“Sounds like a great reason for you to come to the city this weekend. Let me get you a room at the Hyatt.”
“I need to be here. There’s too much going on right now.” On the surface, his offer was generous, but part of me wondered why he never invited me to stay at his apartment. Never. Not once. We always met at hotels or restaurants.
“You can’t blame a guy for trying.” In the background, a door closed, followed by the rustle of clothing.
“Are you just getting home?”
“Yes. Late night. I’m working on a new case.” He sighed, his breath gusting against the phone. “How’s the house coming along?”
“Good. They finished the roof today, and they’re starting on the siding tomorrow.”
“Ah, babe. That’s great. I’m happy for you.”
“Thanks.” I should have been ecstatic. I’d finally found a place to call my own, a judgment-free zone where I could be myself, one that no one could take away from me. So why did I have an uneasy knot in the pit of my stomach?
“Stella?”
“What?”
“Did you hear me?” Judging by the note of frustration in his voice, I’d missed something important.
“I’m sorry. It’s been a long day. What did you say?” Thoughts of the work waiting to be done and Owen’s situation made my blood pressure skyrocket.
“I said I checked into that guy, Owen.”
My heart rate accelerated. I sat upright and forced nonchalance into my reply. “Yeah? What about him?”
“He was convicted of voluntary manslaughter for the murder of his brother and served ten years in a maximum-security prison. I don’t know the particulars, but he took a plea deal down from murder.” He paused. I bit my bottom lip until it stung. “Stella, did you know?”
“Um, yes. Dad mentioned it.” I tried to keep my reply light and unconcerned. “I’m not worried.”
“Well, I am.” Michael’s voice tightened. “I’m around guys like him every day. You don’t understand how sick people are. You should talk to Dad. See if he can move him to another job site.”
“As long as Owen does a good job and stays out of trouble, I don’t have a problem with him.” A bubble of frustration swelled inside my chest. I sat up and tried to calm my breathing. No wonder Owen seemed so distant and wary. Even though he’d paid his debt to society, he’d never outlive the stigma of his mistake.
“He’s not staying out of trouble if the police are hauling him to the station every other day. They’ve brought him in for questioning thirty-two times in the past two years but haven’t been able to make any of the charges stick. He’s a ticking time bomb. I’m telling you, this guy is dangerous.”
“Did you ever think that maybe the police are harassing him? I mean, the whole deal yesterday was ridiculous. He was here working all morning. I saw him here. How’s he supposed to get on with his life when no one will leave him alone?” My outrage surged along with the volume of my voice.
“Why are you defending him?” Michael shouted.
“I’m not. I’m just saying it’s none of our business,” I shouted back.
“Well, excuse me for caring about your welfare.” A half-dozen beats passed before he spoke again, his voice tight and controlled. “You know, Stella, it’s okay to have people look out for you.”
“I know. It’s fine.” He constantly tested the boundaries of my personal space, asking for more than I wanted to give. The more he pushed, the more stubborn I became. In my experience, the moment someone got close, they left. It was easier to shut them out than to suffer through the pain of abandonment. Sooner or later, Michael would move on.
“Whenever a woman says, ‘it’s fine’, it’s not,” he said.
“I don’t need you hovering over me. I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself.” Once the steam had been released from my anger, exhaustion began to creep in. I flopped back onto the mattress. He’d never lifted his voice to me before. We were fighting over Owen, of all people. A stranger. The realization made my stomach churn. What was I doing? Michael represented stability and success, two things I craved. I huffed out a sigh. An apology lingered on my lips, but I couldn’t quite form the words.
“What are we doing, Stella?” A hint of weariness carried through the phone. I pictured him rubbing his forehead, like he did after a long day of work.
“I don’t know, Michael. You tell me.” I shouldn’t bait him, but I couldn’t help it. I needed an outlet for the frustration boiling inside me. “We’re just friends, right? That’s what you told your work buddy Lisa. Are you friends with her, too?”
