by Dianne Dixon
“Oh God.” Ali couldn’t believe what she’d done.
“What is it?” Matt asked.
“I did talk about the move.” She felt sick. “And I talked about the broken lock, too. I must’ve mentioned it to Ava a million times. I was so mad that you never fixed it.”
Ali turned to the detective. “People were always around when I was talking about the lock…and about the move. Dozens of people. Coming in and out of the kitchen all day long…people who knew I was moving, and that the patio door to the apartment was unlocked.”
“We’re looking for a needle in a haystack.” The detective sounded sorry to have to tell Ali, “It would’ve been the simplest thing in the world for your rapist to take the suitcase out of your apartment garage on the night of the rape, pack his clothes in it, and then bring it up here to your attic, unnoticed, on the day you moved in.”
And there were other people, too, Ali thought. People the detective hasn’t even mentioned. Everybody who was in this house the night of the attack, the people who were here for the housewarming…like Aidan. I remember that odd tone in his voice, in the garage…when he put his mouth on my ear and said, “A girl from Rhode Island, who wants babies and loves to cook, is married to the producer of a hit television show and can’t figure out why she’s a work widow. I’d call that Hello Kitty in the Land of the Barbies.” And then later, his weirdly hostile kiss on my cheek when he told me, “I’m leaving. But I’m sure I’ll see you again. Soon.” And what about Levi, and the text he sent me that night? The text that said, “Don’t make me crash your housewarming and cause a scene. Don’t forget. Am on my way into LA…”
Ali was scared to the point of being dizzy. “Why did the person who hurt me hide that suitcase in my attic?”
“My guess? A power play,” the detective said. “He knew it would be found eventually, and when it was, without even lifting a finger, he’d be terrorizing you all over again.”
“Then he got what he wanted,” Ali murmured.
Matt looked at the open suitcase. “You’ll never catch the guy, will you?”
“We plan to turn over every rock we can.” The detective briskly put on a pair of latex gloves. The soothing tone was gone from his voice. “There was some sloppy police work on your wife’s case. The original investigating officers didn’t take a DNA sample from you on the night of the rape, Mr. Easton.” The detective ejected a cheek swab from a plastic case. “Mind if I ask for one now?”
Suddenly Ali felt a tickle of doubt about Matt. “How could my husband have had anything to do with what happened to me?”
“That’s what we’re about to find out,” the detective told her.
Morgan
When Matt opened the door, Morgan was surprised. She’d been expecting Ali. “What are you doing here? I thought your flight wasn’t coming in until late tonight.”
“I caught an earlier flight.” Matt seemed tense.
And it made Morgan wary. She was watching him carefully as she told him, “I almost didn’t recognize you. You look like a completely different person.”
“It’s the beard,” he said.
Morgan took a step toward him, hoping Matt would open the door a little wider and let her into the house. He didn’t. “This isn’t a good time for a visit, Morgan. Ali isn’t here…and she won’t be back for a while.”
Morgan was sick-to-her-stomach frightened. The missing spare key had kept her from getting into Ali’s house this morning, and now it was after seven. The whole day had gone by. She needed to get this done before any more violence happened. She had to get upstairs and confirm her suspicions about buttercup.
Morgan blurted out the first cover story that came into her head. “I want to run up and say hi to Sofie. Just for a minute.”
Matt was already closing the door. “Sofie is at Jessica’s. That’s where Ali is…picking her up.”
Determined to get into the house, Morgan shoved herself through the narrow space between Matt’s body and the doorframe. He made a grab for her, but she broke free and ran, telling him, “I won’t stay long. I bought a little present for Sofie. I’ll just dash in and leave it on her bed.”
Worried that Matt might follow her up the stairs, Morgan yanked her keys from her coat pocket and tossed them in his direction. He instinctively dove to catch them. “I left my purse on the front seat,” Morgan said. “I’m not sure I locked the car.”
She knew Matt was losing patience. From the way he was holding the keys, it was obvious he wanted to throw them at her.
“Please. My purse is wide open, and my wallet’s in there…all my credit cards, everything.” Morgan glanced toward the stairway. “I’ll just be a minute, and I’ll be out of your hair.”
Matt hesitated for a second, then went toward the door. As soon as he was outside, Morgan bolted up the stairs, taking them two at a time.
She went directly to Ali’s bedroom and headed for the closet, grabbing a chair to stand on and swiftly sliding her hand under the shoe boxes on the overhead shelf—finding nothing but a feathering of dust. Morgan stifled a scream.
But suddenly, at the back of the shelf, there it was. The item Morgan had stumbled across that afternoon when she and Ali were rummaging through the closet—the file folder Ali had borrowed from Jessica. Information about rapes that had occurred all over California.
Morgan took the folder and ran to the bedroom window—Matt was walking up the front path toward the house. Morgan quickly ducked into the bathroom, closed the door, sat with her back against it, and flipped through the folder’s contents.
Other than the handwritten note from Jessica clipped to the inside cover, most of the stuff in the folder had nothing to do with the evidence Morgan was searching for. But tucked in, at random intervals, were some of the articles she remembered looking at earlier. News stories that gave a gruesome significance to the word buttercup.
