by Dianne Dixon
One hundred five miles from South Pasadena,
early morning.
Merciless cruelty.
Hot sand.
The flicking tail of a lizard against a bare ankle.
And a curl of lace the color of a blueberry.
Ali
In the early morning of the day Matt was scheduled to come home, Ali was in the bookstore across the alley from the restaurant, trying not to let anyone see how on edge she was.
Ali was near the door, with a group of young mothers. She was waving to Sofie, who was in the center of the room, in a circle of children gathered for the weekly story hour. All of them cross-legged on a braided rug. Their eyes shining as the elderly bookseller, in his Burberry-plaid bow tie, told the tale of The Cat in the Hat.
One of the mothers in the group whispered to Ali, “You look super-stressed. Go back to the restaurant. I can see how busy it is over there. I’ll watch Sofie and call you as soon as story time is over.”
Ali mouthed the words thank you and hurried out of the bookstore. While she was crossing the alley, she took deep breaths, doing her best to keep her anxiety under control. What was waiting for her—Matt coming home tonight, and the confrontation about the clothes in the attic—was overwhelming.
When Ali entered the restaurant, the dining area was packed to capacity. Most of the customers were headed to work, stopping for a muffin and a fast cup of coffee. There were only a few tables occupied by people having a leisurely breakfast. As Ali made her way toward the kitchen, she saw that two of those people were Peter Sebelius and his wife, Quinn.
Peter had a bowl of oatmeal in front of him and was offering a spoonful to Quinn, telling her, “You’ve got to taste this. It’s incredible.”
Still worrying about Matt and the suitcase, Ali hoped to slip past unnoticed—but she’d been spotted. Quinn was calling to her.
Ali forced a cheery grin and went over to the table. “I’m glad you’re enjoying the oatmeal. It’s Sofie’s favorite. We only use steel-cut Irish oats, and before we cook them, we sauté them in a little butter to bring out a nice nutty flavor.”
Quinn was smiling up at Ali. “I’m crazy about the way you top it off with roasted pecans and these amazing bananas.”
“They’re plantains, with a butter-and-brown-sugar glaze that has cinnamon and a touch of vanilla in it.” There was wistfulness in Ali’s voice, as she added, “I got the idea from my friend Ava. She grew up in Belize.”
“No wonder people rave about the food in this place. Everything’s laced with butter,” Quinn told Peter.
“As a doctor, I disapprove. As a guy who likes to eat, I’m loving it.”
Ali put her hand on Peter’s shoulder. “I just realized this is the first time you’ve been in here. What took you so long?”
“He’s a workaholic,” Quinn said. “He’s always at the hospital, always—”
Ali’s phone signaled the arrival of a text. She saw the message and told Quinn, “I’m sorry. I have to deal with this.” She moved away, pressing a number on her speed dial.
Morgan picked up immediately, sounding hysterical. “Where’s the spare key to your house? I’m looking in the planter at the side of the garage. It isn’t here. Why isn’t it where it’s supposed to be?”
“Morgan, you texted me there was an emergency. Why are you at my house? Why aren’t you at work?”
“A meeting with my boss was canceled, and I ducked out.” Morgan’s words were coming in a rush, as if she were being chased. “I only have a little while before I need to be back. Where’s the key?”
“I gave Mom the spare key to use while she was visiting. She probably forgot it was in her purse when she left.”
“Is there another one somewhere?” Morgan’s tone was insistent.
This conversation seemed ridiculous to Ali, as if Morgan had somehow flipped back into being her old self—irrational and demanding. It made no sense.
Morgan’s voice was edging into panic. “I need to come and get your key. I’ll bring it right back. I promise.”
All Ali said before she put her phone back into her pocket was “I can’t talk. I’m busy.” She was under too much stress to deal with Morgan’s sudden return to craziness.