“I’m not playing this game.” His anger crackled through the airwaves. “What’s wrong with you, Stella? Are you wanting a commitment? Because I’ve been willing to commit for a long time. You’re the one who keeps shutting the door on us. So, the answer is yes. I slept with her. More than once while you were out of town. And you have no one but yourself to blame for it because you pushed me there.”
I swallowed and stared out the window in stunned silence. He understood me better than I realized. Across the road, a coyote paused at the edge of the cornfield then loped toward the bridge. The sight of the lone animal made me sad. Michael was right. The closer we became, the harder I pushed him away. I wanted him to leave me. Eventually, everyone did.
“Look, maybe we should take a break from each other while you work through whatever it is you’re going through.” The short, choppy cadence of his speech suggested that I’d crossed the line too many times—a mistake I might never be able to repair. “Goodnight.”
The phone went dead. I rolled onto my stomach and stuffed the pillow beneath my head. In the distance, the coyote howled. If I’d been less exhausted, my curiosity might have tempted me to follow the wild animal in search of the perfect photograph. Instead, my overworked mind kept churning. Michael and I were over. The knowledge bothered me less than it should. I was more concerned about his interest in Owen. If Michael were anyone else, I would’ve shrugged it off, but he made a living out of dredging up the sordid secrets of people’s pasts. The last thing I needed was for him to investigate Owen and discover the truth about our connection. Maybe a break was the best thing for everyone. Hopefully, he would move on and forgot all about my high school boyfriend.
Eventually, my eyelids closed, and I fell into a fitful sleep. In the midst of a macabre dream about bloody knives and demented coyotes, the shattering of glass brought me to a sitting position. I held my breath, thinking the noise had been my imagination. A second, louder thump followed and accelerated my heart rate into stroke territory. The alarm clock read five-thirty AM. I’d been asleep less than three hours. Unfamiliar voices drifted up through the floor register. Someone was in the house.
“Shit, shit, shit.” I scrambled to the dresser and yanked my phone from the charger. The footsteps traveled through the ground floor. Why hadn’t I bought a gun? I’d always been against firearms, but now I began to rethink my position.
I searched the room for a weapon or a hiding place. Under the bed? In the closet? The options seemed inadequate. Light footsteps hit the stairs. The old steps creaked. My sense of self-preservation kicked into high gear. I opened the window and crawled onto the roof of the porch, drawing down the sash behind me. Huddling against the chimney, fingers shaking, I dialed and tried to calm my breathing.
“9-1-1. What is your emergency?” asked a woman from the other end of the line. No stranger’s voice had ever been so welcome.
The police arrived an eternity later. In reality, only fifteen minutes had passed, but it seemed like a lifetime. The intruders, frightened away by the approaching sirens, vacated the premises in a silver van. I stayed on the roof until an officer found me and coaxed me down from the precarious perch. Sheriff Coley pulled into the driveway a few minutes later.
“Break-ins are pretty rare around these parts,” he said, his flat gray eyes roaming over me, assessing. “Probably just some kids having fun. This house has be
en empty for a long time. They didn’t realize anyone was home.”
“I didn’t get a good look at them, but they didn’t seem like kids.” Despite the heat, a shiver ran down my back. Lavender and pink light brightened the sky as the sun broke the horizon. I wrapped my arms around my waist, wishing I had on more than a T-shirt, panties, and a bathrobe. “I saw the van, though. It was a silver Ford Econoline, maybe a 1989 model.” Coley lifted an eyebrow at the specifics. I shrugged. “My foster parents drove one just like it.”
He continued to study me, his features blank. “Did they take anything?”
“I don’t know.” Until now, my possessions had been the least of my worries. “I don’t have much, really, just my equipment.” A sinking feeling landed in the pit of my stomach. I had thousands of dollars in cameras, lenses, and other accessories piled in the mudroom, waiting to be unpacked. Those items were more precious to me than my well-being.
