And yet today, coming home felt different. Was it acceptance? Sorrow? Freedom?
She couldn’t put it into words, didn’t even try, defying the therapist’s orders that she accept each emotion as it came to her, examine it minutely, then let it go so she wouldn’t get dragged into the undertow of sadness. A handy tool if one was truly able to disconnect from the moment-by-moment, all-consuming emotions that came with losing your husband.
She pulled into the concrete drive, turned off the car and let it settle, then headed into the kitchen, dropping her bag on the counter as she went.
She heard the scrabble of nails, the joyous woof. Winston, their—her—Weimaraner, came wiggling into the kitchen. He pushed his wet nose into her hand and turned his sleek blue-gray body sideways into her legs, a warm, weighty comfort. Without Winston, she didn’t know if she would have made it through. More than a companion, he’d become the man in her life, a platonic four-legged husband.
She dropped to her knees and gathered him close.
“How’s my baby?” she crooned, rubbing her fingers into his silken ears. He arched his neck in pleasure, rewarded her attentions with a gentle lick on the nose, then went to the door and sat expectantly, blue eyes smiling.
He’d always been a happy dog.
They’d found him in a box on the side of the road, one Sunday when they’d gone on a drive in the country, down Highway 96 into Williamson County. Green grass, and cows, and a puppy. Aubrey had spied the small gray tail sticking out of the cardboard. Josh had pulled the car to the shoulder to investigate. The puppy, thin, tired, looked up at them with such trust, there’d been no question about keeping him. They’d bundled him home, fed and watered him, trained him to a pad, and been worshipped in return. They named him for Churchill, Josh’s childhood fascination.
Winston missed Josh. Sometimes Aubrey called and he didn’t come, and she knew where she’d find him: in the laundry room, curled on a ratty old ragbag sweater of Josh’s, inconsolable.
She didn’t blame him. If she had the choice, she’d have gone to sleep on Josh’s sweater, too, and never woken up.
She let Winston out into the backyard, climbed the short staircase to her bedroom, changed and tied on her sneakers. A run might help clear her head.
She went back downstairs and opened the sliding door. “Winston, wanna run?”
Sometimes Winston came along, sometimes he didn’t. She always left it up to him.
The dog was having a tussle fight with one of his chew toys. He glanced up at her, and she could swear she saw him shrug. Today he chose to stay in the backyard.
She locked the door behind her and tied her key to her shoelace. Always-careful Aubrey. She set a brisk pace, let the soothing motion of her feet carry her toward oblivion.
For the first couple of years after Josh was gone, after the investigation was finished, after she was exonerated, she’d come home to the shabby little house, let Winston out, and open a bottle of wine. When she started opening a second bottle before she went to bed, when she’d withdrawn so far that she started missing work because she was still passed out from the night before, and had her little accident, she was forced into a moment of clarity and stood back to examine her life.
The consensus? She was trying to dull the pain.
It was a big pain, one that needed to be dulled. But nothing was working. The therapy, the drinking, work, her friends, the dog, the occasional suicidal ideation, none of that was taking enough of the edge off so she could sleep at night. So she could function. So she could stop missing him so very badly.
An escape was a necessity. She had to have something to do. Drowning in her sorrows, literally, wasn’t going to work. It wasn’t helping, and Josh would be embarrassed by it. In all things, his approval mattered the most to her. Even dead, she sought his admiration.
So she turned to running.
The first mile was behind her now, and she hit her stride. She never planned her route beforehand, changed it up depending on her energy level that day and her level of paranoia. After her brief stints in jail, the horror stories she’d heard, she knew enough to vary her routines.
Today, breath was her friend, her salvation. It gave her purpose, renewed her spirit. Cleansed her worries. She let the air flow into her lungs as she pushed harder, up the rolling hills of her neighborhood, legs pumping, sweat drying in the cool air, skimming past the school, the new construction, monstrous houses replacing the small cottages, onto the grounds of Vanderbilt University. She circled the campus. Five miles in now, and the sky was purpling with the impending sunset. She needed to turn back but pushed for another ten minutes, then swerved across Blakemore and dashed into Dragon Park, until she hit the tree.