“Now that I’ve discovered JOY, I’ll be here every chance I get.” Peter Sebelius was calling Ali back to the table—and Quinn was saying, “Well, since we’re going to be regulars, I better get to know the layout. Ali, can you show me where the ladies’ room is?”
The request was so chirpy and self-conscious that Peter shot Quinn a puzzled look. “Finish your oatmeal,” she told him.
As Ali and Quinn walked away, Quinn glanced over her shoulder, making certain Peter was out of earshot. “Is everything set for his surprise party?”
“Yup. We’re good. The food. The equipment for the video tribute. All of it. I even hired a team to handle the decorations. They do great work.”
Quinn squeezed Ali’s hand. “I can’t wait! I wish it wasn’t happening the day after tomorrow. I wish it was happening right now.”
“This is the first private party we’ve ever had here. I intend to make it an evening to remember.”
Ali and Quinn exchanged a quick hug.
Then Ali went back to worrying about what would happen tonight when Matt got home—and she hurried through the kitchen’s swinging doors, barely avoiding a collision with a waiter. When he moved past, Ali saw that in addition to the restaurant staff, there was a stranger in the kitchen.
A man had just walked in through the back door that led to the walled garden. It took Ali a moment to realize who the man was.
“I caught an earlier flight,” Matt told her. “I couldn’t wait to see you.”
He had left for the movie job in the Australian outback only seven months ago. Ali was startled by how much he had changed. He was muscular and tanned. As if he’d been living outdoors, herding cattle or working at some sort of manual labor. His hair was longer, tousled and casual. And he had a close-trimmed beard—a shade or two darker than his blond hair, a golden-honey color. She’d never seen Matt with a beard before.
Everything about him was different. Rugged, and sexy, and new. For the space of a heartbeat, Ali felt an intense physical attraction to him. And in the next heartbeat, there was an overwhelming sense of danger. Her beguiling husband was a potential monster. He had covered up horrible secrets about his past. He’d put out a welcome mat for her attacker by leaving that lock unrepaired. And he was the only person who’d had access to the attic, the hiding place for her attacker’s clothes.
“Aren’t you going to say hello?” Matt asked.
Ali was so afraid, so confused. “You look completely different.”
Matt gave her an easy grin. “Aidan’s into horses. He taught me how to ride. And we played soccer like it was a religion.” Then he said, “I’m a little more buff, but I’m still me.”
And I have no idea who that is, Ali thought.
He brushed his lips along the curve of her neck. “Why did you need me to come home, Al?”
All Ali could feel was dread. She pulled away and wiped at the place on her neck where his lips had been.
“We have to go, Matt. There’s something at home that you need to explain.”
• • •
Before she left the restaurant kitchen, Ali had texted Jessica, asking her to pick up Sofie from the story group and babysit for a few hours. Now Ali was alone in the attic, with Matt.
The brown suitcase was open on the floor. Matt was staring at the satin shirt and the jeans. The horseshoe-buckled belt and the ostrich-skin boots.
All the color was gone from his face. “Who else knows about this?”
“Nobody.”
“Not even Morgan or your mother?”
“It was hard enough just telling them about the attack. I didn�
�t have the strength to talk about this… It scared me too much.”
Matt sounded like he was having trouble breathing. “How did it get here?”
Ali had to hold on to the wall for support. “You’re the only one who ever brought stuff into the attic.”
“But how could I have brought this?” Matt circled the suitcase, looking confused. “We gave this suitcase away. I remember. You put it on the Salvation Army pile at the apartment. Before we ever moved here.”
Ali’s voice was thready and scared. “Tell me why I found my attacker’s clothes hidden in our house, Matt.”
Matt kept his attention on the contents of the suitcase.
Ali backed away until she was safely on the other side of the room. “I asked you a question. How did that stuff get in here?”
“I have no idea,” Matt told her.
Ali looked from the suitcase to Matt—and was suddenly furious. “What is your connection to those clothes?”
