by Cassia Leo
“Rose was seventeen when she went to an ice skating rink with some friends. Same as she’d done every winter since she was eight years old. But this time, she went outside to have a smoke. A nasty habit. I kept grounding her to try to get her to stop, but she just wouldn’t listen. She was too pigheaded.” He finally looked up and met my gaze. “That was the last we saw of her until her body was discovered two months later, in a creek forty miles away.”
I clenched my jaw as I imagined how I would have felt if I’d had seventeen years with Junior before he was murdered. Or if, God forbid, it had been Laurel who had been taken away from me. I wouldn’t want to live in a world without Laurel.
“That was a knockout punch. I was down for the count. No coming back from that, I thought,” Sean continued. “So, I doubled down on how fast I could wreck my life. I was a financial crimes detective at the time, but I began sleeping in my office, poring over the case files day and night. I became obsessed.”
I lowered my gaze as his words shamed me. All the nights I’d spent sleeping on the couch in my home office instead of in the bedroom with Laurel were mirrored in Sean’s story. And somehow, I didn’t think his story had a happy ending.
“Did you find out who did it?”
Sean smiled as he shook his head. “Nope. I lost my job. Lost my marriage. Lost my house. That bastard took my daughter from me, but I willingly gave him everything else. You understand?”
I nodded in silence. For the first time in my life, I couldn’t think of a single cynical thing to say. I was only in this office because it was my last resort. I couldn’t come back to Laurel empty-handed. I’d given her every material thing she could ever want. I gave her shelter and security. I gave her my love. But I hadn’t given her my full attention.
Unfortunately, I knew myself too well to know I would not be able to focus on my marriage and work until I was certain I’d done everything I could for Junior. And, yes, even for Beth. She may have had her secrets, but I meant it when I said Junior could not have asked for a better grandmother. She deserved justice as much as my boy did.
Sean Dougherty and the software program I was working on, which I had dubbed PNW Checkmate, were my last hope. If the software helped us find Junior’s killer, I would expand the software to include all fifty states and territories. For now, I had to focus on this area, and specifically Boise. If Ava Robinson’s suspicions were correct that Beth and Junior’s murders were not random, this was surely the missing piece of the puzzle we needed to help us crack this case. Laurel and I might finally be able to turn the page on this gruesome chapter of our lives.
Sean and I chatted for more than two hours. I filled in any holes in the case file he’d received from the Hood River Police Department. I laid out my suspicions about Beth’s past, information I’d gleaned through conversations with Beth and Laurel over the years. The most interesting tidbit being the time Laurel told me her mother had left her father for a few months when she was about five years old. It wasn’t definitive evidence, but it was one brushstroke in a colorful picture of a woman who lived her life with as much verve as the flowers she so carefully nurtured.
“Whatever you do, do not—I repeat, do not attempt to approach any potential suspects or interviewees on your own. You hear me?” He glared at me with his thick eyebrows raised, awaiting my agreement.
“You have my word,” I replied, probably not as definitively as I should have.
“I’m serious, Jack. Don’t get yourself killed or arrested for this shit. It’s not worth it. Tell me you understand.”
I nodded. “I understand,” I said with a bit more vigor.
He eyed me warily. “I’ll handle all interviews. You’ve got too much at stake. Too many emotions that pose a threat here. And I’m the experienced interrogator. So this is not a request. This is an order. You hear me?”
I looked him dead in the eye. “Loud and clear.”
Chapter 6
Laurel
Our wedding album was probably the last thing I should have wanted to bring with me. Especially since I had to open one of the boxes in the spare bedroom to get it; the boxes that were mostly filled with Junior’s baby clothes and toys; the boxes that still erupted with the powdery scent of my beautiful boy every time they were opened. But the wedding album was the first thing I collected as I packed my suitcase last week.
Part of me feared Jack would destroy the wedding album in an impulsive fit of rage. A larger part of me knew I would need it over the coming weeks and months. I didn’t need it so I could spend my days looking through our wedding photos, reminiscing and wallowing in misery. I needed the wedding album to remind me what true happiness looked like.
