Читать книгу: «Before Cain Strikes», страница 2

2

“And that’s my point, Esme,” said Rafe Stuart. “That’s what I’ve been getting at all this time. You’re knowingly and willfully killing our family.”

Before Esme could respond, Dr. Rosen—a teensy, wrinkly pink woman in a green corduroy dress—cleared her throat repeatedly and yanked on her left earlobe. Dr. Rosen did this often. She claimed it was a combination of congestion caused by seasonal allergies and, well, being seventy-eight years old. Nevertheless, as a marriage counselor, she had come highly recommended.

Esme patiently waited until Dr. Rosen’s fit passed, all the while wanting to give the bite-size old woman something, anything, to ease her discomfort. But Esme had quickly learned during their first session so many weeks ago, when Dr. Rosen had vehemently pushed away an offered blister pack of Sudafed, that any assistance offered in this office was strictly one-way. This office, part of a three-story walk-up in downtown Syosset, twenty minutes from their home in Oyster Bay. Their home, which Esme was apparently, knowingly and willfully killing by, what, serving as a consultant for the FBI?

“Bullshit,” Esme answered.

Dr. Rosen leaned forward in her black leather chair, which, given her diminutive size, nearly swallowed her whole. “I think that statement calls for elaboration, Esme.”

Esme looked to her husband, who sat at the other end of the long divan. His arms were crossed. His jaw was clenched. If she’d had to paint a portrait of Rafe in the months since all this had begun, it would have to include this: arms crossed, jaw clenched. She supposed it was a posture of defense, but that implied she was the assailant here, and she wasn’t, was she? There were no villains in this circumstance, right?

“What I mean to say,” she added, after a calming hesitation, “is that, well, to call what I’m doing intentionally hurtful? That I would want to bring conflict into our household?”

“You brought Galileo into our household.”

And there it was. The elephant in the room. He didn’t resent her for going back to work. He wasn’t that prehistoric. He resented her because of Henry Booth, a crazed sniper who called himself Galileo and eluded national authorities until Special Agent Tom Piper, who Rafe hated, brought Esme out of her early retirement to help track him down. But at what cost? Time on the case had meant time away from home, away from Rafe, away from their six-year-old daughter, Sophie. In the end, in a bit of caustic irony, Booth invaded Esme’s home and took Rafe and Sophie captive. A bit of last-minute ingenuity ended Booth’s menace, but her husband and daughter had come so close to becoming casualties.

These were her sins.

And yet—

“Should we move to Iceland?” she asked.

Rafe raised an eyebrow. “Iceland?”

“I mean, it’s really just one city and the temperature does tend to drop into the negatives six months out of the year, but they’ve got practically no crime rate, so we should move to Iceland. We’ll have to take Sophie out of school, of course, and away from her friends, but she’ll be safer. In fact, why doesn’t everyone move to Iceland?”

“Esme…”

“Or Yemen. The crime rate in Yemen is, if you can believe it, even lower than in Iceland! There’s the whole Sunni thing, but I think I’d look good in a burka, don’t you, Rafe?”

“There’s a difference between overreacting and performing common due diligence.”

“I am performing due diligence! Do you know how many lives the FBI has saved in the six months—six months!—since I rejoined as a consultant? Do you, Dr. Rosen? No, you don’t, because if we do our job correctly, it doesn’t make the headlines. Balancing all of this hasn’t been easy, but it’s been necessary. It’s been the right thing to do. And you talk to me about due diligence. I love my family, and for you to even suggest otherwise, Rafe, makes me want to fucking clock you upside the head.”

“Okay,” interjected Dr. Rosen. “And that’s our hour for this week.”

She scooted out of her chair and held out her arms. Every session ended with a hug to each of them, and then the requisite hug between husband and wife. Dr. Rosen was a big fan of rituals. Esme and Rafe eyeballed each other. Who would stand first? It was an unspoken game of chicken that they played. But after the past five minutes, Esme was not in the mood for games.

She stood, and left Rafe in her shadow as she embraced their tiny therapist, carefully patting her potato-chip bones. By the time Esme stepped aside, Rafe was on his feet, and it was his turn. His black beard, shaggier than usual, brushed against the top of Dr. Rosen’s white scalp.

And then it was their turn.

So they wrapped their arms around each other and squeezed. It was awkward and emotionless and lasted all of three seconds. Then they turned to Dr. Rosen. Did they have her permission to leave?