Their tree.
She pulled up short, caught by surprise. She hadn’t intended to come here. She was trying to escape, and instead, she’d run headlong into her past.
The tree was a century-old oak, a witness to most love affairs in town. The gnarled bark had been stripped clean, replaced with a full-sleeve tattoo of carvings. There wasn’t a square inch untouched from the ground six feet up the tree’s height.
Aubrey turned to go. She didn’t need to see it. Didn’t want to see it. But a gossamer thread of desire pulled her back, to the north-facing side of the tree.
There, carved in the hard oak flesh, intertwined inside a crooked heart, were the letters JDH + AMT = TLA.
Josh David Hamilton plus Aubrey Marie Trenton equals True Love Always.
He’d carved it for the first time when they were thirteen and eleven, respectively. Each year, on their anniversary, they came back and he carved it again, deeper and deeper into the tree. For some reason, other lovers seemed to respect their mark and didn’t try to carve over it.
She ran her fingers over the letters and allowed herself a moment. A capital-M moment. No one needed to know. She didn’t have to report in to her therapist. She could have this for herself, this last wallow in her past, ignore the knife stroke against her heart.
There were no tears. She couldn’t allow that. But she could allow herself to think back to that night, the longest night of her life, the night Josh disappeared.
CHAPTER 3
Aubrey
Five Years Ago
The accident.
On the way to the party, in his rush, Josh rear-ended a black sedan driven by an older man. Aubrey would never forget the look on the man’s face when he came roaring out of the car to scream at Josh. His rage made her shrink back against the seat, but just as quickly, concern over the car, and worry for Josh, drove her out to face him.
The man’s car was barely dented; the bumper of their precious Audi was caved in, sagging to the left as if exhausted by its ordeal. Josh was physically fine, just bruised, and Aubrey was as well, except for the small piece of flying glass from the broken passenger-side window that hit her mouth and sliced her upper lip. She was ministered to by her husband at the scene; two stitches’ worth of thread and a butterfly bandage from the kit Josh always carried closed the tiny gash. She should have listened to him and gone to a plastic surgeon to have it repaired properly, but she would hear nothing of it: Josh was in his third year of medical school, with plans to become a family practitioner, or maybe a surgeon, he hadn’t decided. But stitches, that was med school 101. It seemed wrong, somehow hypocritical, not to take his care for herself.
When things were wrapped at the accident scene, they texted their friends that they were okay and hurrying, then called a cab to take them to the Opryland Hotel. Late and anxious, Josh kissed her at the concierge stand and hurried away to the bachelor party. Aubrey snuck into the girls’ extravaganza, took a seat in a low chair in the back of the room, and discreetly rubbed her neck. Her mood was dampened by the accident, yes, but she already despised the forced hilarity of the traditional bachelorette event: the shrieking girls ogling an oiled-up beefcak
e in a ridiculously tiny thong shaking his package in their faces while they played some random game of touch and shoot—the stripper touches you, you have to do a shot.
She was embarrassed by the looks they were getting from the people around them, half pitying, half jealous. Aubrey knew these girls, knew every single one of them was internally rolling her eyes and wishing she could just be somewhere else. But for some reason they were all in the back room of the restaurant, drunk, surrounding a half-naked man like a pack of starving wolves and throwing dollar bills at him, pretending they were having the time of their lives.