Because the kind of happiness that came in a glass bottle was darkly alluring at times like these.
As the tinny speaker on my cellphone played “Saturn” by Sleeping At Last on repeat, I carried my glass of pinot grigio to the living room and plunked myself down on the sofa. Giggling as a splash of wine landed on the back of my hand, I quickly leaned forward and set my glass down on the coffee table. Then, I licked the sweetly crisp liquid off my skin.
Snatching the wedding album with the silver-plated cover off the table, I leaned back again, slouching drunkenly as I laid the album in my lap. I opened it to the first page and nearly vomited when I saw the first photo.
The picture was taken during the wedding reception. The sun was setting behind Mount Hood, which was off in the distance. The photographer had asked me to run toward the sunset, so he could get a shot of my wedding dress billowing out behind me as I looked back at the camera over my shoulder. But Jack got the idea that it would look much better if he were chasing me toward the sunset. Only problem was, he didn’t tell me he was going to chase me.
As I ran barefoot across the grass, which was warmed by the summer sun, I glanced back over my shoulder and screamed when I saw Jack racing toward me. He caught up to me easily and the photographer took about a hundred pictures of us laughing hysterically as he came up behind me, lifted me off the ground, and twirled me around like we were in a damn perfume commercial.
I turned to the next page in the album and now the photos started at the beginning of the day and went chronologically. The first picture was my mother crying as she watched my hairstylist doing my hair. I had asked the stylist to create an updo that would come undone by simply tugging on a ribbon. I didn’t want a ton of hairspray and hair pins holding everything together. I had a very specific fantasy of my wedding night in mind, where I pulled the ribbon out of my hair and it tumbled seductively over my shoulders. The whole day, I worried that when the time came, the ribbon would get stuck and totally ruin the mood.
What I wouldn’t give to have those kinds of worries now.
I stared at my mother’s image in the photo and began mentally bargaining with the universe.
If I close my eyes for five seconds, when I open them my mom will be standing in front of me.
If I close the wedding album and don’t look at it for a week, my mom will walk through that front door.
If I tear this wedding album to shreds, then none of it will have happened, and my mother will still be alive.
I slammed the album shut and let it fall onto the wood floor as I buried my numb face in my hands. My sobs were guttural, wretched pleas to God and the universe for mercy.
Please, I begged, I’ll do anything. Just let my mom walk through that door. Please.
The sound of the latch clicking made my stomach clench as I held my breath. Every muscle in my body hummed with nervous energy as I watched the front door swing open. I let out a loud, miserable groan of disappointment as Dylan stepped over the threshold.
He appeared almost frightened by the mess he’d found. “What is going on in here?” he said, glancing at the two wine bottles on the coffee table, one empty and one half-empty. “Laurel, are you okay?”
I shook my head as I curled up in a ball in the corner of the sofa, trying to make myself as small on t
he outside as I felt inside.
“Sweet baby Jesus,” he said striding toward me and taking a seat on the cushion next to me. “You look like you’ve either had too much wine or not enough. But judging by those two bottles there, I’m guessing too much. Is that…?” He gasped as he reached for the wedding album I’d dropped on the floor, carefully closing it as he set it down on the table. “I told you to stop looking at this thing. Laurel, you need to stop torturing yourself. Have you eaten?”
I stared into his brown eyes through his stylish black-rimmed glasses and nodded.
He cocked an eyebrow. “Wine doesn’t count. Have you eaten any solid food today?”
I hugged my knees to my chest and shook my head.
He sighed. “Get dressed. I’m going to take you to get something to eat.”
“But you don’t have a car.”
“But I have a five-star passenger rating on Uber.”
I smiled despite myself. “I’d rather eat in.”
He shrugged. “Okay, I’ll order something. What do you want? Pizza, Indian, Chinese, Mexican, Thai?”