“Make a list of anything missing. Don’t get your hopes up. Most of the time, these items are never recovered. You’ll want to turn it in to your insurance.” The sheriff tapped his pen on the notebook, searching my face like I was a suspect in my own burglary. For the next hour, he drilled me about friends, relatives, and neighbors. During our conversation, Dad pulled into the driveway, followed by Owen and the van of workers. Coley motioned for Dad to approach. “There’s been a break-in. I’m gonna need to question your boys.”
“Are you okay?” Dad touched my elbow. I nodded and gave him a weak smile. His presence gave me reassurance. “Go ahead and talk to my guys if you want, but I can assure you none of them are involved in this.” Over Dad’s shoulder, Owen watched from a safe distance.
“You should make sure they didn’t take any of your tools,” I said. “I’m not sure how long they were here before I heard them.”
The sheriff made a beeline for Owen. He squared his shoulders and ran a hand through his hair, tousling the ends. I trotted in the sheriff’s wake, knowing I should stay out of it but unable to stop myself.
“Where were you last night, Henry?” Coley flipped open his spiral-bound notepad and clicked the end of his pen.
“With Dad until about ten, then I went to bed.”
“Alone?”
Owen’s gaze flitted to mine. “No.”
A wave of jealousy prickled along my skin. I brushed it away. After all, I had Michael. Owen was nothing more than a friend from the past. What or whom he did in his spare time was none of my business. Despite my inner protests, I resented any woman bestowed the pleasure of feeling the weight of his body on top of hers. I lifted my chin.
“I’ll need to check on your story. Wanna write down her name and phone number for me?” Coley handed the notepad to Owen.
“It wasn’t him,” I said. The sheriff lifted both eyebrows and blinked. Apparently, he wasn’t used to stubborn women.
He shifted to face me. “I thought you didn’t get a good look at them.”
“I didn’t, but I know it wasn’t him.”
“It seems to me you don’t know what you saw, Ms. Valentine.” The dry disdain of his tone raised the hackles on the back of my neck.
I crossed my arms over my chest. “I gave you a general description. Two men dressed in dark clothing. One was slender and roughly my height. The other one was taller, heavy-set with a limp. In case you haven’t noticed, Owen is none of those things.”
“Why don’t you go inside, Ms. Valentine, and start making that list? Leave the detective work to the professionals.” Coley sighed, as if I’d tested the limits of his patience, and turned back to Owen.
I held my ground. “You’re wasting your time with him and making me question your competence.” One corner of Owen’s mouth curled into the hint of a grin. “And you’re wasting my time with this nonsense.”
He yanked the notepad from Owen’s grasp, flipping the cover closed in the same motion. “That’s something we’ll agree to disagree upon. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”
Owen shoved his hands into his pockets. We watched the sheriff walk away. Once he’d moved out of earshot, Owen said, “You shouldn’t have done that.”
“I couldn’t stand by and watch him harass you. Why do you put up with his shit?” The air between us became thicker, hotter. Owen took a step toward me, shattering my personal space, and lowered his head until his lips almost brushed the curve of my ear. My lungs, starving for oxygen, constricted. The tiny hairs on my body lifted, in unison, giving me the sensation of extreme static electricity.
His hot breath tickled my skin. Two whispered words brought my heart to a complete stop. “Stella. Don’t.”
Twelve
Owen
Eighteen Years Ago
A rhythmic pounding woke me from a restless sleep early on a Sunday morning. I was two weeks from leaving for college, leaving this shitty town, and leaving Stella. We’d spent the prior evening wrapped in each other’s arms in a sleeping bag down by the river. It had been the best and worst night of my life. She’d given me a precious gift to take with me—her virginity and the promise of her undying love. We’d made plans to reunite as often as we could, knowing that our time together had come to an end. Marianne had been sent to the hospital following a stroke, and Stan wouldn’t be able to watch the girls any longer.
“Mom! Somebody’s at the door,” I shouted, not wanting to face reality quite yet. The knocking continued. After a minute, I got up, grumbling, and stabbed my legs into a pair of board shorts.