Matt just stared at her, blankly. Then a realization seemed to dawn. “Holy Jesus. You’re still blaming me for that night?” He let out a groan. “Ali, I’d give anything to go back and make it so it never happened. I swear. I’d fix the lock. I’d sit outside our fucking bedroom with a hatchet and bury it in anybody who even thought of coming near you.”
“But that wasn’t what you did, was it?” Ali crossed the attic and stopped a few feet away from her attacker’s clothes. Without planning to, she punched Matt—as hard as she could.
And kept the punches coming. She wanted to kill him.
Matt made no attempt to defend himself. It wasn’t until Ali’s fists slowed and she said “I hate you for not taking care of me” that Matt gently pushed her away.
“Ali, I didn’t fix the lock. I let you down…but I didn’t let you go home to be raped.” His mystified gaze went back the suitcase and the clothes. “I swear to God, I don’t know how this stuff got into our house.” Matt sounded shattered. “I can’t believe you thought I was the one who brought these things in here.”
She had to look away. The depth of his hurt was too gut-wrenching, too real. Ali instinctively knew he was telling the truth.
She wanted to let go, forgive Matt. Wanted to say she was sorry and that she loved him. She wanted to lean on him and have him hold her up.
But some self-protective part of Ali was warning her to be careful, to take this very slowly.
Looking like he was fighting to keep his composure, Matt was again circling the suitcase. “We have to deal with this. Then we have to decide what to do about the rest of our life together.”
“The rest of our life together?” Ali’s mood of love and forgiveness was suddenly gone. “How am I supposed to figure out how to have a life with you when all you are is a wall of secrets?”
“What secrets?”
“Your sister. And your mother.”
Matt froze.
“I went to Phoenix,” Ali told him. “I met Kim.”
His eyes were wide, like he was caught in a hunter’s crosshairs. “Ali, I—”
She cut him off. “If you can cover up things as huge as what I discovered in Phoenix, how am I supposed to trust you…about anything?”
Matt’s mood instantly changed. He came across the room fast—grabbing Ali and telling her, “We’re both guilty of covering up the truth. And we did it for the exact same reason.” The way he said it was quiet, a warning.
They were at the edge of a cliff, and Ali wasn’t sure if Matt was trying to push her over it, or away from it. She had no idea what he was talking about.
“Your rape,” Matt said. “After it happened, why did you hide in the house and pretend to have the flu? Why didn’t you just come out and tell everybody the truth? Why did you cover it up?” His tone was harsh, yet what Ali saw in Matt’s eyes was empathy.
She suddenly understood what he was asking her, and what he was explaining to her. Matt was throwing out a lifeline they could pull themselves to safety with. And Ali said, “I didn’t tell anybody I’d been attacked because it was too awful. I didn’t know how to talk about it. I lied because I didn’t know what else to do.”
“Me, too.” Matt swallowed hard, and then said, “That’s why I didn’t talk about my mother and my sister, why I lied about the way I grew up. It was so awful I didn’t know what else to do.”
Matt wrapped his arms around Ali. “Neither one of us is a saint, or an unforgivable sinner,” he whispered. “The only way we’ll survive is if we can accept that and just keep on loving each other anyway.”
He made it sound so easy—but Ali had the feeling it might be hard to do.
Matt moved away and crouched beside the brown suitcase. “Al, all I can give you on this is the same promise I gave you back in Rhode Island, when I asked you not to call off the wedding.” He stared at the suitcase’s contents. “I swear I haven’t done and will never do anything to deliberately dishonor our love.” He stood up and waited until her eyes met his. “I have no idea how these clothes got in here.”
Ali let Matt take her hand. As they walked toward the attic stairs, she asked, “Where are we going?”
“To call the police,” was Matt’s answer.
Morgan
Morgan was as jumpy as if the police were after her. Her dash to Ali’s house this morning, hoping to find proof of the meaning of buttercup, had been a disaster. After not getting into the house because the spare key was gone, Morgan had gotten caught in traffic on her way back to the museum and missed an important meeting.