Dr. Rosen sighed, sounding very much like a deflating balloon. “My mother, may she rest in peace, always taught me to be frugal. ‘Never waste,’ she said. She was a good woman.”

Rafe and Esme exchanged a confused glance.

“She raised two daughters, myself and my sister, Betty. She raised us all by herself, and in a community where women just didn’t raise two daughters alone. Our mother’s solution to every problem was always the same—preemption. Keep the problem from happening in the first place. Frugal, you see, even when it came to making mistakes.”

“Um?” said Rafe.

But Dr. Rosen continued unabated. “Betty and I developed different ideas about problem solving. Neither of us had the foresight of our mother, so our methods were more reactive. I came to believe that the best solutions were reached through compromise. Betty, on the other hand, has more of a, shall we say, scorched-earth philosophy. So I became a marriage counselor and what did Betty choose to become?”

“A lawyer,” Esme whispered. “She handles divorces.”

Sometimes she did not enjoy her gift for riddles.

“That’s right.” Dr. Rosen smiled. “Very good. And so here we are.”

Rafe raised an eyebrow. “What are you getting at?”

“She thinks we went to the wrong Rosen sister,” replied Esme. “Don’t you?”

Dr. Rosen shrugged her itty-bitty shoulders.

“So, wait, you’re giving up on us?”

“You tell me, Rafe. Why should I invest my time and energy when you and your wife are unwilling to invest yours?”

“Because we’re paying you!”

“How can I with a clear conscience continue to accept your money when I know it’s just being thrown away?”

“Is that how you feel?” asked Esme, her voice still mouselike. “We have no hope?”

Again, Dr. Rosen shrugged.

‘This is bullshit,” Rafe grumbled.

“So prove me wrong,” replied the doctor. “I’ll give you two weeks. Today is Wednesday, November 10. Come back here on Wednesday, November 24, and show me that I am wrong and I will gladly offer an apology. And if I’m right, I’ll put you in touch with my sister and that will be that.”

“You’re giving us an ultimatum.”

“I’m doing you a favor. Two weeks, boys and girls. Good luck. And drive home safe. It’s supposed to drop below freezing tonight.”

They drove home, predictably, in silence. Dr. Rosen had been right: the weather had taken a turn for the chilly. Rafe kept an eye out for black ice. This helped to keep his mind distracted. Esme had no such luck. The dying trees they passed on the highway offered little respite from her dark, dark thoughts.

Eight years of marriage. Love, a family, a life.

A beautiful child.

Esme knew they were having trouble, but were they really that close to the edge? Could six months put an end to eight years? The math alone didn’t make sense, but very little of this did. Why couldn’t Rafe just be supportive? She stood by him through his dissertation defense, his job search, his battle for tenure. She had never asked him to scale down his responsibilities. She would never have asked him to give up on his passions.

There he sat, less than an arm’s length away. Had he looked at her once since they left the therapist’s office? What was he thinking? She could ask him, but she already knew his answer would be “Nothing,” and that would be that.

Despite it all, she still loved him.

His lenses on his glasses were dirty. He rarely cleaned them himself, not out of laziness but plain apathy. How could he see out of them? She wanted to reach for his glasses case, take out that cheap piece of microfiber cloth that came with it and wipe his lenses clean right now, while he was driving. Six months ago, she would have. He would have protested and then he would have pretended to be blind and he would have forced her to take the wheel and it would have been fun.

Only six months ago.

They drove home in silence and pulled into their affluent neighborhood. The digital clock on the Prius’s dash read 9:22 p.m. Sophie should be in bed by now. During the Galileo incident, Rafe’s ornery father, Lester, had come down from upstate to help out and, well, never left. On one hand, this meant they had a babysitter whenever she and Rafe wanted some alone time. On the other hand, this meant that every day she had to put up with the old man’s judgmental mutterings. He did not like her, had never liked her, and made no apologies for it.

As they neared the driveway of their two-story colonial, they could tell something was wrong. There was a car already in the driveway, not Lester’s old Cadillac, which was in the shop, but a fat, immaculate white Studebaker. It was blocking Rafe’s spot in the garage. There were lights on in the house, but the curtains were drawn.

“Are we expecting guests?” asked Esme.

Rafe shook his head and pulled alongside the Studebaker.

They had a gun in their bedroom, locked in the bottom drawer of Esme’s night table. But Esme shuffled that overreaction to the back of the line and got out of the car. They were safe here in Oyster Bay. Yes, their home had been violated once before, but that had been a special case. To panic only gave credence to her absurd suggestion about Iceland. She looked over at Rafe.

