Wish You Were Gone(40)

Gray sat down hard—the seat of her husband’s desk chair much lower than she was used to—and rolled forward.

Where was Darnell? What was he thinking?

Something peeked out from beneath the piles of paper. She pushed them aside and one of the bottom sheets stuck, adhered to the desk surface by the coffee stain. When it tore free it revealed a series of jagged white scars in the top of the dark wood desk. Heart pounding, Gray touched the violent slashes with her fingertip. There were at least three dozen of them, all roughly the same size, all evenly spaced. Darnell had made them deliberately.

What the hell?

Gray dug out her phone. She tried Darnell for the hundredth time. Voicemail. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and opened Darnell’s calendar on his computer, using the password he always used: #52751119515#, His college jersey number, his pro jersey number, the boys’ birthday, and their anniversary.

His calendar for the day was clear, just as she expected it to be. She looked through the files on his desktop and found one labeled JTW. James Thomas Walsh. Her pulse thrummed in her ears as she opened it, and then everything seemed to go still. Daily reports from William Brady, a PI Gray herself had used. Reports dating back six months. When James left the house, when he arrived at the office. Whom he’d met with, where he’d gone to lunch and with whom. There were photos and printouts of phone records and emails.

Darnell had been following James’s every move, well before he’d learned the truth about what James had been up to. He’d suspected something, and he’d never told Gray.

The evidence was stacking up. If she were a detective, this would be enough for her to call the man in for questioning. Glancing at the closed door, Gray dug a thumb drive out of her bag, copied the folder to it, and deleted it from his desktop, then expunged his trash. Once the task was complete, she sat back in the chair and sighed, wishing like hell she knew where the man was, what he was doing, and whom he was doing it to.





GRAY


11:45 a.m.

13 ? hours before the accident

“Ready to close on a house?” Gray stood in the foyer at Emma’s, butterflies beating around her own heart. It was a big day, in so many ways.

For years, Gray had urged Emma to do something for herself. To join a club, or take a class, or sell cosmetics out of her house, for God’s sake. Something to make her realize she was a real person with real talents and wants and needs. Someone who didn’t have to sit at home every day to wait for the human hurricane to arrive and then pick up the pieces in the aftermath. When Lizzie had started displaying Emma’s work and paying her to help take photos and update On a Lark’s website, it had been a relief for Gray—though she had been perturbed that it was Lizzie who had managed to pull Emma out of her shell and not her.

But whenever Emma went out on a job for Lizzie, or sold a photo, it was as if the young, vibrant woman Gray had once known came peeking out from behind the curtain. When Gray first met Emma, she’d been so different—so full of color and life and joy and ideas. Yet over the years, it was as if that color and life had seeped away, leaving behind a withered, gray husk. The work with Lizzie was great, but it wasn’t enough. And Gray had started to feel as if the whole idea of reclaiming vibrant Emma was a bust.

But then it had happened. She and Emma and Lizzie had been out for brunch for Emma’s birthday. Lizzie had pulled out a new Elle Decor and Emma had started critiquing it. Pointing out where a kitchen color scheme didn’t quite work, or where a skylight would have made all the difference, and Gray had pounced.

“You should flip a house,” she’d said.

And Emma, of course, had laughed. But Lizzie had latched on to the idea—one of the rare moments in the past ten years that she and Gray had been on the same page.

“Yes! You’d be amazing at that, Emma!” she’d said. “Every time we go to a home to photograph it, you notice when a wall has been taken down or point out where wainscoting or a tray ceiling could improve the feel of a room. Why didn’t I think of this?”

“You guys are crazy,” Emma said, shaking her head and sipping her coffee. “Where would I even get the money?”

“I’m sure James would invest,” said Lizzie, who clearly didn’t know anything about James. Which, admittedly, made Gray feel as if she had one up on Lizzie—as if Emma considered her the better of the two friends.

“Or you could use the money your dad left you,” said Gray, who knew every intimate detail of Emma’s life.

And that was when she’d seen it. A true spark of life—of defiance—in Emma’s eyes. She could use her dad’s money. She could do this—do something for herself—and not involve James at all.

“I don’t know,” she’d said. “Maybe.”

That had been the first hurdle, but it had actually taken months to convince her—to wear her down with carefully placed comments and questions. I noticed there’s an open house on Cavalier Street this weekend. Maybe we should check it out… Did you see what they did to the old Figueria place? Horrible. You would have done a much better job… Oh, your mom’s coming up this weekend? Maybe now’s a good time to ask her about the money?

But all it had really taken was for one of the cottages to go up for sale. For some reason that Gray had never been able to fathom, Emma had always loved those cottages on the west side of town. They were some of the oldest, least charming houses in the entire village, but Emma saw something in them. And now that Gray had been inside one, she could almost sort of understand. Emma could make that place beautiful—a sweet bungalow for a small family or a single mom or an artsy millennial couple. And if she did a good job, she’d inspire the homeowner next door to renovate—or sell to someone else who would. One house at a time, Emma’s inspiration could improve the entire neighborhood. Maybe she could even flip more than one.