there, right in front of her, and she could have reached out and pressed her palm to his chest, curling her fingers around the fabric like she used to do, bringing him close to her—
“It’s not mine—the blood, I mean. I must have accidentally touched my face after—”
The words broke as she realized that Mr. Thornton’s blood was on her, staining her skin. She was going to be sick.
“Luke, what’s going on?” Sasha interjected.
“I’m sorry.” He turned away from Margo. “Just give me a moment.”
“Who is this?” Sasha asked.
Luke took a deep breath as though preparing himself for something singularly unpleasant.
“My ex-wife.”
—
Margo stared at her reflection in the washroom mirror.
The blood was gone now, Luke’s ivory washcloth mottled with red stains.
His mother had bought the linens after they had married, the domesticity of such tasks never high on Margo’s radar, especially back then when she had been hustling with everything she had to get her business off the ground.
Likely, Luke’s mother had been trying to help, but for Margo, their arrival was a perceived indictment on her domestic skills or lack thereof.
After all, wasn’t she supposed to be able to have it all?
To run her business, to go to Pilates at least three times a week, manage her finances and the household, devote time to friendships, to family, to her marriage, of course, have time for leisure activities and hobbies that she could talk about with knowledge and enthusiasm at parties, find inner peace, and also have dinner waiting for Luke after they both got home from their exhausting days?
It was possible, surely. Lots of articles that caused her to roll her eyes as she read and filled her with a nagging sense of failure when she’d finished told her so.
Not to mention the social media accounts she’d followed hoping for some inspiration that had instead left her closing her phone screen wondering how the hell they managed to do it all and had her collapsing in front of a reality TV show instead.
She’d tried to be a good wife, she really had, but there was no blueprint for her to follow.
Her pride, her sense of self, had come from her work, from building her business, from making sure she was independent and could take care of herself if she needed to.
That had come naturally to her. The rest of it? Not so much.
Her parents had divorced when she was so young that she’d not had an example of what marriage was supposed to look like—at least in a healthy, functional way—and her mother’s remarriage in Margo’s twenties to a man who lived in Scottsdale had only put more distance between them.
There wasn’t a natural closeness between them, the kind of relationship where she had a mother she could confide in, could look to for guidance.
Luke’s mom, while well-meaning, had been too polished, too perfect, and the few times she’d even tried to be honest about her struggles, she could tell Lucille had been mildly—albeit politely—appalled.
Margo picked up the washcloth and tossed it in the wastebasket, the fine fabric ruined. She made a mental note to ask Bea to send Luke a replacement.
Margo opened the door and stepped into the hallway, the scent of whatever Luke and his—girlfriend?—were cooking wafting toward her. A chicken dish, maybe; French by the seasoning if she had to guess.
Low music filled the hallway, followed by the noise of pots and pans banging together, Sasha’s cooking taking on a furious note.
Had Luke told Sasha he was married before? She could only imagine what he would have said—that it was impulsive, that they burned out as quickly as they started.
No—she couldn’t envision Luke sharing so much.
Margo paused outside his study, taking a breath for courage.
She pushed open the door and traveled back in time.
The room was exactly as she remembered it except for the photographs that used to reside on his desk.
Gone was the one of them in Paris, the one where her cheeks had hurt from the cold and from smiling so much.
Their wedding photo had disappeared, too, and she couldn’t ignore her relief that a framed photo of Sasha hadn’t replaced them.
It would happen one day, of course. The day she suggested they should divorce, she’d known he would eventually move on.
She’d just always assumed his moving on would happen in the background of her life.
Perhaps she would see him walking down the street or run into someone who had known them then who would casually mention that Luke had remarried, and Margo would smile and express her happiness for him, and it would mostly be true, and she would only be dying a little inside.
Kind of like how she felt right now.
Luke leaned against the corner of his desk, his legs crossed at the ankle, arms folded over his chest. One of his fingers was tapping restlessly against his forearm.
Whenever he was nervous or impatient, he had a hard time sitting still, as though he was ready to attack whatever problem he faced head-on.
His gaze scanned her appearance quickly, searching for any injuries, any signs of bleeding she had missed.
“What happened?” he asked Margo.
Margo took a deep breath. “Mr. Thornton is dead. He was killed in his shop. Stabbed. I found his body.”
Luke uncrossed his arms, pushing off from the desk. He stopped, just out of reach, and she could feel his hesitation, the instinct to offer comfort disappearing as quickly as it had arisen. Clearly, she wasn’t the only one who was stuck between the past and the present.
“When?”
“A couple hours ago. He was still alive when I found him,” Margo added, wondering if he was aligning the timeline in his mind, realizing that they had just missed each other at the bookshop—that he had just missed the killer.
“I’m sorry,” Luke replied. “I know how much you respected him. He was a good man. You could tell he really cared about the books he was selling, about making sure his customers had a good experience. He cared about you a great deal, too. Worried about you.”
“Is that all you have to say?”