He remained in the car.

“It’s okay,” she told him.

“You don’t know that,” he replied.

This wasn’t cowardice. This was textbook post-traumatic stress disorder. Henry Booth had almost killed him. She wanted to reach back into the car and give her husband a real hug, a protective hug, a hug to keep away all the demons. But she couldn’t.

Instead, she walked toward the front door.

Who would be visiting them at nine-thirty on a Wednesday night? There was a Florida license plate on the back of the Studebaker, so whoever it was had driven a long way. And nobody traveled one thousand miles for a surprise visit, not even one of Lester’s old buddies.

Esme reconsidered her overreaction.

She glanced back at the Prius. Rafe remained paralyzed. He probably wanted to move. He probably was willing his muscles to move. But they weren’t responding. Esme assumed he was thinking about Sophie, about his father, inside the house, possibly in danger, about her perhaps even, unarmed, her hand now on the doorknob. But still, his hands remained on the steering wheel and his legs didn’t budge an inch. No, she wasn’t upset with him. She pitied him. The cold air misted the breath in front of her lips, and through the dissipating mist, she turned the unlocked doorknob and opened the front door.

There was a stranger in the den. He had a glass of wine in his hand. His head looked like a penis. It was bald, ruddy, oblong, and protruded from a brown turtleneck sweater that looked scratchy and lint-infested. He was a large man, easily six-four, and had the gut of a beer keg.

“Grover Kirk,” said the stranger, by way of introduction. He reached out a sweaty-looking hand. “I’ve left you several messages.”

Grover Kirk?

“I’m writing that book about the Galileo murders. I’ve been trying to get an interview with you and your family.”

Ah, yes. Grover Kirk. Esme glanced again above his shoulders. Definitely a dickhead.

“Mr. Kirk, who invited you into my house?”

“Your father-in-law. Lovely fellow. Relayed to me some terrific anecdotes. He’s in the bathroom at the moment. I’m afraid he might have had a bit too much red wine. I brought up a bottle from my vineyard in central Florida. Would you like some?”

He reached for a half-empty bottle on the coffee table. The bottle had stained a purple ring on the cover of one of Esme’s Sudoku books.

She knew forty-four ways of rendering him unconscious in five seconds.

“Mr. Kirk,” she said, “if you’ll recall, I did respond to your first phone message. I told you that I wasn’t interested in participating. I told you that my family wasn’t interested in participating.”

“Your father-in-law seemed very interested.” He offered her the bottle. “How was marriage counseling?”

The front door opened. It was Rafe. Finally.

“I… Who’s this?”

Grover again reached out with his hand and introduced himself.

“He’s the one who’s writing that book about Henry Booth.”

“And all associated with what he did,” added Grover. “My book would be incomplete without long passages about you and your wife. Just to be here, in this house, where it all went down, is an honor.”

Esme gritted her teeth. “He wasn’t Elvis Presley, Mr. Kirk. He was a psychopath and this family is trying to put all of that behind us.”

“You can’t escape the past, Mrs. Stuart. Surely you of all people know that.”

She wanted to ask him what he meant, but she really, really wanted to clock him upside the head, and had taken a step forward when they all heard the downstairs toilet flush. There was nothing like that sound to eliminate the tension in a room.

“Leave,” muttered Rafe. “Now.”

Grover looked to him, then back to Esme, then finally to his bottle.

“All right,” he said. “I know when to call it a night. My card’s on the table. I’ll be staying at the Days Inn over in Hicksville. Give my regards to your father-in-law. Lovely fellow.”

He waited for them to move out of his way.

They moved out of the way.

“Be seeing you,” he said, and winked, and left.

Rafe locked the door.

“What an ass,” he said.

“I liked him,” replied Lester, shuffling into the room. “Wait…where’s the bottle of wine he brought?”

“He took it with him.”

Lester frowned. “Took it with him? What an ass.”

His reason for socializing gone, the old man continued on his way to his room. Esme counted the seconds until she heard his door slam shut.

Then she turned to her husband. He hadn’t moved far from the door.

“Are you okay?” she asked him.

“I…”

She reached out to him.

But once again: an interruption. This time it was Rafe’s cell phone, vibrating in his pants pocket.

“If it’s a Florida area code,” said Esme, “don’t answer it.”

Rafe examined the screen. “Five-one-eight.”