By the time I got downstairs, the sheriff had my mom in the living room. She was crying uncontrollably and calling Chris’s name over and over again. I hadn’t seen my brother since Friday, but that wasn’t unusual. He often disappeared for days at a time without excuses.
“What’s going on?” I asked, my stomach churning with dread.
“Son, there’s no easy way to tell you this, but Chris was found dead this morning.”
An icy wave swept over my body. White-hot pain followed swiftly, gutting me. Memories of Chris flashed through my head. The two of us learning to ride bikes. Playing video games into the wee hours of the morning. Laughing over fart jokes. I blinked, trying to comprehend the news. It just wasn’t possible. Although we’d grown apart over the past few years, he was my older brother. He’d always seemed invincible to me. The sheriff observed my face with emotionless eyes. I wanted to be a man, but I couldn’t stop the slow trail of tears down my face.
“Can you tell me where you were last night, Owen?” he asked.
“What do you mean? I don’t understand.” I ran a hand through my hair, fighting past the bile in my throat. “How did it happen?”
“I’m going to need you to come down to the station,” the sheriff said. I didn’t like the way they were looking at me, but I was too distraught to make sense of the situation. I wanted to do anything I could to help them find the person who’d done this terrible thing.
“Sure. Whatever you need.” At the flash of silver handcuffs, I recoiled. “Wait a minute. Am I under arrest?”
“No, we’d just like to ask you a few questions.”
The ride to the police station passed in a blur. When we got there, they hustled me into an interrogation room, but not before I caught sight of Lanie and Stella. Lanie sat on a bench outside someone’s office, her arms wrapped around her waist, rocking herself. Stella looked like hell. Her left eye was swollen shut, and her lip had been busted. They had her in handcuffs, leading her from a different interrogation room and down the hall, away from me. “Stella,” I called out to her, but she disappeared around a corner.
Inside the interrogation room, I drummed my fingers on the table. Nondescript beige walls surrounded me on every side. I stared at the two-way mirror between me and whomever was on the other side. The hard folding chair bit into my backside. Numbness settled over my body. Chris was dead. I still couldn’t believe it. A farmer had found his body on the riverbank a few miles from Stella’s house, not far from where we’d been. I wan
ted to cry for him, but my tears had dried. Although Chris had been a ruthless, cold-hearted asshole, he’d still been my brother. No one deserved to die like that, especially at such a young age.
My thoughts turned to Stella. Why did they have her in handcuffs? What was she doing here? We planned to walk down Main Street today, so she could photograph the historic homes. With so little time left together, we wanted to spend every moment in each other’s company. The sight of her small and helpless filled me with rage and frustration. I bounced a knee to expel some of the pent-up emotions. Finally, the door opened, and the detective pulled up a chair across from me. He placed a folder on the table.
“Owen, I’m going to ask you some questions,” the detective said. He had a kind but weary face with an overgrown mustache and pock-marked skin. “Take your time. We’re just trying to get to the bottom of what happened, so we can put whoever did this terrible thing behind bars.”
For hours, I answered question after question. They drilled me about Chris, his habits, his friends, where he hung out. The tone of the questions grew more intense. Eventually, the grilling turned to Stella. They wanted to know everything about her. This path of cross-examination immediately raised my defenses.
“Were you with Stella last night?” the detective asked.
I hesitated, not wanting to get her into trouble, knowing we were both screwed no matter how I answered. “Yes.”
“Do you know who this belongs to?” He raised a plastic bag in front of me. The dark sheen of blood crusted the silver blade of Stella’s knife. My stomach churned. I swallowed hard, trying to keep from puking on his shoes. “Is this Stella’s knife?”
“Can I get a glass of water?” I rasped with an unfamiliar voice. Suddenly, everything became crystal clear. Stella’s fight to keep Lanie away from Chris. The bruises on her neck. I fought back panic. She wouldn’t have done something like this, not in a million years. Sure, she was tough, but she was sweet, too. And Chris was a strong guy. He would have taken the knife from her in a heartbeat.
Lies We Tell Page 8
