“You mean the fire?”
He glanced away, to the right and the highway past it. And for a second I thought he was going to ignore what I was saying and drive me away. I put my hand on the door handle, thinking I would run before I’d let him take me away.
“I don’t know if the fire was to hurt you or warn Caroline or destroy something.”
“Destroy what?” I asked. “The house doesn’t have—” Oh. The paperwork from the lawyer? That would be... ridiculous.
“What?” he asked. “What are you thinking?”
“Nothing,” I lied. “I’m not thinking anything. Just take me home,” I said.
He turned left and gunned the engine.
The front of my house was covered in yellow tape. There were black scorch marks on the side of the house. Half the trees were blackened sticks. It was so much worse than I thought. So much more real.
Ronan sat, stone still, eyes on the house.
“I’d invite you in,” I said with a laugh. “But—”
“Go,” he said, like he was just so done with me.
All-righty. Carefully trying not to show him any part of myself beneath the robe, which was ridiculous when I’d already shown him so much, I opened the door. “I suppose I’ll see you,” I said. “Lurking in the shadows somewhere.”
“Just be careful,” he said, and when he looked at me, the words dried up in my mouth. Anger, such pure anger it was like being frozen in place, radiated off him.
“Goodbye,” I whispered and got out of that car. Away from him with as much of myself as possible. God, when would I learn to stop giving men pieces of me just because they wanted them? I ran to the front door of my house, which had been unlocked after all the drama of the night. The floor inside was wet and sooty. Muddy.
I followed the cold draft coming in the back of the house from the kitchen.
“Oh my god,” I breathed. The glass was shattered from the sliding glass door and shards of it were blown all around the kitchen. More yellow tape fluttered in the breeze on the patio outside.
I looked at all this damage. The absolute ruin of my house and wondered... why I didn’t care. My cage was finally destroyed.
I pulled my dead phone out of the pocket of my silk robe and plugged it into my charger sitting on the counter like nothing had happened.
They’d turned off the gas last night in an effort to prevent my home from going up like a bomb. But my electricity was still on, and my little coffee pot was working and so was my fridge. Within a few minutes I had a hot cup of coffee with milk. And in the closet, I found my sweatshirt and put that on over my robe. The phone was going to take a few more minutes so I found myself standing in front of the door that led to Jim’s office.
The night he died... killed himself? Was murdered? The gunshot woke me up, and I lay in bed for a long time, freaking out and scared. Expecting, any minute, for the senator to come upstairs and tell me he’d shot an intruder. But the more time that passed I thought maybe I’d been wrong and there wasn’t a gunshot. If something was wrong the senator would be sure to let me know. And I fell back to sleep.
I slept until 7 am, went downstairs. Made my coffee. And it wasn’t until 8 am when I heard his secretary scream that I knew something awful had happened.
That picture of him in the folder had been taken on a gurney. If there were pictures of him in the library after the shooting, I’d never seen them. I’d never actually seen him. His secretary had had the foresight to throw a blanket over him. All before I even made my way down the hallway.
I’d been grateful all along that I didn’t need to look at my dead husband. But now it threw another layer of suspicion over everything. Had I seen him, would I have been able to tell if he’d been murdered?
Not likely. But still.
I stood at the door to Jim’s office, the desk in front of it where his poor secretary sat, judging everyone who came to visit. Including me. Especially me. Ugh. I hated her. There was something about that door. The big gold doorknob. The hinges were so big they looked like something out of a medieval prison.
This had been the senator’s space, and I’d cared not at all about it.
I didn’t want to be in this room then, and I didn’t want to be in this room now. I didn’t want to believe a word of what Caroline had said. But I had lived with my head in the sand for a long, long time. And it was time to be done.
I had to find some answers for myself.
I pushed open the door to reveal his wood-panelled study. The desk a wide raft that could have held four computers or at least another Jack fromTitanic. The walls were floor-to-ceiling bookcases. Full of... I didn’t even know. I never even cared. There was a fireplace and two chairs pulled up in front of it. A drink cart beside it. I wondered who ever sat with him in front of that fire. Because it certainly had never been me.
Had the Morellis sat there? It actually wasn’t hard to imagine. Jim had been evil, and evil men usually liked other evil men.