Reputation(53)

I can feel Willa turn to me. She wants to ask me something, but I hold up a hand. I feel too exhausted to mine this any further. I hate her for exposing my daughter’s duplicity. I also hate that these are things that have gone over my head. I’m supposed to know my girls better than anyone else.

“The night of the benefit,” I say to Sienna, my voice croaking with fear. “I need to know. You really weren’t here? You really didn’t see Greg? You really didn’t . . . ?” I’m not able to complete the sentence. It’s like tossing a bomb into a field and then running away before the blast.

Sienna’s eyes are wide, dark pools. Her lips part. “No way.”

“Okay,” I say, nodding and nodding. “Okay.”

I tilt my face toward the ceiling, staring at the pendant lights over my family’s old island, glowing like the sun. I have so many questions. How Sienna crafted the e-mails and hacked into his e-mail. Why she didn’t just come to me with her suspicions. Did she think I wouldn’t believe her?

Again, my fault. All my fault.

I think about the wording of those e-mails. Greg’s aggression. Lolita’s retreat. She begged him to take her back in the end. Could it really be fiction? How does this tie into who killed Greg? Does it even? Or maybe Sienna’s right, and Greg was having an affair with someone—but not Lolita. And it’s this person who felt cheated on.

Gravity presses down on me. This is too much to take in. I can’t focus on my husband’s killer. I still haven’t wrapped my head around the fact that my husband’s gone. And underneath that layer is how angry I am with him. And underneath that layer is the frustration that Martin had a bad heart and that now I’ve lost two people I loved, and how it doesn’t seem like the universe has dealt me a particularly fair hand.

“I need a second,” I say, rushing out of the room. But as I’m at the door, I hear a sharp, metallic buzz. My eyes dart to Sienna’s phone, which lies faceup on the table. A name flashes on the caller ID: Raina.

Aurora frowns. Sienna grabs her phone and turns it over. The thing keeps buzzing, sending shock waves through the wood, the air, my teeth. Buzz, stop, buzz, stop. Finally, Sienna holds down the button on the side and turns it off.

I feel Willa watching me again, and finally, I meet her gaze. It’s clear she saw the name on the screen, too, and she’s making the same connections I am. Raina. The night Greg was murdered, I remember Sienna’s voice on the phone, her quick assurance that she wasn’t drunk. I remember how she worded the next part, too: I just need to find Raina, and then we’re leaving.

Maybe Raina had tried to impress upon me that she and Sienna had been together when Sienna heard the news—together the whole night, essentially—because she needed to cover her ass, create an alibi. Aldrich is a half mile from my home on Hazel Lane. Someone could easily travel from campus to there and back again in the span of an hour or so.

I walk out of the kitchen, through the back door, and to the middle of the yard. My feet sink in the wet earth. Wind whips around me, stinging my skin. But I can barely feel it. I’m too caught up with the picture taking shape before me. The truth about Greg’s mistress has been in front of me this whole time. Maybe the truth about his murderer has been, too.





20





LAURA


MONDAY, MAY 1, 2017


At 6:00 P.M., Ollie opens the refrigerator and proclaims we have nothing for dinner. “I can cobble something together,” I tell him. “There’s some chicken breasts in the freezer.”

“Nah, that’s okay. We need other things, too. I’ll go out. You look tired.”

I certainly can’t argue that. Before he leaves, Ollie pulls me into a half hug and kisses the top of my head. I try to relish the affection, but all I feel is numb panic. Then I watch him shrug on his coat and head out the front door. After his car is gone, I collapse against the doorframe as though all my bones have broken. Ollie worked from home today, and because I’ve had the day off, too, we’ve been under one another’s noses in this little house for hours. With him gone, it feels like I can finally breathe again. Finally think.

Except ten minutes later, I hear the keys in the lock again. The front door squeaks open.

“That was quick!” I chirp as I clomp down the stairs. “Did you just get takeout?”

But Ollie has no shopping bags in his hands. He’s even left the front door open, a cold wind blowing in stray bits of leaves. When he sees me, he just stares. Except there is something empty about his gaze. It seems like he’s looking through me.

Horror carves through me. “I-Is everything okay?”

“Give me the baby,” Ollie says in a low voice.

I start. Then I press Freddie to my chest, my hand against his back. “W-What? Why?”

“Give me the baby.” He holds out his arms.

Something in his voice makes my stomach drop. I hand over the baby, staring down at my trembling hands. Ollie stands over me, his nostrils silently flaring. My heart hammers.

“I just got a group e-mail from Reardon about the Greg Strasser murder case—I guess they’re looking for any tips they can get,” Ollie says in a low voice. “Some images from a neighbor’s security camera show the cars in the cul-de-sac the evening he was killed.”