It felt like my heart was in a vise, squeezing slowly, painfully. My God. What this woman had endured. What she’d survived. I wasn’t a father—had no personal knowledge of that particular bond from the point of view of a parent—and yet I could hardly fathom how she was still standing. I pulled her closer, breathing in the warm, sweet scent of her, wanting to do anything to minimize the pain reliving that memory must be causing her.
“When?” I finally managed to ask.
She pulled in a shaky breath. “Three years ago.” I’d bet anything that she knew how many months, days, and hours came after that simplified answer, but I didn’t ask.
I’d known there was something more going on the second she came bursting into the barn, her eyes filled with such raw agony, it had stunned me. And then the way she’d sobbed into Mona Lisa’s neck when we’d found her baby . . . Fuck. I’d never forget the sight of her body wracked with grief as the rain pummeled the earth all around her. It’d branded me in some way I couldn’t even put into words.
“Did they catch him?” I held my breath as I waited for her answer.
“Yes.”
My breath rushed out on an exhale of relief. At least, at the very least, she didn’t have to fear that her personal monster was still out there somewhere.
“Is he in prison?”
She pulled back slightly, looking up at me. Her face was bathed in firelight, her eyes wide with sorrow, but also with . . . strength. I felt humbled to be in her presence, and so deeply ashamed as well. I’d thought I was the victim and she was my adversary when I first met her. What an idiot I’d been. When did I become that man? When had I become so used to game playing—manipulation—that I’d never imagined her intentions were based solely on kindness, on her own terrible understanding of what loss could do to a person, and nothing more?
“He resisted arrest and was killed.”
“Good,” I said, not intending for the word to come out with quite as much rage. “Did they establish a motive? Anything?”
“No. He was a drifter. He’d been in and out of prison, had drugs in his system. They said it was random.” She shook her head. “Just a random crime.”
The way she said it made my heart squeeze. Just? Had the police explained it to her that way? So . . . matter-of-factly? Maybe the murderer hadn’t picked them based on anything other than the geography of their house, or the privacy of the back entrance, something of that nature. But Belle’s family was dead and to explain it that way felt criminal somehow. How could your whole life implode based on something random?
I moved a piece of hair back, tucking it behind her ear. “I’m so sorry, Belle.” I cupped her cheek in my hand and she leaned into it. “So sorry. What you lost . . . it’s unimaginable.”
She breathed out a shaky breath, but lifted her head. “The truth is, my husband and I hadn’t had a great marriage.” Her lips trembled as she smiled sadly. “It took me a long time to say that afterward, even to myself. I knew it beforehand, but to think about it later felt . . . I don’t know, sort of like I was betraying him somehow.” Her grip on the material at her throat had loosened and I noticed her fingers move under the fabric, wrapping around the chain of her necklace. “I mourned him. I did.” She fell silent for a moment and I waited for her to gather her thoughts. “I was so young when I married him. He worked at a bank in town and my father took me with him to do business one day. I saw him and . . .” She shrugged, her smile sweet but sad. “He was just beginning his own investment company and he’d visit my community. I had so many stars in my eyes. So many dreams. And he promised to make them all come true. He swept me off my feet, and when I discovered I was pregnant, he suggested we get married and run away together. He would start again, he said, for me. And I thought it was the only way. I couldn’t bear the thought of feeling like an outcast every day of my life—of my child feeling like an outcast too, or worse, a mistake. We’d start fresh, somewhere new. I’d learn about the world, about motherhood, about love . . .”
“It didn’t work out that way?”
She stared at her lap for a moment. “No. It was okay at first. There were so many new things to see and explore. We didn’t move far, just a couple of hours away. And I was fascinated by the world outside the community I’d lived in all my life. But Ethan, he . . . changed.” She frowned, looking sad, alone. “He became distant, dissatisfied with everything I did. After Elise was born, he started staying out all night, telling me he was working late. I suspected he was cheating, but by that point, I almost didn’t care. He didn’t love me, but . . . I didn’t love him anymore either.”
“I’m sorry about that too, Belle.” Something about what she’d said—about feeling as if she was betraying her husband to think of him in negative terms—poked at an old bruise deep inside. Something I’d think about later, but not now when the woman in front of me was baring her vulnerable, scarred heart.
She played idly with the necklace between her breasts, something she’d been doing since we’d begun talking about her husband. “Did he give you that?” I asked, nodding toward where her index finger wrapped around the delicate silver chain.
She glanced down as if she hadn’t even realized what she was doing and frowned. “No. This key, it was in the pocket of the coat he’d been wearing the day he died.” She stared off behind me for a moment. “I carried so much guilt where my husband was concerned—not just to admit the truth about how I’d come to feel about him, but for the fact that the crippling grief I experienced wasn’t for him, but for my daughter.” She gave her head a small shake, looking at where her fingers held the chain, rubbing it between her thumb and index finger. “I found this key afterward and for a long time, I just carried it with me in my pocket. It felt . . . I don’t know . . . like a sort of tribute to him. Penance. A way to keep him with me, even when my mind and my heart were somewhere else. It assuaged my guilt so I could focus on my grief in the way I needed to. Later I bought a chain and started wearing it around my neck and I suppose it became habit to put it on each morning. I always wear it.” She gave a small laugh. “I suppose that doesn’t make much sense.”
“It makes sense to me. Do you know what the key is for?”
“No. It’s probably nothing very important. Just some random key he had in his pocket.”
I nodded. I guessed we all had odd keys lying around here and there. I had one in my gym bag that went to my locker at the gym . . . there was one in a kitchen drawer that went to the storage space assigned to me in the basement of my building. “It was more about the symbol than its use. I get it, Belle.”
I looked to the key, the metal glinting in the firelight. There was a small logo of some sort almost completely faded away on the top and I picked it back up between my fingers, bringing it closer to my eyes, familiarity niggling at my mind.
“You know what this looks like?”
“Two horses? I never could figure out what that might be—a club of some sort maybe? A racetrack?”
I shook my head. “This looks like the logo of a storage facility off Legendary Run. I used to t
hink the sign made it look like some fancy place when I was a kid and we’d drive by it, but then it was really just a big lot of silver sheds.” I looked closer. “Might not be it, but it reminded me of that just now.”
I watched her for a second as she looked at the key, her eyes lingering on it for a second and then letting go of it. “Do you still hurt all the time, Belle?” How could she not?
Her lips trembled into a small, beautiful smile. “I’m usually okay, you know? I didn’t think it would, but the pain has dulled over time. I’ve never talked about any of this . . . and maybe I needed to. No, I . . . I definitely needed to. Thank you for”—her eyes shifted to the side for a second and she bit at her lip—“being here. Thank you for everything tonight.”