She returned to work and discovered that her next meeting was scheduled to begin in minutes. Racing the clock, Morgan ducked into her office—heading straight to her computer.
With buttercup still buzzing in her mind, she swiftly navigated a corporate website, jotting down the locations of the company’s impressive number of regional offices. The information sent a spidery, creeping sensation down the back of her neck. Earlier in the day, she had scanned several other websites, looking for information on unsolved crimes. What she’d found had rattled her.
She could hear someone coming into her office. She closed her computer and quickly turned away from it. Her boss, Mr. Dupuis, was watching her through narrowed eyes. “Is there a problem, Morgan? They’re waiting for you in the staff meeting.”
“No. No problem. I was just…um…I was just on my way.” Morgan made a show of efficiently gathering up her files and her museum-issued iPad. But all she could think about were the notes she’d jotted down from the website she’d just visited. Addresses that spanned the state of California, from mountaintops to desert valleys.
Those addresses terrified Morgan. But she was determined to do what was needed. Walk into the mouth of hell. Risk her life, if she had to.
Morgan intended to do whatever it took to make Ali safe.
Ali
Ali was, again, in the attic. Matt was with her.
Ali’s attention was focused on the two strangers on the other side of the room. A wide-shouldered black man. And a ferrety, sallow-skinned woman. The woman was meticulously photographing every inch of the attic.
From the moment he arrived, the man had maintained an impersonal, businesslike attitude—but he seemed genuinely sympathetic as he told Ali, “I’m gonna help you all I can, ma’am. You have my word on that. The original detective on your case has left the department, and now that I’ve inherited your file, I’ll make sure nothing falls through the cracks. However, like I told you, this is real life, not TV. In real life, sometimes there are crimes that don’t get solved.”
Ali understood he was pointing out the truth—and she stubbornly refused to accept it. Until her attacker was behind bars, she couldn’t feel safe. Which is why she was insisting, “But now you’ll know who he is, you can arrest him. The clothes in that suitcase must have his DNA and fingerprints.”
The detective stepped
aside to allow his companion to photograph the items in the suitcase. “Ma’am, if these really are your rapist’s clothes, and not somebody’s idea of a sick joke, the DNA evidence we get will be the same as the samples collected from the rape kit they did on you in the hospital the night you were attacked. Samples we haven’t been able to match to anybody in our database. We still won’t have the guy’s name.”
Ali’s response came through gritted teeth. “This isn’t fair.”
“I understand your frustration,” the detective told her. “But if you think about it, we don’t even know for sure this is your old suitcase. Most suitcases look pretty much alike. And even if it is the one you used to own, any of a hundred people could’ve brought it up here.”
“No. That’s impossible.”
“Ma’am, you were attacked the night before you moved into this house. By seven o’clock the next morning, the doors were wide open and the place was crawling with people. The movers. The people delivering your new furniture. People installing the alarm system, cable TV, and computers. It probably stayed that way most of the day. In all that confusion, it would’ve been easy for somebody to walk in and slip a suitcase into your attic. Nobody would’ve noticed, certainly not your husband, or you. You were both in shock. You’d just been raped. Chances are that neither one of you was paying attention to every single individual carrying a box or wearing a uniform.”
For a minute Ali was speechless. “I never thought about that. You’re right. There were all kinds of people fixing things and delivering things on the day we moved in.”
“And as far as potential suspects go, it’s only the tip of the iceberg. Who knows how many others we could be talking about? Think about all the people who knew when you were moving, where you were moving from, and where you were moving to. At your restaurant alone there would’ve been kitchen staff, waiters, vendors, cleaning crews, window washers, gardeners, and, more than likely, a lot of customers. You probably talked about your move for weeks before it happened. You would’ve made phone calls, scribbled down notes, had papers all over the place that showed your new address—”
