by Layne, Ivy
What were we going to do? Stay here in his house forever? I didn't want to be here. Not in this house, not in Black Rock. The small town was beautiful, and the people were nice, but this wasn't my place. This wasn't my life.
This was the life Trey had wanted, the life he'd tried to convince me I should want. Now that he was gone, I should have been able to leave, to decide what my life was going to be.
Instead, I was trapped here by Trey's secrecy and my own ignorance. Somewhere in this house was the key to setting us free. I just had to find it. And I was running out of time.
I had to keep him safe. Adam. Nothing mattered more than my son.
My entire life all I wanted was to be a mom. Other little girls dreamed of being a doctor or a movie star. Not me. To the deep disappointment of my parents, I never had career aspirations.
I didn't want to be a lawyer, or a professor, or a ballet dancer. I didn't want to go into finance. I didn't want to win a Nobel Prize.
I wanted to be a mom and a wife. I wanted a family. I wanted to cook dinners and match socks. To drive my kids to games and practices, to pick them up from school and playdates. I wanted to rub my husband's shoulders after a long day. To read bedtime stories and play make-believe.
I'd grown up ashamed of those dreams. I was a woman in the new millennia. I could be anything. And of all those options, I wanted to be a mom.
I never understood why that was such a disappointment to my parents. In my mind, raising children is one of the most worthwhile things I could do with my life. My professor father and artist mother could only mourn my lack of ambition.
“You have so much potential,” they'd said when I'd turned down an internship my father had wrangled for me in favor of babysitting. “Don't waste it with children. Do something meaningful.”
It was probably a blessing that they'd kicked me out when I'd married Trey. At least I didn't have to listen to their 'I told you so's'.
When Trey wanted to give up on getting pregnant, he'd broken my heart. He’d refused to meet with the doctor. Refused for either of us to get more tests. He kept saying everything would work itself out, but he wouldn't tell me what that meant.
Distance grew between us. He was traveling more and turning to me in the night less. I'd started to think I'd made a mistake when everything changed.
I'll never forget that night. It was the first snow of the year, and the roads were slick. I was worried about Trey driving in from the airport. The rush of relief at the rumble of the garage door took me by surprise.
I met him at the door, ready to take his bags from his hand, and found him standing there, a tiny, blanket-wrapped bundle in his arms. He pushed the bundle at me, and I'd looked down to see a red scrunched face crowned by a cloud of wispy, white-blond hair. One look and I'd fallen in love.
Adam changed everything. I was too distracted by the child I'd always wanted to wonder about Trey's constant travel and locked office door. I didn't notice when he started sleeping in the guest room. I accepted his vague excuses when I wondered why our adopted son looked so much like my husband.
He'd given me my dream, and in my joy, I let him off the hook for everything else.
I was a fool. I'd buried my head in the sand, let Adam consume me, and now we were paying the price.
I was a mother, and it was everything I'd dreamed it would be. But, in all my imaginings of hugs and bedtime stories, I'd never guessed at the fear of not being enough. Of not being able to keep him safe. Of failing him.
I had to keep looking until I found what I needed.
Where to start? I stood in the middle of Trey's office and turned in a slow circle. It looked like a layout from a decorating magazine. The Gentleman's Office. Tobacco brown leather sofa surrounded by dark woodwork. Persian rug. Huge desk, the surface an acre of mahogany. Trey's brown leather chair dotted with brass nubs.
No computer in sight, only the blotter and the crystal and brass pen holder. Trey's laptop was in the drawer. I pulled it out and flipped it open, entering his password. Adam. Not very stealthy.
The home screen popped up. I stared at it blankly. This was not the first time I'd searched Trey's computer.
You know the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over and hoping for a different outcome. Buy me a ticket for the crazy train because I was going to search this thing one more time.
After half an hour of opening folders, scrolling, checking documents and doing the whole thing again, I closed the laptop.
There was nothing there. That couldn't be right. I knew it couldn't be right. Trey had used his laptop for everything. Hadn't he? There were some files that seemed to relate to the business. An accounting app. But that was it.
The laptop was strangely empty, almost as if it was supposed to look like Trey's laptop, but he hadn't actually used it. I wanted to reject that idea as soon as it entered my mind. The idea that there might be another laptop out there made my stomach twist.
If this laptop was a decoy…the implications cascaded through my brain. A second laptop meant Trey had something to hide. Something big. A second laptop was a level of deviousness, of forethought, that confirmed Trey was not the man I thought he was.
I wasn't ready to go there. I wasn't ready to accept that my husband was involved in business dealings he felt he had to hide. I wanted to think he'd just been a bad record keeper. I could have held on to that excuse if not for the meticulously organized drawers of bills I'd already found.
A man who kept every cable bill for years wasn't a sloppy record keeper. A man that careful would be good at hiding his secrets. I glared at the useless laptop on the desk as if I could demand answers it wasn't going to give.
