Chapter 1 #2
Lucy breathes out. “That’s not your call to make for him.”
“It is if I’m the one it’s happening to.”
“And if it gets worse?”
“It won’t.”
Neither of us believes me.
I open my laptop because doing something feels better than sitting with the cold thing in my ribs. My search history already knows where I’m going. Private security Helena Bend. Residential threat assessment. Consultation fee.
The numbers make my stomach tighten. Logan would notice a payment like that. Not because he monitors me, but because money in this marriage has never had locks on it. We share everything. Accounts. Calendars. Grocery lists. The last bite of dessert. Everything except this.
“Char,” Lucy says softly. “This is not a weird fan anymore.”
“I know.”
“Say the word.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Say it anyway.”
I stare at the screen until the letters blur. “I think someone is watching me.”
There. Said plainly, it sounds worse.
Lucy’s voice drops. “You tell Logan tonight.”
“I’ll try.”
“No. You tell him.”
From the driveway comes the low roll of tires over gravel. Logan’s home early.
“I have to go,” I say.
“Charlotte.”
“I’ll call you later.”
I hang up before she can say my name like that again.
Logan comes in carrying the day on his shoulders. He sets his keys in the little ceramic bowl by the door, misses, and has to catch them before they slide off the table. His tie’s loosened. His jaw’s tight. There’s a smile ready for me, but it looks tired before it arrives.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey.”
“Meeting ran long.”
“Did authenticity survive?”
“Barely. They want me in a commercial standing in a river.”
I lean against the counter. “For beer?”
“For ruggedness.”
That almost-laugh happens again, except this time it makes it out. Small, rough, real.
He crosses the kitchen and cups my face before I can decide whether to meet him halfway.
His thumbs brush my cheeks. His eyes search mine, and I have the sudden, painful sense that we’re both looking for proof of something we’ve not lost. He kisses me.
It’s not dramatic. It’s better than dramatic.
Warm mouth, familiar pressure, his hand sliding to the back of my neck. I rise into him without thinking.
For a moment, everything’s simple. Then he rests his forehead against mine. “I missed doing that while you were sick.”
His voice softens on the words, and it nearly breaks me. Tell him. I put my hand over his wrist. “There’s something I need to?—”
His gaze shifts past me, toward the counter by the sink. The orange prescription bottle sits beside the fruit bowl.
I forgot it was there. I found it in the back of the upstairs linen closet this morning when I was looking for clean hand towels. One of Ray’s. Somehow missed when Logan and his mother packed up the medications after the funeral.
Logan goes still. Not tense. Still. Like some internal system has shut down to keep the rest of him standing.
I turn and grab the bottle. “I found it earlier. I meant to put it with the pharmacy returns.”
He takes a breath through his nose. “I thought we got all of them,” he says.
“We did. This one must’ve rolled behind the towels.”
“Right.”
His voice is normal in the way a locked door is normal.
I tuck the bottle into a drawer just to get it out of sight. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“I should’ve moved it before you got home.”
He shakes his head once. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Act like my grief’s a live wire you’ve to throw your body over.”
The words are sharper than he means them to be. I see him regret them immediately. His mouth tightens. His hand goes to the back of his neck.
“Char,” he says. “I didn’t mean?—”
“I know.”
“No. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“It’s not.”
But we both let it stand there, because we’re tired and because the drawer now contains a small plastic bottle that has somehow filled the whole kitchen with Ray’s last month alive.
Logan looks toward the wine rack near the pantry. “I’m going to open a bottle,” he says. “You want a glass?”
I almost say yes because it would be easier than saying anything else. “No, thanks.”
His eyes come back to me. Something passes through them. Disappointment, maybe. Or worry. Or only exhaustion dressed as both. He takes a bottle of red from the rack and sets it on the counter.
The closet door near the entry clicks. We both turn.
I must not have latched it fully. The door’s drifted open a few inches. From where we stand, the white box is visible on the top shelf.
Logan frowns. “What’s that?”
My body moves before my mind catches up. “Nothing.” I cross the kitchen too quickly. “Just something for the blog.”
I shut the closet door and press my palm flat against it. Behind me, Logan says nothing. That’s worse than a question.
I turn around. His face is unreadable, but his eyes are on my hand. On the door. On me. The corkscrew sits untouched beside the wine.
“I was going to tell you,” I say. It’s close enough to the truth to hurt.
“About a box for the blog?”
“Yes.”
He studies me for another second. Then he nods. “Okay.”
Not because he believes me. Because he loves me enough, tonight, not to push. That should make me feel grateful. Instead, I feel like an asshole.
“I’m tired,” I say.
His expression changes. Softens. “Go up. I’ll lock everything.”
Everything. The word slides cold under my skin.
I nod and leave him in the kitchen with the unopened wine, the closed drawer, and the grief I keep telling myself is the reason I can't add my fear to his.
Upstairs, I wait until I hear the den door close. Then I go back down as quietly as I can.
The house is dim. Logan’s in the den; I can see his outline through the partially open door, standing near Ray’s chair with his head bowed. He’s not sitting. He never sits.
I take the box from the closet and carry it upstairs. In our bedroom, I lock the door for the first time in eight years of marriage.
My hands shake when I lift the lid. The bracelet lies in its bed of cotton, fern charm catching the lamplight. Pretty. Thoughtful, if thoughtfulness can curdle into threat.
I open the card. There are only seven words inside.
You looked beautiful at the conservatory yesterday.
For a second, I don’t understand. Then I do.
Yesterday, I went to the conservatory to take more photos. There had been no one there but me.
At least, that's what I'd thought.
Downstairs, I hear Logan's footsteps.
I press the card to my chest, as if that can hide what it says from the walls, from the windows, from the man I love walking beneath me so filled with grief that he drags it around like a weight on a chain.
And I tell myself the worst lie yet.
I’ll tell him tomorrow.