The Last Lie Told (Finley O’Sullivan, #1)(11)

Over the past year, many of the houses along her block had been completely renovated, while hers remained a bit of an eyesore with its ragged siding and sagging front porch. Roof still leaked. A bucket to catch the rain was a fixture in the dinky hall. Inside, the walls were only partially done. Electrical wiring and plumbing remained exposed in some areas. The original floors were in great shape, comparatively speaking. Derrick had said those floors had been the main draw for him.

Finley nosed her car into her cracked driveway. Grass had sprouted in the gaps of concrete. Walking to the front door, she ignored the fact that the tiny yard desperately needed a good mowing. She should hire someone. The neighbors’ Fourth of July decor finally coordinated again with the stuff that had been hanging on her porch since July of last year. She’d meant to take it down, but each time she started, her mind played a nasty trick on her by replaying the night she and Derrick had hung those lights and the red, white, and blue decorations. Laughing. Lighting sparklers. She shook off the memories and unlocked the door.

As much as she loved those memories, they remained too tender to touch with any regularity.

After wrestling the box of files in from the front passenger seat, she shoved the door closed with one hip and hauled the unwieldy package into her living room.

For about ten seconds she stood still, eyes closed in the darkness. She allowed the memory of his voice to echo through her.

You’re home late. Have you eaten?

She was always late. Work consumed her life then and now. Of course she hadn’t eaten. More often than not she had to remind herself to eat. As hungry as she was when she finally made it home, seeing him had made her forget. Her shoes came off; her clothes followed. They would make love and then drink wine and eat cold pizza or peanut butter sandwiches.

Finley collapsed against the door and ordered the memories away.

He was gone.

No matter that his clothes still hung on one side of the miniscule closet they’d shared in the unfinished bedroom.

He wouldn’t be coming back.

Even now she sometimes caught herself thinking “when Derrick gets home.”

She should donate his clothes. She could use the space.

His old pickup was still in the garage. When she’d moved in, they had joked about how the right-leaning structure would never make it through the year. But it was still here, creaking when the wind got up and groaning when the rain was heavy.

The memories, his clothes, his truck . . . all those things were the reasons she couldn’t move from this house. Parts of him were here, and she wanted to be near any part of him she could reach.

She switched on the light and blinked to hasten her eyes to adjust.

Despite all the work still to be done, the walls, the windows and doors—every part of this house had been touched in some way by him.

Just as every part of her had been.

“Enough.” She rarely allowed the memories to overwhelm her. Doing so only led to bouts of severe depression and overmedicating with alcohol. Not a good thing.

Pushing away from the wall, she tossed her bag aside and went in search of wine. She would sit on her favorite end of the sofa and study the case file some more while she drank herself to sleep. If she was lucky, she wouldn’t dream of that night. She’d relived it far too many times already.

For days after . . . that night . . . she’d lain in a coma. Bones broken, her body bruised and battered. Eventually she’d come around, and then the real pain had begun. The physical pain of healing and the emotional pain of facing the fact that Derrick was dead—and she wasn’t.

All the while, there was the investigation into what had happened, with its “one step forward and two steps back” pattern. Her pain turned to anger and bitterness. By the time she was out of physical rehabilitation, nearly two months had passed and the case had gone nowhere.

Her life on a sort of blurry autopilot, she had returned to work at the DA’s office. As if fate intended to finish the job started the night of the murder and, for added effect, right in the middle of her first big postrecovery case, she fell apart.

A psychotic episode, they had called it. Complete breakdown. Another month of a different kind of hospitalization and rehab followed. Bordering on violent, her episode in the courtroom garnered her probation from the bar. In a fit of outrage, she’d quit her job. To her way of thinking, she had lost everything anyway.

But she hadn’t cared.

She hadn’t cared about anything for a while. She’d holed up here—in the murder house, the news articles had called it—and tried to disappear.

Then Jack had pounded on her door and insisted she come work for him. He didn’t give a damn whether she cared about living or not, he’d claimed. He just wanted her to try. He promised Finley that if she couldn’t find her way back, he’d personally put her out of her misery.

How could she ignore the challenge?

Now, eight months later, she didn’t think about giving up or dying very often. Only when an in-your-face opportunity arose, like the one during the attempted robbery at the Shop Easy. What she hadn’t told Detective Graves was that she hadn’t been trying to get the guy with the gun killed. Not really. In that fractured, twisted moment, she was hoping he would take her out the way he should have done before. Then she wouldn’t have to keep trying to have a real life, and Jack wouldn’t have to worry about holding up his end of their bargain.