Pushing back from the desk, I crossed the room to the closet. The walk-in closet had shelves on one side and built-in file cabinets on the other.
I'd searched here more than once. I was going to do it again. I refused to accept that what I was looking for might not be in the house. That it might have disappeared along with Trey.
It was here somewhere. I'd seen it, once upon a time. I would find it. I had to. Adam's life depended on it.
Chapter Six
Knox
What the hell was she looking for?
I watched Lily Spencer slam the laptop shut and cross the room to the closet. I'd planted cameras all over the house as she'd slept the night before.
I already knew that closet was office storage: shelves filled with supplies, reference books, and baskets with odds and ends. The other side had built-in file cabinets. Drawers and drawers of files, three-quarters of the way to the ceiling, with more shelves above.
Lily wasn't paying bills or balancing her checkbook. She wasn't answering email. She wasn’t cleaning out the closet. There was no trash bag, no pile of things to discard.
She was looking for something.
Fortunately, I'd had the forethought to stick a camera high in the corner of the closet. From that vantage point, I had a bird’s-eye view of the top of Lily's head right down into the scoop-neck of her T-shirt. For a second, I was distracted by the swell of her breasts as they rose and fell with every breath.
Okay, I got distracted for more than a second.
Get your head back on the job, Knox. If she’s wrapped up in this mess with Dad, you can't afford to let your cock fuck with your head. And if she needs your help, you won't be any good to her if you're distracted by her tits.
I tried not to enjoy the view down the front of her shirt. I did. But watching her search the files was mind-numbingly boring. Whatever Lily was looking for, she wasn't finding it.
It couldn't be a copy of the will. She'd said she'd seen that document, and it was on file at their attorney's office. Access to bank accounts? Trey Spencer had left their household accounts flush with cash. Unless Lily had expensive habits, she wouldn't run out of money any time soon.
Two hours after she started, she'd searched every drawer. As far as I could tell, Lily hadn't found what she was looking for. Proving me right, she turned around and started on the shelves. In a few places, there were stacks of papers and file folders. Lily went through those with the same attention to detail she'd paid to the file cabinets. The rest of the shelves were filled with matching woven baskets, the dark fibers a contrast to the gleaming white shelves.
Starting from the bottom, she pulled out one basket after another, sorting through the contents before sliding it back on the shelf and starting again. One was a jumble of cables. Another old issues of magazines. None of them held what she was searching for.
The lower shelves done, she studied the rest. She'd already looked through everything she could reach, but the shelves went all the way to the ceiling. As if she followed my train of thought, she strode from the closet.
I followed her on the cameras to the mudroom where she grabbed a tall stepladder, hefted it onto her shoulder, and carried it back to the office closet. When she had the stepladder in position, she climbed up two steps and began to search the higher shelves.
Something about the way she looked told me this wasn't the first time she'd searched the office closet. She finished the shelves she could reach from the second step and climbed to the third. I winced as she leaned out over the side of the stepladder to pull a basket from the end closest to the wall.
She wasn't that high off the ground. If she fell she wouldn't really hurt herself, but with the bulky basket in her arms, her position was precarious at best. Bracing the basket against the shelf in front of her, she rifled through it, then leaned out again to replace it. I let out a breath of relief when it slid onto the shelf and she was standing on two feet once more. Her eyes went up to the next shelf.
Under my breath, I muttered, “Don't do it, Lily”.
Lily couldn't hear me and probably wouldn't have listened if she had. She climbed a step higher on the ladder and went through the same routine, searching every basket on the shelf.
Again, she came up empty. She stood still for a long moment, apparently thinking as she eyeballed the top step of the ladder. The one clearly marked DO NOT STAND. She looked at the step, then the highest shelf, before lifting her foot and placing it right over the yellow and black warning sticker.
I leaned forward in my seat, gripping my knees, willing her to hold onto the shelves. Willing her not to do anything stupid. The top shelf was well above her head. She wobbled as she strained to catch the sides of the box above her with her fingertips.
I saw it happen in slow motion. Lily inched the box back, took a step to steady herself, and misjudged the width of the ladder.
I didn't hear her scream as she fell. I was already out the door.
Images of Lily, broken and bleeding, flashed through my mind as I bolted for the house. She could have hit her head. She could have broken an ankle or an arm. If she'd come down the wrong way and cracked her neck on one of those hard, wooden shelves—
Don't worry about it until you know what you're dealing with.
I burst through the door to the mudroom and raced down the hall, cursing Trey for putting his office on the opposite side of the house.
“Lily! Lily! Are you all right?” I skidded to a halt in the office to see Lily sprawled in the doorway of the closet blinking up at the ceiling, a basket upside down on top of her, papers scattered everywhere.
I went to my knees beside her, scanning for signs of injury. There was nothing. No blood, no limbs bent at an awkward angle, not even a bump coming up on her forehead.
“Lily, what happened?” I demanded, moving the basket and running my hands over her, searching for an injury I couldn't see.
