“Come here.” I pull her in, and her body bucks against mine a moment. “It’s going to be all right.” Except it isn’t, considering the fact Lena has set up camp across the street. Damned hippie. If she really cared about Ree—about herself, she would never have let it get this far.
“It’s not going to be all right, Bram. You don’t know my mother. You have no idea the evil that woman is capable of.” Her watery eyes look to mine, a clear ocean of amber. Twin pools unwilling to give up their tears. Ree has always held a princess appeal, and tonight she looks like exactly that.
Lilly howls for us, and we take a simultaneous breath.
“Let’s get the kids to bed.” I tuck a kiss under her jawline. “And then we can get to the task of making a new kid.” I give a playful shrug. “Or practice. I think we’re getting a little rusty.”
Her cheeks brighten a warm shade of red. Ree has always managed to look smitten to be with me, grateful to be with me, and it feels awkward to admit that. Ree is gorgeous in her own right, and all that monster who’s about to barrel into town has ever done has made Ree think otherwise.
“I love you,” I whisper. “And if I didn’t say it earlier, you looked stunning tonight.”
“You can cool it with the come-ons.” She gives the lip of my jeans a quick tug. “You’re getting laid, Dr. Woodley.”
I flinch internally when she says my proper moniker. We haven’t spoken it out loud since our last move. And strangely, it feels as if she’s just unleashed a curse into the room, slithering between us like a snake.
We share a dark, delicious kiss before putting the kids to bed.
Ree and I hit the sheets and set them on fire, set each other on fire. Yes, another child would be nice, would be a blessing. But I can’t help feeling a little bit cursed these days—hell, I’ve never felt otherwise.
All night I toss and turn. Somewhere between four and five in the morning Ree gets up, no lights, tiptoes to the restroom, but she doesn’t come back to bed. Instead, she heads into her closet and closes the door, leaving a seam of light slicing through the murky darkness. She doesn’t come out for a good long while, and it makes me wonder.
* * *
On Monday, somewhere between setting a crown and a routine dental exam, my phone buzzes in my pocket. I’m not one to pick up when I’m with a patient, but I’m mid-stream, walking between one room and the next. Here at Smile Wide, the philosophy is juggle two clients at once. The billing is phenomenal, only I wouldn’t know it because I happened to sign on as salary.
I glare down at my phone a moment. It’s a number I don’t recognize, so I let it go to voicemail, but something in me says wait it out. Sure enough, there’s a message.
“Hello, this is Detective Rivera from the Hennessy Police Department calling about a recent homicide you might have information about. Please call me back at your earliest convenience. I’d love to ask you a few questions.”
Ice courses through my veins. My feet have screwed themselves into the floor. Can’t move. The convention. Loretta. Shit. Shit. Shit.
It takes all my willpower to get through the rest of the day before I meet my brother for drinks down at the Thirsty Fox, a dive bar on the edge of town that splits the distance between our homes.
The Thirsty Fox is on the last decent street before you segue into a homeless encampment. It’s dark inside, save for the dim lighting emitting from a yellow neon sign that sits behind the bar itself like a homing beacon for all the drunks that infiltrate this place. It holds the scent of hard liquor and peanuts, and somehow the lively atmosphere makes up for the fact it’s located in the ass-crack of town.
No sign of Mace, so I belly up to the bar, take a seat on the end, and a beer magically appears before me.
It was a bar just like this one that I met Ree in. I still think of that dark rainy night. What a miraculous coincidence it was that we were there together—two lost souls intersecting at just the right time in one another’s lives. How horrific it would have been if either of us didn’t show up. But a part of me holds a romantic ideal that we would have met anyway, at a bus stop, simply walking down the street, in line for a movie. That the universe had no choice but to arrange for it. I’m not a big believer in destinies, especially not after the shit parade my life with Simone had become. But with Ree, I could practically hear destiny calling. When I least expected it, I looked up, and there she was.