The stripper moved closer to Aubrey, and she instinctively pulled back, then halfheartedly tossed a dollar at him—there was no way on God’s green earth she was going to let his sweaty hip touch her. When the attention focused on the next woman, she edged away from the group and slipped out to the ladies’ room. Splashed a little water on her face. Glanced at her wide brown eyes and the unruly mess of Medusa-like curls that crowned her head. The straightening shampoo her hairdresser had talked her into was a joke. Even with an hour of excessive flat ironing, there was no way to tame her tresses into any semblance of smooth, silky waterfall hair. She’d wasted that fifteen bucks. Looking back, she kicked herself. They were going to need every dime to pay for the repairs on the car.
Her lip was swollen, the little stitches slightly bloody beneath their butterfly bandage, like a sepia train track. People paid good cash money to get their lips this puffy. Little did they know a simple car accident could save them thousands in surgical procedures.
She started back to the group. High-pitched squealing made her stop short. Janie, the bride, was being molested by the stripper now, twirling and dancing in his arms. God, she must really be hammered. All this crew was concerned with was getting as loaded as possible as quickly as possible, and it looked like the drinks had done the trick. They were up to their ears in the party’s signature cocktail, pink piña coladas. Aubrey was allergic to coconut, so every time the waitstaff moved through with the concoctions on their trays, Aubrey passed.
But she did want something. No one would notice if she disappeared for a longer stretch. This party wasn’t about her. No one would miss her.
She walked down the hallway to the first quiet bar she found. The Opryland resort was gigantic. It housed multiple restaurants and bars, all situated along a garden-like atrium on the lowest level of the hotel, each with a different theme, a commercial identity crisis like no other. You can’t be all things to all people, but Opryland was trying.
And truth be told, she wanted to check on Josh. He wouldn’t mind; she knew he wouldn’t. He was probably worrying about her this very second, just as she was worried about him. They had a connection like that. She could think of him, and he’d call, almost as if she’d summoned him.
The silence of the bar was welcome. She settled herself on a stool and sent him a text.
Utterly bored. Come meet me for a drink? I’m in the Jack Daniel’s Lounge.
Five minutes passed with no word. She figured he was distracted and hadn’t looked at his phone, and wondered what, exactly, the groom, Kevin Sulman, and his friends had devised for the male cohort’s entertainment that had her husband so transfixed. Strippers, probably, though Sulman had claimed to his bride-to-be that he was skipping the tradition. Janie had assured him she would follow suit. So much for that.
And if there were strippers, Josh was a healthy young man, and would certainly be looking. Aubrey tamped down the spurt of anger. He would look, but he wouldn’t touch. He’d promised. And she trusted him.
She gathered her purse and phone to leave when a waiter came through from the back of the bar with a tray balanced on his hand. Centered perfectly was a single highball of clear liquid, garnished with a slice of lime. He caught her eye, made a beeline to her seat, set the drink on the bar in front of her with a smile, then turned with a flourish and disappeared back the way he’d come. She hadn’t even had time to grab her wallet from her bag.
She sniffed the drink, and a wide smile broke over her face—Tanqueray and tonic, her favorite. Josh was such a silly romantic. She loved that about him the most. He was surprising, and fun, and smart and sexy and wonderful, but under all of that ran a streak of romanticism that would make Eros proud.
Like sending a gin and tonic to her in the middle of a boring party. More than a drink. A promise.
She settled back onto the bar stool to wait for him, expecting him to appear from around the corner with a sly grin on his face, tickled to death that he’d surprised her. Texted him again—You are the best husband EVAH!—and waited.
Aubrey sipped the drink and let the cool, piney taste coat the back of her throat, once again considering how incredibly lucky she was. Having money would be nice, but it couldn’t buy her the love of a good man, or friendship, or the kind of happy, settled contentment she’d always felt when she thought of her husband—the things she valued most in this world.
She thought back to their own wedding three years earlier, a quiet, subdued affair but, in her mind, much more fun. They’d both been excited, a little nervous. Josh’s hands had shaken when he put the ring on her finger, but his voice never wavered as he said his vows. She didn’t remember all the details, but would never forget looking into his denim-blue eyes as he said the words that would bind them together forever. She’d gotten goose bumps, so strong was his intensity, and she knew he meant every word down to his bones.