“Upstate?” asked Esme.

Rafe nodded and pressed Talk. “Hello?”

Esme watched him as he listened. His parents, Lester and Eunice, had raised him in upstate New York. It was only luck that Rafe chose a graduate school in Washington, D.C. Otherwise, they would never have met.

Eight years.

“Who is it?” Esme whispered.

Rafe put up a hand to silence her. His face had gone pale. Whatever he was hearing was not good news.

She had accompanied him a few times to his old house. His childhood in upper-middle-class suburbia had been very different from hers on the streets of Boston. But opposites attracted, right?

Rafe spoke a bit to the person on the other line, thanked them and then hung up the phone. He looked even more rattled than he had in the car.

“Rafe, what is it?”

“Do you…remember that girl you met at my reunion…the one I took to the prom?”

Esme vaguely recalled the woman in question. She was a sales rep for a vacuum cleaner company. A bit heavy-set. Very pretty blue eyes.

“Lynette something, right?”

“Yes. Lynette Robinson. She… Anyway, that was my cousin Randy…on the phone. The police…they just identified the…remains of…Lynette’s body…in the basement of a torched house.”

3

The funeral was done in black and white.

The black, of course, was provided by the mourners. More than a hundred people came out to pay their respects. Half of them didn’t even know the deceased, but had read about the tragedy in the Sullivan County Democrat. The national press was there, too, at the outskirts of the cemetery, and even they had the good sense to wear dark colors.

The priest wore black, naturally. The grave diggers, who stood a few feet from the crowd, wore long black coats. When the time was right, they would operate the pulleys, which were painted brown to camouflage with the sod, and lower the coffin into the four-by-eight-by-three hole they’d shoveled this morning.

The weather provided the white, covering the soil and the grass and the hundreds of gravestones scattered about the cemetery. Almost an inch of pale accumulation lay fixed above the cold earth, with more to come.

Even snowflakes were eager to attend Lynette Robinson’s funeral.

As the priest, a youthful redheaded tenor, recited scripture, Esme’s mind wandered (as it was wont to do when in the presence of recited scripture). She thought back over the past two days, from Grover Kirk (who had had the audacity to phone her Thursday morning) to Lester’s long list of supplies he wanted them to get while upstate. She and Rafe had arrived at his old house in the early evening. Immediately, they opened all the windows to air out all the dust and mildew off forty-year-old linen upholstery. Lester had kept the kitchen faucet dripping so as to prevent his pipes from freezing, but Rafe descended into the cellar nonetheless to double-check.

Esme phoned Oyster Bay.

“Hello,” grumbled Lester on the other end. “Hi, Lester.”

After exchanging hollow pleasantries, Esme asked if he could put Sophie on the line. And she waited. A breeze wafted in through one of the open windows in the bedroom and tickled at the back of Esme’s neck.

Then, finally: “Hi, Mom!”

“Hey, baby. How was school?”

“Zack Portnoy wet his pants. There was a big puddle under his chair. The janitor had to come and clean it up and everything. It was gross.”

Esme grimaced. “I’m sure it was, sweetie. Did you learn anything today in class?”

“To clean up pee, you need to use ammonia.”

“Did you learn anything else?”

Silence.

“Sophie?”

“I’m thinking, I’m thinking! Oh, yeah—Mrs. Morrow wanted me to remind you that you’re shap…shap…uh…”

“Chaperoning?”

“For the science museum trip on Monday.”

“Are you excited to go see the science museum?”

“Uh-huh. Will I get to touch the electricity in the crystal ball?”

“That’s up to Mrs. Morrow. She might have a lot of activities planned.”

“Okay. Oh, Grandpa Les bought Chinese tonight and I bet him that I could put a whole egg roll in my mouth and I did.”

“Sweetie, that’s not a good idea,” said Esme, caught between a giggle and a groan. “You could have choked.”

“Nuh-uh, I had water and also, if I choked, I would just put my arms up and I’d be all better.”

Rafe stepped into the room, a pair of his father’s worn workman’s gloves in his left hand.

“Just promise me not to do it again, all right, Sophie?”

She’d said their daughter’s name to let Rafe know who she was talking to.

Rafe indicated, a little vehemently, that he wanted to talk to her, too.

“Okay, Sophie. I’m going to put Daddy on. I love you.”

“I love you, too, Mommy.”