I turn my head to the left as a wistful nod to fate and shudder when I see an all too familiar blonde.
“Astrid?”
Her pale face breaks into a giant mischievous grin, and I can feel the acid percolating in my stomach.
“Well, hello, sexy.” She shakes her chest half-heartedly as she plops in the seat next to me. She lifts a finger at the bartender. “Long Island Iced Tea.” Those glowing eyes revert back to mine. “What brings you down to this shithole? Drinking your troubles away so soon after moving to Percy?” Her shoulder brushes against mine, and my stomach sours. Astrid has been to my office on three different occasions now, all bullshit excuses to arrange for my fingers to probe around in her mouth.
The secretary confirmed she requests me personally. She even offered up a mocking laugh when she implied Astrid had something akin to a schoolgirl crush. But here we are in a bar, together. And God knows something like this can be misconstrued to mean something different. Small towns are known to talk, and I’m not in the mood for something different. I may have behaved one way with Simone, but with her I was both worn down and stupid at the same time. A toxic combination if ever there was one. But with Ree, I am straight as an arrow, not because I feel compelled by fear, but because I love my wife. She is the only woman I want to be with for the rest of my life. The only woman my heart can see. And how I wish my eyes weren’t seeing the one before me. Ree is it for me. My love story ends with her.
And the dark and bleak truth is that I wish Ree were my wife from the beginning, not Simone, never Simone. I wish that Isla and Henry were ours right along with Lilly and Jack. A horrible part of me wishes I could blip Simone out of the radar of my life as far back as that day we met. Another part of me is convinced that Isla and Henry would be here if Ree were in charge. I’m not sure why I never placed the blame on the sitter. Logic would deem so, but Simone was at the water that day with them, absorbed in her damned laptop. Ree would have saved it for later and had fun with the kids. She knows how fleeting childhood can be. She just so happened to have missed her own.
“I’m meeting up with a friend.” I’m not sure why I went with the lie. But something tells me once she finds out I have a brother, it will put Mace squarely on her very married radar.
Her tongue rims her lips as she rocks her body, bumping into me every other second. “What kind of friend?” Her shoe runs along my leg, a cheesy move if ever there was one.
“Just an old buddy. It’s nothing more than a friendly hello.” I pull my beer forward. “Just like this.”
Her affect falters, from lust to anger, zero to sixty. “Hon, you and I both know I’d like to be much more than friends.” Her teeth graze her bottom lip. Her skin is sagging around her eyes, her makeup encrusted along the edges. “Consider it an open invite anytime you’re up for trying something new.”
I swallow hard, uncertain what to do with this sober invite. It’s frightening and makes me wonder how this will be used against me. In my world, that’s how this kind of a thing works. Every disaster, real and imagined, has always fallen squarely over my shoulders.
A warm laugh rattles in my chest. “I’m quite all right. Your husband seems nice. Good man.” I point over at her as I suck down as much of my beer as I can. The quicker I can dilute reality, the better.
“He’s all right. If you’re up for that kind of thing.” Her finger traces over my thigh in the shape of an S and I snatch up her hand before she hits pay dirt. She glowers at me a moment before taking her wrist back. “An eviction notice has been circling my brain as far as he’s concerned. I’m n
ot there anymore. Not present in the marriage. There’s just something missing. The man hardly makes me feel alive.” Her eyes widen as she leans in far too close. “It takes a special man to make me feel alive, Bram. A gorgeous man like yourself with fire in his eyes, a zest for life. You make me feel emotions that I never thought possible. In fact, you have managed to garner the attention of every woman in Percy the second you showed up in town. How is that, Bram? What kind of a spell did you cast on the women of this town to make that happen?” Her fingers dig into the back of my hair, and I back up just enough until she surrenders her position.
