Never Lie (72)

He wouldn’t. I’m almost sure of it.

But I’m not certain.

“So what do you think?” I say.

“I…” His eyes reflect the flames from the fire. “I think…”

I misjudged him. I’ve made a terrible mistake. I thought he would understand, but I was wrong. He doesn’t understand. Nobody can.

“Ethan?” I whisper.

He rips his blue eyes away from the fire and looks straight into mine. “I think that guy Luke is going to be a big problem. He knows way too much.”

My heart flutters. “Yes. Yes. I was thinking the same thing.”

“And also…” He is the one who reaches for my hand this time. “I’m glad I’m here to help you. We can take care of this problem the right way. Together.”

I squeeze his big, warm hand. “I knew you would know exactly what to do.”

We stand up simultaneously. Ethan walks over to the bookcase, and he picks up the carving knife he left there. He grips the handle with his right hand. His face glows eerily in the crackling light of the fire. I’ve always wanted a fireplace, but it’s not the sort of thing you could have in Manhattan. And this is a beautiful fireplace.

“You know,” I say thoughtfully, “this house is kind of growing on me. Maybe I could see myself living here after all.”

“Yeah?” His face lights up. “I was hoping you would say that. Because I feel the same way.” He raises his eyebrows. “You coming, Tricia?”

“Yes. Just a moment.”

I find my wool coat, draped on the edge of the couch. I rifle around in the pockets and my fingers make contact with the cassette tape I stashed there. I pull it out, looking at my initials on the side of the tape. I’m a different person now than the girl on the tape. But in other ways, I haven’t changed at all.

I close my fingers around the cassette. I walk over to the fireplace, my cheeks absorbing the heat radiating out of the small space. I toss the tape in with the others, onto the slowly disintegrating pile. For a moment, I stand there and watch it burn.

Then I join my husband.





Epilogue


TRICIA



Two Years Later




My daughter Delilah loves the garden behind our house.

She turned one a few months ago, and she’s in this adorable chubby toddler phase where she walks around with her arms out at her sides, about to topple at any moment. I watch her from the rocking chair in front of the house as she does just that—falls to her knees in the soft grass, then gets right back up without missing a beat.

She is a girl with a mission. Right now, her mission is to bring me a daisy she found growing in the grass. She makes it the rest of the way over to me and places one of her tiny hands on my knee.

“Mama,” she says. “‘Dis.”

“Yes.” I accept the slightly crumpled daisy. “It’s a flower, darling.”

“Flar,” she repeats.

“That’s right.”

She beams up at me. I might be slightly biased, but I think she’s the most beautiful child who has ever lived. She looks a lot like her father. Ethan and I both have blond hair, but mine comes out of a bottle and his is real. She has his blond curls—although his is cut too short to curl—and his clear blue eyes. She’s a spitting image of the way he looked in the baby pictures he finally showed me soon after we bought this house.

She takes such joy in the little things too. I bought her a baby doll for her first birthday, and her little face lit up with a brilliant smile. It made me remember the collection of dolls I used to have as a child. I had at least a dozen of them. And then another collection in a drawer in my room of the shorn heads of the dolls I didn’t like as much.

“Flar!” Delilah cries, then she toddles back into the garden, eager to rip out more of my flowers and deliver them to me.

I reach for the iced tea on the glass table by the rocking chair. We kept some of the furniture Adrienne Hale left behind in the house. We kept the bed but got a new mattress. We kept her sectional sofa after sponging it down aggressively. We kept the antique coffee table. I took down the portrait and stashed it in the attic. I couldn’t quite bring myself to destroy it.

Unfortunately, Dr. Hale didn’t have any patio furniture. All of that had to be purchased new. But we got a few gorgeous items. Everybody who comes to our house remarks enviously about how beautiful the place is.

They have no idea what a steal it was.

A hand drops onto my shoulder—Ethan is standing next to me. I smile up at him, and his eyes crinkle as he smiles back. He’s one of those men who’s going to get much more handsome as he gets older. You can just tell.

“Is she being good?”

“She’s always good,” I say.

It’s true. We live a charmed life here. We have an angelic little daughter. Ethan can work from home most days and avoid a commute into the city. All we had to do to get here was knock off a few people.

Right after our weekend at the house, I called Judy and told her we were very interested in the estate going up for sale. I pressured her to show it to us before it was officially ready for a viewing and we put in an offer on the spot. We didn’t haggle. We paid the asking price, not a penny less.

After all, we had a reason not to want people tromping in and out of the house. We had a reason to keep Judy from discovering any of the hidden compartments and turning the house back into a crime scene. We especially had a reason to keep her out of the garden.