I drew in a long, stuttered breath. “Can we just have, like, a salad or something?”
“Of course,” Dylan replied cheerily as he pulled his phone out of the front pocket of his jeans.
Inside, I died a little. If Jack were here, he would have understood and acknowledged my Nacho Libre salad reference. I wanted to close my eyes and fall into a permanent sleep where I at least had a small chance of seeing Jack in my dreams.
When Dylan was finished ordering our food on the Postmates app on his phone, he stared at me for a long time, seemingly lost in thought.
“How’s the new job?” I asked to break the silence.
He smiled. “It’s actually pretty fun,” he replied, sitting back. “I didn’t think I would know the first thing about marketing beer, but it turns out it’s not rocket science. I work with an amazing team and I just met Houston’s wife the other day. She’s gorgeous.”
“Houston is the guy who owns the brewery, right?”
“Yeah, actually…” He cocked an eyebrow as he stared at me for a long while. “You know, I overheard him talking to the marketing director yesterday, and they were talking about creating some fun apps to promote the brand. Don’t you have a degree in computer science or something like that?”
I waved off Dylan’s suggestion. But when our salads arrived on our doorstep, I eagerly ate mine as I turned the idea over in my mind. What kind of app would a brewery need? Then, it dawned on me. I could write a drinking game app.
I was pleasantly surprised when Dylan’s gorgeous face lit up at the mention of this idea. I was even more surprised when he offered to help me come up with some cool drinking games. We decided to engage in a brainstorming session with a little experimentation.
It was a few minutes past eight p.m. as Dylan helped me collect the wine glasses and coffee mugs we’d been using to play wine pong — due to a serious lack of beer. As I stood from the kitchen table, the room began to spin around me.
“Oh, my God. I’m gonna be sick. Swim away!” I managed to shout as I raced to the kitchen sink, where I vomited a greenish-beige stream of wine and half-digested salad into the porcelain basin.
Dylan jumped back, to avoid the splash zone, then he cackled with laughter. “Make sure to put a warning on your app,” he said, setting the glasses and mugs on the counter. “Consuming too much alcohol may cause extreme party foul.”
I spit a few stray bits of lettuce out of my mouth as I turned on the tap. “Please drink responsibly,” I muttered before I splashed water into my mouth and swished it around to rinse away the sour ribbons of vomit slithering over my numb tongue.
Dylan laughed as I flashed him a lazy grin. “You are just so gorgeous, even when you’re shit-faced and smiling at me with half-chewed lettuce on your teeth.”
I laughed as I cupped my hands under the running tap again to catch more water. Slurping it down, I spit it out almost immediately when the sound of Dylan’s drunk laughter evoked a fit of uncontrollable giggling. It took a few more attempts, but I finally rinsed away as much leafy detritus as I could before I attempted to navigate through the maze of hallways toward the downstairs bathroom. I swished some aggressively minty mouthwash, knowing there was no way I could make it upstairs to get my toothbrush.
When I returned to the living room, Dylan was facedown on the sofa, his glasses askew as he snored softly. There went my plan to collapse onto the couch. I would have to climb up the stairs after all. But as I made my way toward the bottom of the steps, I spotted a fluorescent pink Post-It note affixed to the banister. The four words on the note were written in my sober handwriting.
TAKE OUT THE TRASH
My eyes widened as I realized I hadn’t taken the bin out to the curb yet. Due to my recent aversion to all things domestic, including cooking, the bin was full to the brim with takeout containers. If I didn’t take it out, it would be overflowing in a few days. Then, I’d have to deal with the trash pandas spewing garbage all over my backyard.
I giggled as I imagined those cute little raccoons with their grabby little fingers picking through my half-eaten salad.
Shaking my head, I resolved to do this one task before I went to bed. As drunk as I was, I could definitely navigate my way to the backyard and lug my bin to the curb. Taking out the trash wasn’t rocket surgery.