“Fine.” She holds her palm out at me. “Have it your way, but know this. I’ve seen that wifey of yours, met her, spoke with her in depth. She won’t keep you settled for long. A man like you needs someone vivacious, someone who’s up for anything, and I’m guessing she’s not.” She gulps down her drink in record time and slams the glass onto the table. “Enjoy your missionary position life. And enjoy that beer. I suddenly realize why you need it so badly.” She takes off, and her perfume lingers in the vacuum of her wake. I can feel it fashioning a rose-scented noose and circling my neck. Astrid is trouble. If I’m not careful, she will most certainly and enthusiastically come back to bite me in the ass.
Mason shows up as if on cue and slaps me over the back as he takes her seat.
“Making friends?” he teases.
“You and I both know I’m only capable of making enemies.” And there are no truer words than that.
“You look like shit.” He sheds a quick grin. Mace and I have always been cautious regarding our happiness. After our father took off for greener marital pastures, it seemed he took the familial horseshoe with him. Neither Mace nor I have ever been able to catch a break. He’s up a divorce on me, but I’m up one dead wife.
“I was about to say the same about you. Thanks for coming out.”
Mace nods to the bartender, and two fresh beers land before us. I suck the foam off of mine before indulging in a few hearty gulps.
“Homicide detective down in Hennessy wants to speak with me.”
The whites of his eyes shoot my way. My brother has always been my older lookalike, save for his salt and pepper hair. The salt is winning. He blames me, of course, all that worrying about his baby brother. I always said my hair never bothered to turn because I was too damn afraid to worry.
I blow out a slow breath. “It’s about Loretta.”
His brows bounce. “She’s dead.” He offers an odd congratulatory nod as if everyone associated with me were somehow required to die. Some demonic feat that needed to be met. “But I already knew that.” His expression sours again. “In fact, I’m one step ahead of you.” He pulls up a picture on his phone and shoves it my way.
“Oh God,” it’s all I can muster. There I am in black and white, my hands on her shoulders, her face filled with fear. Her beautiful face.
“Yes, oh God,” he parrots without the right emotion behind it. “You are fucked, my friend. What the hell were you thinking?”
“How did you get that?” I take a moment to marvel at my brother’s stealth detective skills. In all honesty, when he set out to be a caped-crusader, I didn’t have all that much faith in him. Low self-worth has always been the great Woodley curse, and I never thought to contest it.
“Never mind how I got it. Did you kill this woman?” he hisses it out low enough, but the hair on the back of my neck curls nonetheless. This woman. I met that woman in a bar much like this one, but in Manhattan during one of the many city runs I made to escape a marriage that was wearing me down. I thought she was a friendly girl, pretty, and one thing led to a hotel room. Turns out, she liked to meet men in bars for fun and for a little cash on the side. She never charged me, which, of course, fed my ridiculous ego.
“No. I did not.” I lean in, pissed as hell. “Do not breathe those words to me ever again. I was at—”
“A dental convention,” he muses. “Do you know her little finger was removed with a surgical instrument? One, say, that a dentist might have access to?”
I shake my head at the implication.
Mace leans in, those dark caterpillar brows of his do a little dance along his forehead. “Do you remember who else had a finger missing?”
“Shit.” It’s as if someone unplugged the entire world, and the room grows strangely dim. The music grinds down to destitute levels. It’s all I can do to remain upright.
“Hey”—Mace grips me by the arm and gives a hearty shake—“do not pass out on me. Pull it together.”
I drag my eyes to meet with my brother’s. Growing up, it was always Mace who came to my rescue. It was Mace who warded off the bullies and the bad guys. After our father took off, it was Mace who was the man of the house, thereby allowing me to be the carefree kid who would eventually make enough mistakes for the both of us—for the neighborhood, hell, for the entire Western Hemisphere.
“Who’s doing this?” The words crawl out of my throat like maggots. “And why?”
“Pete, if I knew that, I wouldn’t be sitting here. I’d be tracking down the motherfucker with a machete.” The muscles in his jaw pop because he meant every word. “But I do believe somewhere in that ball of knowledge that sits on your shoulders lies the answers. Who did you infuriate?” He shakes his head, his demanding stone blue eyes heavily glued to mine.