As the priest genuflected and stepped away from the podium, Esme’s thoughts returned to the present, and the funeral, and all around her, amid the light snow, a concerto of sobs. She glanced over at her husband. Like many there, he wore dark sunglasses. They’d stopped at a Walgreens on the way to the service to pick them up and had run into Rafe’s cousin Randy, from the ne’er-do-well branch of the Stuart family tree. Randy walked with a cane—not to support any actual injury but to support his claim for disability. He used to work at the Pepsi factory on the outskirts of the city and a case had fallen near his foot, and near his foot became on his foot and there it was. At Walgreens he bought a pair of knock-off Ray-Bans and walked off with a box of M&M’s.

It was Randy who’d called Rafe and Esme about Lynette. Randy was drinking buddies with one of the deputies in the county sheriff’s office, and rumor, when lubricated with cheap Scotch, traveled easy and fast. Randy had never personally known Lynette, but he was there at the funeral nonetheless, standing a few feet behind Esme and Rafe. He would be at the reception, too, with his cane, and would probably attempt to parlay his “disability” and his “grief” into a one-night stand.

The two grave diggers winched the coffin into the ground. Lynette’s immediate family was seated up front—both parents, two pairs of grandparents, three brothers and a sister. They had the best view. Not for the first time, Esme longed (in the event of her untimely death) to be cremated.

The coffin reached its resting place four feet below topsoil. This cued the crowd of mourners to slowly, quietly disperse. Esme followed Rafe back to his Prius. A thin coat of snow outlined the carlike shapes in the cemetery parking lot. Were it not for the chirp of Rafe’s electronic fob, they might have had to go door to door.

Once inside, Rafe powered up the seat warmers. Esme loved the seat warmers. Esme believed that every chair, couch and bench needed a seat warmer. They idled in the parking lot for several minutes while the windows defrosted the snow. In the rearview they could see the bottleneck of vehicles fighting to be the first to leave. Esme looked away from the mirror and clicked on the radio.

Rafe clicked it off.

“Have a little respect,” he said.

So Esme respectfully sat there in silence as the hybrid’s engine idled and the heat breathed out of the dashboard vents and the melting snow drooled down her window. Only once the parking lot had emptied did Rafe shift into Reverse.

The GPS navigated them to Lynette’s parents’ cottage, located at the end of a lower-middle-class cul-de-sac just outside the Monticello town square. The street was cramped with cars, so Rafe had to back up and park by the county courthouse. By the time they got out of their car, the flurries had thickened in a snowstorm. If they’d had the radio on, mused Esme, maybe they could have found out how many inches were forecasted. In the meantime, it was trudge-trudge-trudge and hope-hope-hope.

Esme wanted to be more sympathetic. She really did. Her sense of detachment didn’t have anything to do with the fact that Rafe went to the senior prom with this girl. Lynette had seemed pleasant enough, and what had happened to her was a horror. But ever since that session with Dr. Rosen, ever since she’d pronounced her ultimatum, Esme had felt as if she were a dispassionate spirit, floating outside of her body. The only moment in the past two days she’d felt anything close to actual emotion was that confrontation with Grover Kirk.

In other words, when it had to do with Galileo.

Had she become an adrenaline junkie? When she had been full-time with the FBI, she’d known her share of those. The type who only smiled under duress. The type who sought out increasing scenarios of danger (whether picking fights in a D.C. bar or parasailing in South America). The type who, whenever their heart rate dropped below the speed of a Keith Moon drum solo, became inordinately depressed. But, no, that wasn’t her…was it?

As expected, the Robinson house was wall-to-wall with the same black-clad guests as the cemetery. Lynette’s immediate family was among the last to arrive; the media had dogged them the moment they stepped off the holy ground of the cemetery. Fortunately, some neighbors had volunteered to stay at the house during the service and set everything up. A few faces looked vaguely familiar to Esme, but she was hard-pressed to put a name to any of them.

Many people knew Rafe. They shook his hand, patted him on the back, told him how glad they were to see him, asked how his father was doing. Each time, Rafe dutifully introduced (or reintroduced) Esme. She could tell that his heart wasn’t in it. He seemed detached, too, but for very different reasons. For the right reasons.

The local police were in attendance, as well, in uniform and paying their respects. Esme spotted Randy chatting up a freckled deputy. That must have been the drinking buddy. Then Rafe escorted her to the sheriff, a stout man in his sixties standing by a card table with a punch bowl. He had the awkwardness of a wallflower at a junior high school prom, albeit a wallflower with salt-and-pepper hair and a sidearm clipped to his belt. His name tag read Michael Fallon.

