The Vanishing Season (The Collector #4)(15)

He gets it, though, why it bothers me. He gets it the same way Mercedes does. Mercedes, who never walks out her door in less-than-perfect makeup, because it covers the two jagged scars down her cheek made with a broken bottle when she was a kid. Because there’s a difference between being unashamed of your scars and putting them out for everyone to comment on.

He kisses me again and then walks me to my car, standing in the driveway until I’ve safely pulled away. I can see him in my rearview mirror until I turn the corner.

Home isn’t far, just over fifteen minutes if I obey all the traffic laws. Despite what my team likes to say, I do drive reasonably when we’re not on a time-sensitive case. My former team leader, Finney, before his promotion meant he didn’t have to be in a car with me anymore, used to turn a bit green when we had to get somewhere five minutes ago. However terrifying it was for him, I also never caused an accident or any damage to vehicle or passengers. I’m allowed to take a certain pride in that, I think.

I check the mail, throwing most of it in the trash can in the mail room, and head upstairs. I don’t bother to turn on any lights when I get in the apartment. I come home this kind of exhausted often enough that my bones know the routine; they don’t need my eyes to chime in. Bags and keys by the door, gun in the safe disguised as an end table by the couch, timer set on the electric kettle in the kitchen.

After changing into pajamas, I scrub my face and brush my teeth, then head into the closet to pull out clothes for tomorrow—today—and promptly trip over the garment bag that lives in one corner and seems to be growing. I growl and kick at it, but that’s predictably unsatisfying. It may be eight million pounds of tulle and satin and it still can’t be enough substance.

The Dress.

From the Wedding That Wasn’t.

It lives there in the corner of my closet, and every time I’ve almost figured out how to get rid of it, I chicken out. Every time I’m almost ready to let go of it, something says no, not yet.

I know there’s a reason I keep The Dress, I just don’t know what it is. Whatever that hesitation is, there’s something I need from it. Or maybe it’s a ledge, a painful but comfortable reminder of a thing I successfully walked away from, a leash that keeps me from hurtling into the same mistake.

I don’t know.

I met Cliff through temple, back when I lived near my parents and let my mother badger me into some of the singles gatherings. A good Jewish boy whose mother is one of the very few people my profoundly overbearing mother can call a friend.

It was the only thing I did that made my mother happy. She hated my major in college, hated my job, hated that I didn’t live with her and aba. But she was so happy I was dating a good Jewish boy that I stayed with him, even though I wasn’t all that sure I actually liked him. I didn’t hate him. And then he proposed, both sets of parents at the table with us, him kneeling with a ring and garnering the attention of almost everyone else in the crowded restaurant. We hadn’t talked about marriage. We hadn’t even been dating a year yet. But he proposed in front of so many people that I honestly couldn’t make myself say no. Not with all that attention. Not with all that pressure.

My mother was over the moon. She and Cliff both pushed to get everything decided right away. Choose the venue and the photographer and the caterer, get all the deposits down. Buy the dress.

The Dress.

I wasn’t ready, but they pushed and pushed and made me feel like it was impossible to say no. Like I was wrong to not want it, to not be ready for it.

Maybe that’s why The Dress stays around. I got steamrolled into buying it before I was ready, so I cling to it until I’m ready to let it go. Until I decide I’m ready, no one else.

Despite the friends gently poking at me to get rid of it.

Muttering curses under my breath, I shove the bag farther into the corner and rifle quickly through my suits and blouses to find a combination for the morning so I won’t have to think about it then. As I try to fall asleep, I can’t get it out of my head.

Some people have the monster under the bed, the nightmare behind the dresser.

I have The Dress in the Closet and the lingering self-loathing that comes from letting myself be manipulated into something I didn’t want. Even when your scars come from escaping something, they’re still scars. Brooklyn will learn that, if we can find her in time.





7

I arrive at the office just shy of five in the morning, having finally given up on trying to sleep. I’m not the only one either—the other three roll in twenty minutes later, Bran and Mercedes supporting a zombie-shuffling Cass between them. They look like parents trying to get a kid off to school.

Mercedes lets go so she can grab the bag under Cass’s desk. Bran keeps Cass upright until Mercedes can take her back. He slurps down the last of his coffee and puts the empty travel mug on his desk. Knowing him, it had enough espresso in it to kill most healthy people, and it probably wasn’t his first of the day. Of all the bad habits I’ve absorbed since joining the Bureau—or coming to Quantico—replacing my blood with coffee is somehow not yet one of them.

“We’ll be back,” Mercedes says more cheerfully than should be legal after so little sleep. She starts steering Cass toward the bathroom.

“Métela en la ba?era de una vez y abre el agua,” Bran grumbles.

“Si no lo hago contigo, no lo haré con ella tampoco.”