Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 138642 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 693(@200wpm)___ 555(@250wpm)___ 462(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138642 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 693(@200wpm)___ 555(@250wpm)___ 462(@300wpm)
“Then who?” I ask faintly. “The coroner’s van, I mean.”
Grant stops at his patrol car, one big hand on the driver’s side door, the other on the roof, glancing back at me.
“Maid up at the big house.” He looks past me to the looming sharp outline of the Arrendell house. “Suicide.”
“Oh, that’s terrible! I’m so sorry for her family.”
Again, Grant says nothing.
He just looks at me for a fraught moment—then ducks into his car.
The engine starts and the patrol car backs up before U-turning onto the road.
Just like that, he’s gone, following the van with the poor dead woman out of town.
Leaving me alone on the side of the road with bad phantom memories and a heart he shouldn’t be able to break again.
I turn to stare at the elegant house on the hill, hating its mystery, while the cold seeps in and numbs my bones.
3
ONE DAY AT A TIME (GRANT)
Fuck, I should’ve told her.
I slouch at my desk at the dilapidated little Redhaven PD precinct office, staring at the paperwork on the Cora Lafayette case. My pen taps restlessly against the half-filled report.
I just need to wrap up my notes. Once we get the coroner’s report, we can file this away. Should only take five minutes or so.
Instead, I can’t stop thinking about it.
I should’ve told her.
I should’ve told Ophelia that her younger sister is engaged to Aleksander goddamned Arrendell.
I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.
I could hardly get a fucking word out at all, not after seeing her for the first time in—damn, how many years has it been?
Too many after she went tearing out of Redhaven the second she was college ready, heading to nursing school out of state and never looking back.
Ten years.
I remember a girl—slim and lithe and headstrong—with a dancer’s delicate build and a bulldog’s determination.
Butterfly.
That’s who she was back then, barely old enough to drink and an adorable pain in the ass with an attitude bigger than her frame.
The Ophelia who came back is a stranger and all woman.
And that woman doesn’t need me dumping more trouble on her doorstep than she’s ready to handle, especially with her ma’s cancer relapsing. That’s probably why Ros didn’t want to fess up and tell her yet.
I should just trust her to know her sister.
She’ll know the right place and time.
What matters is that it’s not my place.
Doubt I could’ve spilled the truth without doing more damage, anyway. Hell, I almost didn’t recognize Ophelia when I saw her, changed by time and the sorcery of growing up.
Somehow, those girlish features got refined into sophisticated elegance, but the glacial perfection of her face just can’t be cold when her mouth is crooked and red and sweet.
Yeah, fuck me for staring at her mouth.
She’s got this way of quirking her head to one side and biting her cheek like she’s always about to laugh. The cold October breeze turned her honey-blonde hair from a tumble into a cloud, flaring around her in streaming wisps. They glowed like gold where the sun caught them, the entire mass caught up inside the collar of my coat.
Then there are those wide green eyes, gone angled and soft and wiser with age, yet still so innocent.
Still so familiar it kicks me in the face when I know the sharp mind behind that pointed gaze.
She’s so much more than a distant memory when she’s here again.
And I can’t believe she’s still got my heart tied up with nothing more than a glance.
Hell, if Ethan were around, he’d sock me in the mouth and tell me to keep my eyes and my dirty paws off his little sister.
He’d probably be right.
I’m pretty sure she hates me anyway.
She has every right.
After the way we parted, I’d hate my miserable, bitter, antisocial ass, too.
Ten Years Ago
“There’s something you’re not telling me.”
For such a skinny string bean of a girl, Ophelia’s always been as perceptive as a mirror.
Sometimes I want to ask her how she always knows.
Only, I think she’d smack me clean across the face if I did.
We’re sitting out back on her ma’s porch. It’s gotten to be a habit in the time since Ethan disappeared without a trace.
Almost ten damn years now.
I couldn’t do much, not back when he first vanished.
I was only twenty then, still in college and working to get on the Redhaven PD. After that, I was just a rookie. As I’ve worked my way up to a proper badge, I’ve kept up the same habit, year after year.
I have to look in on the Sandersons.
On Angela, on little Ros, on Ophelia, just to see how they’re coping.
I have to make sure they’re okay.
Ethan would’ve wanted it that way.
I think he’d like me watching over them, even if he would’ve given me endless shit over it and laughed his dumb head off.