She glanced at her watch. She’d sent the first text at 9:45 p.m. It was now almost 10:15. Her drink was three-quarters gone. She toyed with the lime on the edge of the glass. Where was he?
She had a nice little debate with herself. She was tired. Sore and bruised from the accident. The drink had made her sleepy, and they had a beautiful king-size bed waiting upstairs. Share a hot bath, maybe get crazy and raid the minibar, definitely break in the bed—these things sounded like heaven. So if he wasn’t going to come to her, the least she could do was go to him.
She finished the drink, wound her way through the acreage of the hotel to the concierge desk, and asked where the Sulman party was taking place. The concierge didn’t hesitate, told her the room number immediately, which gave Aubrey pause. Did he think she was part of the entertainment? Her dress wasn’t that revealing, was it?
She turned her back and started toward the bachelor party. To be fair—she was always fair with him—she texted Josh, THX for the drink. I’m coming to get you, we have things to do upstairs, ended with a smiley face.
She got lost immediately. The hotel was so big that she didn’t know how the people who worked there found their way around. Fifteen minutes passed, twenty. She was hopelessly lost. Finally, a man dressed in the pink-and-gold livery of the hotel appeared around a corner. She flagged him down, and he showed her to one of the little golf carts that buzzed around the site. “I’ll take you. Hop in. It’s on the other side of the property. A two-minute ride.”
She got into the cart, wondered if this qualified as getting in the car with a stranger. It was chilly; the sun had long since disappeared, and the early spring evening fought with the last vestiges of winter for control.
“Where’re you from?”
Aubrey started. “Oh. I’m local. We’re here for a wedding. My husband and I, that is.”
He smiled. “No worries. We see lots of people like you here.”
Aubrey’s back stiffened. The damn dress. She did look like a stripper. Or a swinger, or something else equally unsavory.
The man didn’t say anything more, just pulled up to a pink-and-gold building with Lounge written on the doors.
“Here you go, ma’am.”
He waited, and she opened her purse and fished out a dollar. He took the money with a smile and buzzed off, leaving her standing alone in the dark.
The door to the lounge sprang opened, and one of Josh’s best friends, Arlo Tonturian,
stumbled out. His eyes were nearly crossed, but he recognized Aubrey.
“Hey, hey, sexy lady. You must excuse me for a moment.” He weaved over to the bushes and proceeded to vomit. Yes, she’d definitely arrived in the right place.
She didn’t want to wait. She wanted to go inside, grab Josh, go to bed, but Arlo was in pretty bad shape, so she went to him and put a hand on his back.
“Can I help?”
He retched again, stood up, spit a few times. He looked slightly more normal, but still pale, and still drunk.
“Jesus, why do I ever agree to Jägerbombs? Shit makes me sick every time. Josh not feeling good either?”
“I don’t know. He’s been doing Jägerbombs, too?” Great. They didn’t make him sick, but they certainly didn’t make him amorous. More like passed out cold.
Arlo gave her another slightly cross-eyed look. “He never showed, princess. And trust me, Sulman is mightily pissed.”
CHAPTER 4
Aubrey was getting annoyed.
“You’re drunk, Arlo. Josh is inside. He took off for the party the minute we arrived.” She glanced at her phone; it was nearing midnight. “That was over three hours ago. We were late, we had an accident on the way over. Didn’t you hear?”
Arlo rubbed his eyes and gave her that soft grin he used when he wanted to be charming. “I’m drunk all right. As a fucking skunk. But he ain’t inside. We called his cell phone, but he never answered. He’s missing the strips, too. They have ta-taaaaas.” Arlo’s face turned white. “You didn’t hear that. Don’t tell Janie. She’s not cool like you.”
So Sulman had fallen prey to the strippers.
“I won’t say anything.” Aubrey reached for the door, but Arlo stumbled over and slammed it shut.
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