A few minutes later, I mentally patted myself on the back as I lined up the gray bin with the edge of the curb in front of the house. But as I turned around to head back inside, I twisted my ankle and fell flat on the sidewalk. In my drunken state, I had managed to at least hold my hands out to break my fall. But the heels of my palms had not faired well.
As I turned onto my side on the cold pavement, I watched tiny droplets of blood bubble up on my scraped skin and I couldn’t help it, I laughed. Hysterically. I laughed because I couldn’t feel even a smidgen of pain from the fall, but I knew I would feel it in the morning. I laughed because I was lying on the pavement in front of my house and there was no one around to help me up. I laughed because I was seriously considering just falling asleep right there.
I managed to catch my breath and perform the Herculean task of pushing myself up onto my knees, so I could use the garden gate to pull myself upright. As I clutched the iron fence and carefully stood up, a flicker of movement caught my eye. Turning my attention toward Isaac’s house, I saw his father standing on the porch, watching me. In my drunken mind, I couldn’t tell if he was deciding whether to help me or if he was utterly disappointed.
I waved clumsily. “Good evening, Mr. Evans!” I called out as my other hand fumbled with the latch on the garden gate.
He didn’t respond. He watched as I struggled to figure out how to flip open the latch and push the gate open. As I walked down the pathway toward the front porch, I flinched when I heard the gate slam shut behind me with a loud clank.
“Sorry,” I whispered in Mr. Evans direction.
My head pounded an incessant beat against my skull as I realized my front door was locked. I tried to be as quiet as possible as I made my way to the backyard, entered through the back door, and made the conscious decision to not attempt to lock up the house. I needed to get upstairs as quickly as I could, so I could vomit again, away from Mr. Evans’ judging eyes.
After vomiting a small mouthful of bitter bile in the upstairs toilet, I splashed water on my face and stared at my reflection in the mirror. I cried as I wielded my toothbrush and awkwardly attempted to brush my teeth without further activating my gag reflex. Then, I reached into the back pocket of my skinny jeans and sighed with relief as I found my phone.
Collapsing onto the bed in my mom’s old bedroom, I hugged her pillow against my chest as I curled up into a ball and dialed Jack’s number. It rang four times before the voicemail came on and my heart sank at the sound of a young woman’s voice.
Thank you for calling Halo. You’ve reached the desk of Jade Insley, executi
ve assistant to Jack Stratton. You’ve reached this number after hours. Please leave a detailed message or call back between the hours of nine a.m. and six p.m. If you’re attempting to reach Mr. Stratton, please be aware that he is out of town and is currently unreachable. Please leave a message and it will be relayed as soon as possible. Thank you!
“Jack? I… I’m so alone. I lie here every night, hugging my pillow. Oh, God. I’m so drunk. I… I hug my pillow and stare at our wedding photos and wish I had done everything differently. I know I hurt you, but…”
I pulled the phone away from my mouth before I confessed every depressing thought in my head to Jack’s assistant. In fact, I had to delete this message.
I pressed the pound sign to call up the menu where I could append the message or erase it. But as soon as I tapped it, I heard a beep followed by a horrifying automated voice.
Thank you for your message. Goodbye.
Chapter 7
Jack
Jade sounded tired. In the four years I’d worked with her, Jade had never sounded tired.
I didn’t get personal with my coworkers. It was a rule I had. Personal relationships at work only muddied the waters when someone needed to be reprimanded or promoted. Which was why I often turned down invitations to go golfing and drinking with Kent and the other partners.
All I knew about my lavender-haired assistant was she had a boyfriend with more artificial than natural holes in his head. I didn’t question Jade’s attraction to facial piercings. Her personal life was none of my business. But that didn’t mean I could ignore when something was different about her.
People don’t usually change who they are overnight. When that happens, it’s usually a change that was forced upon them. Like how Laurel and I changed after our son was killed. As much as I wanted to keep my relationship with Jade strictly professional, I couldn’t help but worry that someone or something may have forced this change in her.