They were printouts from the websites of different newspapers—each paper published in a different California town, documenting rapes that had occurred in different months and different years. At first glance, the crimes seemed to be unconnected. But when Morgan laid them out on the bathroom floor, side by side, they formed a pattern.
The article with the earliest date was from a Pasadena newspaper and described an attack that happened in an upscale neighborhood. The other articles came from all over California, and every one of them had a connection to the corporation Morgan had researched that morning, before Mr. Dupuis called her into the staff meeting.
Each rape was within a few miles of one of the corporation’s regional offices.
The Pasadena attack and the other rapes shared a pair of identical details. Details that had Morgan shaking. She’d been right about the meaning of buttercup. And she now realized the awful significance of what she’d seen in the drawer on the boat—the panties.
In the articles she was reading, the victims all reported that as the assault began, the attacker said Time to pay up, buttercup. And in each case, the attacker had also taken the victim’s underwear.
Morgan rapidly gathered the scattered contents of the folder, and then put her ear against the bathroom door to hear if Matt was coming upstairs. When all she heard was silence, she pulled her phone out of her pocket. Morgan’s focus was the note from Jessica, clipped to the inside of the file folder: The guy’s trademark was the name he called his victims, the name of a summer wildflower…and he always took their underwear.
The instant Morgan’s mother answered her call, Morgan said, “Mom…those yellow flowers on Grandma MaryJoy’s farm, the ones that used to grow wild in the summer…they were buttercups, right?”
“Yes, honey, but—”
“And the person who hurt Ali…when he was attacking her, did he call her buttercup?”
“I’m not sure. I don’t know. Ali never gave me the details. But what’s going on with you? W
hat do flowers on Grandma’s farm have to do with any of this?”
“It’s not the flowers. It’s their name…buttercup. I think I’ve found Ali’s rapist.” Morgan checked the file folder again. “I was just hoping you knew if he took Ali’s underwear.”
But the truth was that not having absolute proof Ali had been called buttercup, or that her underwear was taken as a trophy, didn’t change anything. Morgan’s gut instinct had already told her everything. She knew, without a doubt, who Ali’s attacker was.
And Morgan intended to punish him—to do it up close and personal, looking straight into his eyes.
Without saying good-bye to her mother, Morgan switched off her phone and dropped it into her pocket, her heart racing. She could hear Matt coming up the stairs, and that Ali was with him.
By the time Morgan scooped up the file folder and walked out of the bathroom, Ali and Matt were on the other side of the doorway, in the bedroom. Matt shot Morgan an exasperated look.
Holding the folder behind her, she slipped it out of sight between the bedroom wall and the dresser she was passing.
Cradling Sofie in her arms, Ali had her attention on Matt. “I’m glad Jess could take Sofie this afternoon. I wouldn’t have wanted her here when we were dealing with the awfulness of that suitcase—” Ali stopped.
Startled to see Morgan in the room, Ali looked horrified.
“What suitcase?” Morgan asked.
Ali nervously transferred Sofie to Matt. “She’s been asking for her teddy bear. Can you help her find it? I think it’s downstairs in the kitchen.”
Matt didn’t seem to want to leave. Ali gave him a look that said Go. Please.
Ali waited until Matt and Sofie were out of the room before she said, “How much do you know, Morgan?”
“I know that right now I’m feeling what you’re feeling. It’s horrible. I’m guessing it has something to do with the suitcase you just mentioned. And I want to help.”
Ali was adamant. “There’s nothing you can do. And I don’t want to talk about it. I can’t. Not yet.”
Ali looked so fragile and unprotected.
Morgan wrapped her arms around her sister, wanting never to let go. “It’s my turn to be the strong one. Let me take care of you…the way you’ve always taken care of me.”
• • •
Morgan held Ali until she sensed that Ali understood. Morgan was no longer a burden. She was a source of strength.
As soon as Ali went downstairs to start dinner, Morgan closed Ali’s bedroom door. After she made sure the door was locked, Morgan reached behind the dresser, pulled out the file folder, and slipped it back onto the closet shelf. She wasn’t ready to tell Ali, or the Pasadena police, about what she’d found.
What she wanted to do first was deliver a very specific kind of vengeance.
Six hundred ninety-three miles from Pasadena,
in a winter twilight.
Retribution.
Intense cold. Gusts of icy, fast-falling snow.
Halfway up a steep mountainside. A schussing sound—growing louder.
A man on skis. Moving down the face of the mountain like a bullet.
Suddenly. A small, brown rabbit darting out of the shadows.
The man swerving. The tip of his ski snagging a snow-dusted tree root.
For a fleeting moment, the man is airborne, in silent flight.
Then he is falling to earth.
Ali
The rain started shortly after Morgan came downstairs and kissed Ali good-bye.
There was an aspect of the kiss that was strange. Ali couldn’t shake the feeling something had been left unfinished between herself and Morgan. And thinking about things that were unfinished took Ali to what the detective had told her earlier in the day when Ali and Matt were with him in the attic—that the man who attacked her might never be caught or punished.