“It’s a pleasure, Sheriff,” said Esme, and shook his hand, which was dry but warm.

“And how’s your father, Rafe? Still kicking your ass, I assume?”

“Yes, sir.”

“We all heard about that ugliness last spring.” Sheriff Fallon shook his head in sadness. “I’m glad you all emerged in one piece. Are you okay, Rafe?”

Rafe offered Esme a quick glance, then answered, “As good as could be expected, Sheriff.”

The man nodded, then took a sip from his punch.

But Rafe wasn’t finished.

“So you’re aware, then, of who my wife is? Of what she does?”

This time Esme shot him a quick glance. Where was he going with this…?

“Of course,” Fallon replied.

“Be honest with me, Sheriff, for my father’s sake. This case… How out of your league are you?”

If Fallon was insulted, he didn’t show it. “We’ve got every man in the county working on it.”

“I’m willing to bet they’re all working hard, Sheriff, but I’m also willing to bet that none of them have my wife’s mind or her experience.”

Now Esme was the one who felt like the flower—a shrinking violet. Where was all of this praise coming from? Rafe had never even hinted that he thought about her like this. Even when they were dating, he disapproved of her job, and now this?

“If we need the FBI, Rafe, if it comes to that, we’ll call them. I promise you.”

“That’s what I’m saying, sir. You don’t need to call them. They’re already here. Esme is already here. And you’re going to use her, or I’ll tell the media camped outside that you could have but you didn’t. They know who she is. You’re going to put your provincial pride in your back pocket and let her help you solve this case. Are we clear?”

“What the fuck was that!”

They had retreated to one of the rooms in the cottage. Rafe motioned for Esme to keep her voice down, and he closed the door behind him. It took Esme a second to realize their dumb luck. This had to be Lynette’s room. An assortment of national flags decorated one of the walls. Esme recognized maybe half of them. From what she knew about Lynette, the woman had never even left New York State. The flags must have represented a dream of hers: to travel the world. On her vanity lay a jewelry box, open. Lynette trusted people. Esme wasn’t a profiler, but some of these conclusions were obvious.

Lynette probably trusted her assailant, until things turned dark.

The bedsheets were white and recently laundered. The room smelled sweet. There were lilacs by the window. Esme almost approached them to inhale their scent but then remembered what brought her into this room in the first place. She wheeled toward her husband, who was staring at the contents of the jewelry box.

“Let’s start simple,” she said.

He looked at her. His eyes were sad. “Fine.”

“First, I am not a prostitute and you are not my pimp. Don’t ever, ever offer my services without consulting me.”

“I thought you’d want to help.”

“That’s so beside the point!”

Rafe shrugged. That obnoxious dominance he’d displayed with Sheriff Fallon had been replaced by a mournful smallness. His gaze shifted back to the jewelry box.

“Second, since when have you given a damn about what I do? Since when have you done anything but criticize and ridicule my job? Eight years ago, you forced me to quit! Two days ago you accused me of ‘knowingly and willfully killing our family’!”

“I know what I said.”

“What’s changed?”

“Lynette is dead.”

“Were you close with her? Had you even spoken to her since the reunion?”

“No.”

“Then what makes her so special that you’re willing to upturn everything you’ve believed in and argued?”

“I would think you’d be happy,” replied Rafe. “Your husband finally values what you do. I would think you’d be thrilled.”

“Thrilled? I’m dumbfounded! I need you to explain this to me, Rafe. I need you to do it now and I need you to do it so I understand, because at this moment I have no idea who you are.”

“Someone I knew has been murdered. I’m asking you to help find who did it. It’s what you tell me you do, Esme. Why is anything else relevant?”

“Because it is!” She caught her own reflection in the vanity mirror. The tips of her ears, poking out from her shoulder-length brown hair, were scarlet. As sure a sign as any that she was pissed off. “How can you not see how this has to do with us?”

Rafe ran a hand over his face and let out a long sigh. Then he reached into the jewelry box and took out a pair of teal earrings.

“She wore these once,” he said.

Esme’s brow furrowed. “I don’t understand.”

“Please don’t make me… It’s not important….”

“Jesus, Rafe! Were you in love with her?”

“No! No. I never was in love with her. That’s the… Okay, fine. You want to know the whole truth? You want to know the story? You want to know why this is tearing me up inside?”

“All I’ve ever wanted is honesty.”