Till Death(22)

The hand slides into my hair, the touch oddly gentle. Approving. “That’s my bride.”

I didn’t go back to sleep after having another nightmare. This time I didn’t even stay in bed. I went out into my living room and turned the TV on. Some late-night infomercial about a food processor that could apparently save the world was on, but I wasn’t really paying attention as I sat on the couch, wrapped in the soft throw.

I was thinking about the Groom.

He’s dead.

If he weren’t, he would be in his sixties now. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t be able to continue doing what he did, but I imagined that as he grew older, it would be more difficult.

I never saw the Groom’s face the entire time I was with him. It was either completely dark in the room or he blindfolded me. I’d only seen what he looked like when I was recovering in the hospital and the federal agents brought in a picture of him for me to look at. I avoided all media surrounding him and me, and I only saw his face once, but his image was cemented in my memory.

So when I dreamt of my time with the Groom, he sometimes had a face even though I never saw it while I was with him.

I shivered as I tucked my knees against my chest. Deep down, I knew that this poor woman’s fate had nothing to do with the Groom, but I couldn’t stop where my thoughts were going, especially after the pretty and super skinny brunette news anchor had gone there. What had she said? The body was found in the infamous location used by the Groom to dump the bodies of his victims.

Dump the bodies.

Closing my eyes, I pressed my lips together. There were only a few phrases I hated more than that one. Like someone was out dumping trash along the road. These were innocent women—six innocent women who were sisters and daughters, friends and lovers. They weren’t something, even in death, that could simply be dumped like an empty fast-food bag.

But what happened to this woman wasn’t because of the Groom. He was dead, because I wasn’t. Knowing that also meant that it was a coincidence that this poor woman’s body was found in the same location favored by the Groom.

But that didn’t make me feel any better.

I opened my eyes and let out a shaky breath. Rising from the couch, I walked over to the window overlooking the front lawn. I pulled back the curtain and pressed my forehead against the cool window.

The run-in with Mayor Hughes replayed as I stared out over the dark grounds. Did he really think I’d talk publicly about what happened with the Groom? I couldn’t understand how anyone would even think that was a possibility—

A shadow blurred across the lawn, disappearing into the hedges. I jolted back from the window as my stomach pitched. The blanket slipped off my shoulders. Then I jerked forward, yanking the curtain back.

My heart raced as I scanned the still grounds below. What had I seen? I wasn’t sure. The shadow had appeared person-sized, but it was so fast that I couldn’t be positive. I couldn’t be certain that I’d seen a thing.

I stood at that window for several minutes, waiting to see if anything moved, but other than branches from the oak trees lining the driveway, there was nothing.

“God.” Dropping the curtain, I turned and bent down, picking up the blanket. Now I was seeing things.

Was coming back here a mistake?

“No,” I whispered to the room. Coming back here had been the right thing to do; the only thing.

Walking past the couch, I picked up the remote and turned off the TV. I went into the bedroom and flipped on the nightstand lamp. Sitting down on the edge of the bed, I picked up the small rectangular card.

I’d looked at it so much that I practically knew the words and numbers by heart.

Smoothing my thumb over the card, I thought back to what Miranda had said about me coming home. She probably hadn’t thought twice about the words, but they were simple and powerful.

She’d said I came home to start living.

The photo of the woman they found started to form in my thoughts. It was the photograph used for her hospital ID. She had been young, early thirties, maybe late twenties. Light brown hair highlighted with blond streaks. She’d been pretty. Her smile was hopeful. The gleam to her eyes eager. She’d been alive until someone decided to take that away from her.

This woman I’d never met was not going to have a second chance. She wasn’t going to spend years in therapy overcoming whatever was done to her. Her story had ended midsentence, in the middle of a chapter.

Exhaling roughly, I placed the card on the nightstand.

There were two types of death. Actual death, like the kind this poor woman had suffered, where the body and soul and everything was gone. Then there was the second kind of death—where the soul was stripped away, but the body continued on, going day to day, just existing in a shell of what once was.

I stood up and started to walk toward the living room, but realized I had no idea where I was going or what I was doing. I placed my hands over my face and held my breath.

I’d died ten years ago.

Not from the injuries and all . . . all the damage. I died from everything else, and I’d just been existing since then. That knowledge was nothing new.

My throat started to burn.

Leaving here hadn’t fixed me. All it had done was give me time to deal. Not necessarily heal 100 percent, but to . . . deal. My therapist had pointed that out about one or five hundred times. Again, this knowledge wasn’t new.