CHAPTER 25
Lying in bed, Luke wondered how he’d gotten here. In an empty house, empty bed, alone on his seventeenth anniversary. Natalie—gone. Kids—gone. Felicity—gone. Annie—gone.
He’d replayed Annie’s farewell over and over in his head for the past week. It followed him to work, to every meeting. It followed him and echoed off the walls of his strangely empty home. What did he do wrong? What should he have done differently? Every single scenario ended the same way, with Annie never talking to him again. At least this way, it was his choice.
A few hours after Annie left, Luke finally got up the courage to use the business card he’d dug out the night before. Dennis Bormet, the investigator from Brian’s new job. Nervous but determined, he dialed the number on the card. The phone rang, one, two, three times. Just when Luke was coming up with what he’d say in a voice-mail message, a man answered.
“Hello?”
“Hello,” Luke responded automatically. “Uh . . .” He cleared his throat, trying to remember the story he’d planned out before the call.
“I already know who you are if that makes this any easier,” Dennis Bormet groused, like Luke was interrupting him in the middle of something important. Luke realized, belatedly, he was calling on a Sunday afternoon.
“This is Luke Richardson. I spoke with you a few weeks ago about Officer Brian Gurrella . . . you called me about a security clearance check?”
“Mm-hm, yeah, so?” Eating, it definitely sounded like he was eating something. Luke made himself continue, focusing on the cuts on Annie’s feet and face, the thought of Brian losing control, going too far.
“I need to retract my earlier recommendation. Some new information has come to light, and I . . .” Luke faltered, sure his script sounded juvenile rather than sophisticated. Playing nice wasn’t going to get him anywhere. He took a deep breath and blurted, “Brian Gurrella is an alcoholic. I don’t know if you test for that or if it’s relevant, but I felt like you should know.”
When Dennis Bormet didn’t answer immediately, Luke wondered if he’d hung up the phone. Listening closely, he heard two long gulps and a muffled burp.
“What evidence do you have of Officer Gurrella’s alleged alcohol abuse?” Papers rustled in the background, and unless it was a bunch of very stiff napkins, Luke was sure he’d finally gotten the investigator’s attention.
“I saw him when he was passed out. I . . . I saw some unlabeled pills and . . .” He hesitated to mention witnessing Annie’s injuries. “Also there was evidence of violence in his home. Broken furniture, glass, everything.”
Dennis Bormet paused for a minute, letting an uncomfortable silence sit between the two men. Luke recognized the interrogation tactic from when he’d been questioned about his mother’s death. Pauses were very tempting to fill with more information.
“Mr. Richardson, I’d like to talk about this with you in greater detail. Can I call you Monday morning and get this all on record?”
“By ‘on record’ do you mean you’ll record our conversation?”
“Yes, sir. But it’s all confidential. No one will ever know you spoke with us.”
A thrill of danger and revenge sent a shiver through Luke. If he told them the truth, maybe they wouldn’t hire Brian. Annie would remain safely a few blocks away. If Brian tried to hurt her again, she could call Luke for help, and this time he’d call the police.
“I’d be glad to speak with you tomorrow. Sorry I bothered you on your day off.” When he touched the red end button, Luke dropped the phone on his bed triumphantly. In the middle of his self-congratulations, an uncomfortable thought came to him—he wasn’t really doing this just because it helped Annie. He was doing it to make her stay.
Luke shrugged off the guilt. Calling Bormet might not be an entirely altruistic move, but that didn’t make it the wrong one. In the morning Luke had a long discussion with Dennis Bormet as he drove into work. The next morning he spoke with Bormet’s supervisor. Then Luke waited, keeping his phone in his hand as he slept, sure Annie would make her desperate phone call sooner rather than later.
Today he was avoiding sleep and avoiding leaving his bed all at the same time. Soon he’d have to get up and log in to make it at least look like he was working from home. He didn’t want to go far from home today. There would be a Natalie letter with the mail today, he knew it. And it would be all about their wedding day. Knowing Natalie, she’d write about every detail, how they wrote their vows together the night before, and then up past midnight before realizing he’d officially seen the bride on their wedding day. There was a time in his grieving process that letter would’ve been refreshing, could get him through another few days without her. But now the idea of reading a letter about the happiest day of his life only made his current situation stand out as even more depressing in comparison.
Eventually it was his bladder, not his stomach, that got him out of bed. Then the shower called to him, asking him to return to the world of fresh-smelling humans. After scrubbing himself till his skin tingled, Luke stood in front of a steamy mirror, wondering if he should shave or leave the day-old stubble Natalie always begged him to grow out. Closing the stopper in the sink, Luke grabbed a new razor from the clear plastic bathroom organizer. It rattled around inside the tub, half-empty without Natalie’s overflowing beauty supplies.
The sink reached its capacity, and Luke turned off the scalding water. Then a faint ding sounded from the main floor, followed by loud pounding.