While she was feeding Sofie the last few bites of dinner, Ali was anxious. Glancing at the back door, checking to see that it was locked. The conversation with the detective had her worried.
She took another look around the room. Something wasn’t right—the knife block was at a crazy angle. The boning knife was missing.
Ali started to call out to Matt and tell him about the missing knife, ask him if he knew where it had gone. Then she remembered how a little while ago, when she needed to talk to Morgan and asked Matt to watch Sofie, he’d immediately put Sofie down for a nap—disappearing into his study to make a series of muffled phone calls.
Now she was hearing his footsteps in the entryway, followed by the slam of the front door.
Seconds later, she heard the sound of Matt’s car, tires squealing on the rain-slicked street, racing away from the house.
• • •
It wasn’t until Ali was upstairs and Sofie was asleep for the night that Ali realized Matt had come back into the house. He was standing just outside Sofie’s room, looking in. The collar and cuffs of his shirt damp with rain.
Ali kept her voice low, not wanting to wake Sofie. “Matt, what’re you doing?”
“Thinking how much I love you.”
There was something in the way he was gazing at her that wouldn’t let Ali look away. “What’s happening?” she asked.
“You’ll see. Right now, I just need you to come here.”
Ali stepped out into the hall, not sure what Matt wanted—not entirely sure about Matt.
He carefully shut Sofie’s door. Then he kissed Ali and said, “Your lips are cold.”
“I’m a little shivery.”
“A lot of shivery things happened today.”
Ali hoped that whatever this was, it wouldn’t be another hurt, another shock.
“I’ve been thinking about what the detective told us,” Matt said. “I’m wondering if he was right about your attack being one of those crimes that’ll never get solved.”
“Where are you going with this?”
“Al, I don’t want you to spend the rest of your life afraid, waiting for the guy to come back. I don’t want him to win.”
Matt moved close to Ali. She could see her eyes reflected in his. The same as when they were on the staircase at the wedding in Newport. When she’d caught the bridal bouquet. And Ali was seeing exactly what she’d seen then. The sweetness in Matt, and how much he truly loved her.
“That bastard who hurt you won’t win, Al. We won’t let him.” Matt took Ali into his arms reverently. Like a bridegroom lifting his bride at their threshold. Their beginning.
And then Matt carried Ali into their bedroom.
The room where Morgan had so recently unearthed the terrible truth about buttercup, and about the identity of Ali’s attacker.
Matt
When Matt carried Ali into the bedroom, what he had waiting for her were forests of white candles flickering in jewel-like glass containers and dozens of mahogany-brown baskets filled to the brim with red and white roses. The roses were in full bloom. The edges of the baskets and the petals of the flowers were dusted with raindrops. The way a cloudless night sky is dusted with a glitter of stars.
Matt could see Ali was dazzled, and puzzled.
“Happy Valentine’s Day,” he told her.
She was so innocent, so sweet. “Valentine’s Day. Oh, Matt. I’d forgotten!”
“I had, too…for a while.”
Ali looked at the baskets of flowers, delighted. “How did you manage to find a florist that was still open, much less one that had all these incredible roses?”
“It was a miracle. We were overdue for one.”
Matt moved toward the bed, wanting Ali to notice that he’d turned down the sheets—and that there was a single red rose on her pillow.
It had been a very long time. He waited. Letting Ali decide.
As she made her decision, Matt saw a look in
Ali that he’d only seen on one other occasion—when they’d had sex on that bluff in Newport, just before a gust of wind had blown them apart.
Morgan
The night rain tapped lightly on Morgan’s living room window. She was in her favorite chair, safe and snug, with Ralph sleeping at her feet.
There was soft music on the sound system, the songs of Billie Holiday. But what Morgan was hearing was the snippet of conversation she had with her mother earlier in the day, while she’d been crouched in Ali’s bathroom holding the file folder.
“Mom. The person who hurt Ali…when he was attacking her, did he call her buttercup?”
“I’m not sure. I don’t know. Ali never gave me the details. But what’s going on with you?”
The tender tone that had been in her mother’s voice was filling Morgan with yearning. Yet as she reached for the phone, she was immediately pulling back.
Morgan had spent her life pushing her mother away. She was afraid to find out just how much of a toll it had taken on her mother’s love for her.
Switching screens on her phone, Morgan checked her voice mail. There was a new message—Ben Tennoff, gentle and concerned. “I know I’ve been gone and you’ve been busy, and we haven’t seen each other for a while. But I just got home and read your Facebook post…that there was a tragedy in your family. I want you to know I’m here. If you need me.” He paused. “Or if you just want a friend to rent you a movie and bring you some popcorn.” There was another pause. “Oh. And, Morgan? Happy Valentine’s Day.”
Being with Ben was something Morgan very much wanted to do. But she was thinking about the martini-drunk afternoon she’d spent on Logan’s black silk sheets. For a minute she wasn’t sure she deserved kind, openhearted Ben Tennoff.
But there was that thought that Sam had shared: “Life is the process of becoming. It starts with your first breath and stays with you until your last. Just think of the power of it…being able to continually reach toward the light. The possibilities are infinite.”