“Knox?” Her dazed eyes focused on my face, and her brow knit in confusion. “Knox? What are you doing here?”
“I was outside and heard a shout,” I lied. “Are you all right? What happened?”
“I was up on the ladder trying to get a box down, and I slipped.”
“Are you okay? Are you hurt? Did you hit your head?”
Lily rolled her head from side to side before trying to sit up. I slid an arm under her back, lifting her. She winced at the movement.
“What?” I demanded.
“My back,” she said, reaching to run her fingers under her shirt. I lifted the soft fabric to see a scrape on her right side.
“Not too bad,” I said. After that fall, it could have been far worse.
Lily probed the scrape with her fingertips, biting her lip as the salt on her skin touched raw flesh. She brought her hand around to stare at her fingers. “It's not bleeding.”
“Not really,” I agreed, though droplets of blood welled here and there. “Mostly it's just raw. It'll sting for a day or two, but it'll heal up pretty fast.”
“I guess I should count myself lucky then.”
“What were you doing at the top of that ladder?” She followed my gaze to the empty space on the top shelf and back to the basket upended on the floor.
“Nothing,” Lily said. Then, maybe realizing that wasn't much of an explanation went on, “Just looking for some old paperwork.”
She picked up a loose piece of paper from the floor and turned it over. I plucked it from her hand and scanned.
“Auto maintenance records? For a Mercedes CL coupe? That's not your car.”
“It was Trey's,” Lily said, snatching the paper out of my hand, busying herself trying to organize the mess on the floor. I reached for a pile of papers, and she snapped, “I've got it.”
“Next time you need something over your head, ask. Might as well take advantage of having someone around who can reach higher than you.”
“Is that a short joke?”
I ignored her comment. “Don't do that again, Lily. If you need to get up to that shelf and you don't want to ask me, use the other ladder.”
“It doesn't fit in the closet,” she muttered under her breath as she finished shoving the last of the papers from the floor back in the box.
“Then ask for help,” I said. “You want me to put this back on the shelf?” I asked.
“No, you can leave it.” She dusted her hands off on her shorts, her eyes on the basket by her feet. “Do you want a cup of coffee or anything? I baked blueberry muffins.”
My stomach turned over at the thought of what Lily could do to blueberry muffins if the rest of her baking was like that coffee cake. “I'm not hungry, but I'll take you up on the coffee.”
I followed Lily down the hall into the kitchen inhaling the scents of coffee, blueberries, and something savory and rich. “What's for dinner?” I asked.
“Pot roast. I can't seem to get the hang of baking, but my pot roast is pretty good.”
Lily was in the middle of pouring my coffee when she caught sight of the clock on the stove. “Shoot, I didn't realize it was that late. Can you take this to go? I need to get Adam from preschool.”
She shoved me out the door, mug in hand, before I could object. Lily didn't want to leave me alone in her house.
As her personal security, I should have had access to the entire property, whether she was there or not. I didn't bother to object.
I already knew Lily had secrets. It was only a matter of time until I uncovered them, one by one.
Chapter Seven
Knox
Lily didn't invite me to dinner. She showed up at my door at six carrying a tray loaded with a steaming bowl of pot roast, crusty white bread, a folded cloth napkin, and a blueberry muffin.
Her eyes flitting to mine and back to the tray, she mumbled, “I brought you dinner,” shoved t
he tray into my hands and took flight down the path back to the house, reminding me again of a skittish fawn.
Either I made her nervous, or she had a reason to keep me out of the house. Maybe both.
Lily's pot roast wasn't good. It was amazing. I'm a sucker for pot roast, it's true, but Lily's was out of this world. Tender and juicy in a rich gravy that coated chunks of potatoes and carrots. The bread was delicious. She must have bought it in town.
I watched over the cameras as Lily and Adam ate dinner at the dining room table off of the kitchen, Adam telling his mother the details of his morning in preschool.
She listened with rapt attention to stories of the Lego tower he'd built, engaging in the debate over what was more fun, construction or destruction. I remembered those days myself. The joy of seeing how tall you could build a tower. The teeter when it reached its maximum height and the gorgeous explosion of colored bricks when it toppled to the floor.
If Lily was bored by the minutia of five-year-old life, it didn't show. From what I'd seen, she gave her son attention without smothering, and he soaked it up.
It could be hard to tell with kids, but he hadn't seemed particularly broken up about his father's death. He could be shoving his emotions deep, not ready to process such a loss at a young age. Or—and this was my guess—Lily was his primary source of love, comfort, and care. Losing his father may have been difficult, but losing his mother would be devastating.
Lily would do anything to protect her boy. It was written in her eyes, in her stance when she was beside him. Whatever was going on with the dead husband's connection to my father, if Adam was wrapped up in it, then getting through to Lily would be that much harder.
I intended to have my answers. If the money was proof, Trey Spencer had been up to his neck in my father's bullshit. Lily loved her son. Would she have put him at risk for the promise of easy cash?