I gulp down half my beer trying to solve the riddle of the Sphinx. “Erwin Wilson is serving a life sentence under psychiatric care for the murder of my wife.” I glance to Mace, and he shakes his head.
“Try again.”
A moment of strained silence thickens the air between us. The moment I stop believing that Erwin Wilson bludgeoned Simone in our living room all those frightening years ago is the moment I begin to unravel.
“That’s the real reason I called you here.” I rap my knuckles against the bar as if calling court to order, a foreboding irony in and of itself. “I think we need to peel back the past, one painful layer at a time.” I hold him firmly in my gaze while my heart does the death rattle on its way up my throat. Once I say the next few words, all hell is going to break loose. Who am I kidding? It already has. “Deep down, I have always questioned Erwin’s involvement with Simone’s murder.”
His eyes widen just a touch. “Forensics—”
“I don’t give a shit about forensics.” I lean in hard, glaring at this older version of myself without meaning to. “I do not care about the judicial system that put him behind bars either. Something nefarious has been eating up my existence and those around me ever since I lost Isla and Henry.” My vocal cords threaten to knot up when I say their names. My God, I don’t think I’ve so much as whispered them ever since that night I shared their names with Ree. I haven’t even spoken of them to Lilly and Jack. Ree has been the translator of all things macabre. She’s been the rock I’ve needed her to be, my mouthpiece, the binding which holds my sanity together.
Mace takes a deep breath, widening his chest to the size of a city. “You want me to reopen my investigation?”
I give a single nod. I know what shit ride it was the first time. The endless hours that were lost all dragging us in one slow, bloody circle. We ended at the same place we started, with nothing. The police arrested Erwin relatively quickly, less than twenty-four hours into their investigation. It all seemed like such a relief at the time, but in the back of my mind, it felt a little too easy, a little too convenient for my complicated life. I was still guilty in the court of public opinion.
Erwin was prosecuted quickly and shuffled off to what amounts to a detention center for the criminally insane, and that was it. One big neat judicial bow was put on the case, and I was free to go on with the rest of my life. But that nagging feeling that this was wrong, that this, whatever this is, was far from over, never quite left me. Not before Ree, not after.
I have never been able to shake the feeling that lurking in the shadows of my life was someone, something waiting to burn everything down around
me. My dead children, my dead wife were not enough. I could feel its thirst for me ramping up. And yet I wondered what more there was to give. But now there are three things, three people I would go to the ends of the earth to protect, and I will.
“This is where you come in,” I whisper as I knock my beer softly to his. “You, my brother, are going to figure out this jigsaw puzzle that something far more evil than fate has thrown at my feet. I don’t think it was a coincidence anymore that Ree found that body at the school function a few weeks back. I don’t think it was a coincidence that Loretta St. James ended up dead at the same hotel I was staying at. And I don’t want to wait until another seeming coincidence pops up in my life.”
A thought hits me, a brick wall of a revelation that I had openly overlooked up until now.
“Her finger was missing.” I blink over at my brother, stifling the urge to vomit. “The woman Ree found. The prostitute.”
Mace looks dazed as if I had thrown him. It’s not uncommon for us to berate my shitty life when we get together, but today I took it up to a whole other level. Not to mention the fact I’m dragging him right back into my personal wormhole.
“Where do I start?” He gives his beer an absentminded twirl. “I’ll see about getting in and speaking with Erwin again.”
“Good.” Something in me loosens as if our feet had finally hit terra firma again after all these years. “I’m going with you.”
“I didn’t think you’d miss it.”
“I will miss everything once they pin Loretta’s death on me. And that prostitute?” I shake my head, afraid to verbalize the obvious. “I’m not being paranoid, Mace.”
“I never said you were.” And those are the most frightening words my brother has ever spoken. “I suggest we move quickly. The clock is ticking, and the minute hand is not in your favor.”
“It never has been.” I can’t think of a single thing that has.
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