Crash & Burn (Tessa Leoni, #3)(98)

Is knowing that you’re tired of forgetting the same as knowing how to remember?

I stride across the parking lot in search of Tessa’s black Lexus SUV. Cloudless night above. Half-moon in the sky and so many stars. I can’t help but stop and stare. In all the places I’ve lived, the cities, the coasts, the deserts, there’s still nothing like the night sky in the mountains of New Hampshire.

I should count the stars, I think. So many, so vast. I could count and count and each one would make me feel smaller, less significant. Until I’d disappear once and for all, standing in the middle of a hotel parking lot. No more decisions left to make. No more past left to escape.

Then, in the next instant, I smell smoke.

And that’s how I know he’s here.

I can’t help myself. I take one step forward. Then another. There are only six cars in the dimly lit space. But I already know he’s not in any of them. He’s the shadow, right there, leaning against a tree. The man slowly straightening, unpeeling himself from the branches.

My husband walking toward me.

It’s funny the things you know after so many years together. I can’t see his face. He’s too far away and it’s too dark. But I don’t need to see his eyes or his nose or the slash of his mouth or the set of his jaw. I know my husband simply from the way he moves.

And the corresponding tightness in my chest.

He has his hands in his pockets. Nonthreatening, I think, and yet already my nerves are on edge. I hold Tessa’s key fob tight in my fist, just in case.

He stops four feet back. I can feel his gaze on my face, assessing me, even as I try to gauge his mood.

I feel too much at once. An urgent desire to rush forward, throw myself at him. Because I’m alone and I hurt and I wanted a family and I lost a family and he’s all I have. All, maybe, I’ve ever had, and God, I’ve missed him. The steady comfort of his voice. The feel of his fingers, massaging my temples. The strength of his resolve, day after day, week after week, month after month.

I love you, he told me, all those years ago. Wherever you want me to go, whoever you need me to be, whatever you need me to do . . . I will always be there for you.

Now I stare at my husband of twenty-two years, and I realize that for the first time, I’m afraid.

“Where are you going?” he asks. In the faint light cast by the moon, I can see that he’s frowning. “Should you even be out here?”

“Funny, I was going to ask you the same.”

He frowns again. Takes another step forward, before something about my expression brings him up short. He rocks back on his heels. Nervous, I think. Uncertain, which doesn’t make any sense.

“You met with her, right?” he presses. “Marlene Bilek. I saw the cops bring her.”

“You’re spying on me.”

“Of course. What did you expect?”

I shake my head, fight an instinctive need to rub my forehead. “You burned down our house.” Then, perhaps more important: “You were with me Wednesday night. You asked me if I trusted you. Then you fastened me into the driver’s seat and shoved my car down a hill.”

Thomas doesn’t say anything. He’s eyeing me intently. Waiting for me to speak more? Or waiting for me to remember more?

Sergeant Wyatt has it wrong, I realize abruptly. This has never been about Vero. And it’s never been about me. It’s about us. Thomas and me. Because that’s marriage, right? It’s never about one person or the other. It’s always the dynamics between the two.

And Thomas and I, we go way, way back. The longest relationship I’ve ever had. To the smell of freshly mowed grass. And a lonely girl’s view from a tower bedroom.

All these years, my husband hasn’t been waiting for me to tell him the truth. He’s simply been waiting for me to remember it.

I step forward. Testing out my theory, I hold out my left arm, push up my sleeve to reveal smooth skin. “Vero had a scar,” I say.

There, just for a second, a flash of recognition in his eyes.

“On her left forearm,” I continue, eyes still on his face. “I don’t have it.”

He knows. He knows exactly what I’m talking about.

“But the fingerprints,” he counters, “recovered from your car. The police identified you as Veronica Sellers. I saw it on the news.”

“I’m not Vero. Marlene Bilek knows it and so do I.”

He frowns, disappointed, frustrated, annoyed? I can’t tell and it makes me angry.

“You did this.” My conviction is growing, and with it, my sense of power. “You handed me those gloves. Did you tamper with them somehow, etch Vero’s fingerprints into the tips? But you did it. You made me put them on. And then . . .”

Rain, mud. I’m cold; I’m hot. I’m crying, but I don’t make a sound. I’ve consumed too much scotch. I’ve followed the woman, the magical queen from all the stories. And I’ve seen Vero, who was once dead but is now alive, and my world is imploding and I can’t put the pieces together again.

Thomas, responding to my frantic call. Thomas, once more riding to the rescue.

“Do you trust me?” he asks me, standing in my open car door. “Do you trust me?”

He bends down, presses his lips against my cheek. Soft, featherlight. A promise already laced with regret.