“Damn it.” Seeing people was definitely not on his approved activities list for the day. When all the noise downstairs stopped, Luke leaned over the still-steaming sink, dipped his hands in, savored the stab of the superheated water, and splashed it onto his face.
The doorbell rang again. Luke sighed, yanked up the stopper, placed the canister on the counter, and pulled out a half-wet towel from the laundry basket to dry off. He snatched a thinning cotton T-shirt off his bed, grabbed his phone out of habit, and rushed down the stairs, barely getting the T-shirt over his head before the pounding started. With his free hand, Luke swung the door open. A tall, thin college kid with thick black hipster glasses frames stood on the other side, a blue ceramic vase packed with at least two dozen tulips cradled in the crook of his arm.
“Oh, hey, you Luke Richardson?” The guy read his name off a folded yellow invoice.
“Yes.” Luke opened the door a little wider, squinting against the late-morning sun.
“These are for you. Here.” He passed the tulips to Luke and shook the invoice open, offering the pen resting on his ear. “Sign here, at the bottom.”
“Um, sure.” Luke juggled the glass container of flowers and his phone. “Hold on, let me put these down.”
The delivery boy shrugged; his drooping name tag read KAL. Using his elbow Luke moved the collection of mail to one side, making a spot where he could put down the vase. The thick glass hit the wood with a thunk, and a blue envelope fell out from its resting place inside the flowers.
Whoever sent the flowers had been delivering the letters. Without stopping to check the thickness of the letter or estimate a number of pages, Luke rushed around his front door and on his front porch.
“I’ll take that paper now.” The kid fumbled with the invoice, and Luke resisted the urge to yank the paper out of his hand. When Kal finally passed it over, Luke ran his gaze across the crinkly yellow page, not sure what he was looking for.
Deliver to: 9317 Orland Dr.
Flowers required: 2 doz. Tulips.
Payment: Cash.
Then he saw it, bottom of the page, a name, smudged by the carbon on the old-fashioned order slip.
From: N. Townsend.
The name was crossed out with a simple X and next to it was written:
Anonymous.
The flowers. The letters. Everything—they’d all been sent by the infamous “Dr. Neal.” Somewhere deep inside he’d known it ever since he saw Neal’s name on Natalie’s phone. But to see the proof in his hand, scribbled down by a careless florist, made his fist clutch the pen he’d taken along with the invoice. Why? Why was this man such an important part of Natalie’s life? Why did he keep showing up in every corner of her existence? Who the hell was he? That anger he’d been running from his whole life boiled deep in his gut, crawled up his arms and neck, and made him want to hit something.
“Uh, you sign there.” Kal pointed vaguely at the bottom of the page. Luke lifted the pen to sign but then had a thought.
“Is there any way I can get a copy of this?” Luke held the pen off the paper. If he signed it, Kal wouldn’t have a reason to help him anymore.
“I only get paid if I turn in the yellow sheet . . . with your signature.” Kal waited with his hands in his pockets, his grungy brown hair hanging into his eyes. “But you can take a pic of it if you want,” he added.
Yes. His phone. Holding out the paper, Luke centered it in the frame and enjoyed the sharp click of the phone’s internal camera. Finally some proof. After checking to make sure the quality of the picture was clear enough, Luke scribbled his name across the bottom and handed it back to Kal.
“Thanks,” he said, heading back inside, closing the door behind him. The picture on his phone was clear enough to read every line. Luke glared at the flowers. There was a small rectangular card from the florist shop with a handwritten note in unfamiliar handwriting.
July 30
Luke, Happy Anniversary. My love for you goes on forever.
Love, Natalie
“Liar,” Luke whispered. Yes. That’s what she was. Whatever she was hiding with Dr. Neal as her accomplice, it was something she’d been lying to him about for years, decades even. “Liar,” he said again, louder, his voice reverberating through the nearby stairwell. The room turned a hazy shade of red, his breathing coming fast, like he’d been running. He picked up the vase full of tulips, each happy blossom another reminder of all the beautiful lies she told him. “Liar!” Luke yelled.
The cool vase suddenly burned in his hand. He couldn’t stand looking at it anymore. Listening to the monster inside him, he hefted the vase, bouquet and all, across the room. The ceramic bounced off the wall with a thunk and then crashed into a million turquoise pieces when it hit the floor. Water, flowers, and glass spread out across the floor like blood.
“Damn it!” Luke slammed his hand on the side table. His knees buckled, and he fell to floor. Who was he anymore? Where was that life he—and everyone else—thought was so perfect? Broken. Just like the vase. And the parts of that man, his father, who he’d worked so hard to keep repressed, they were taking over.
The water spread across the floor, and one edge crept slowly toward the letter he’d accidentally dropped earlier. He watched it eagerly, both wanting it to stop short of the envelope and wanting to watch the letter consumed at the same time. When the water’s edge touched Natalie’s sealed letter, Luke stretched out one hand, ready to save it, read it, add it to the pile in the box on his end table. No. He curled his fingers back into his palm, pushed off the floor, and turned his back to the destruction behind him. He’d let her words drown.