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Hunter had gone. Dana had gone. Every last guest had gone, and I was alone in a small house that felt too large and filled with ghosts.
There was a quiet stillness in the air as I finished up washing the dishes we’d used for the wake. The lights were on across the entire house, and I went through and flipped each of them off except the one by Dad’s spot in the living room.
I sat in his chair. I turned on the television for the first time since he’d passed, a rerun of M.A.S.H. flickering to life on the old square box. On the coffee table in front of me, a little book poked out, threatening to fall off. I hadn’t noticed it before.
I reached for it, saving it from a tumble onto the floor and dropped it in my lap. The front and back covers were blank and it was wide, like one of those display books you find at the bookstore, its only purpose to draw attention.
I flipped it open, a scratchy handwritten sentence filling the center of the otherwise blank page.
Our dear Lottie. Please don’t ever forget us. —Mom and Dad
My fingers froze. That didn’t look like Dad’s handwriting. Did Mom write that?
I turned the page.
Photograph after photograph wedged between paper and plastic. There were some of just me, some of the three of us, ones of just me and Mom or just me and Dad. There were photos of us hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park, photos of me learning how to ski, photos of me on the back of my childhood horse. I’d never seen a single one of them before.
I nearly dropped it from my lap when the doorbell rang.
Wiping away the tears I didn’t realize had fallen, I sprung to my feet. A big part of me wished it was Hunter. The more I thought about what Dad had said in his video, the more I found myself wondering if maybe there was a shred of truth to it all. Hunter had been such a comforting distraction in my time of grief and had seemed so sincere when he told me that he loved me.
Suddenly I desperately wanted him to be the one behind the door. It wasn’t unlikely. He could have come back, could have realized that I didn’t really want to be alone. But I didn’t want just anybody so that I wouldn’t be alone. I wanted him. I wanted to spend my moments with him, wanted to immerse myself in him, wanted to love him.
I wanted to stop lying to myself, telling myself that I didn’t.
I grabbed the handle and pulled it open, the words on the tip of my tongue, the want overwhelming?—
No.
God, no.
Chapter 37
Hunter
The lights and sounds of a car rolling down Lottie’s dirt road had roused me from sleep. Clumsily, I fumbled for the seat adjuster, forcing myself upright as my eyes slowly adjusted.
I hadn’t been able to bring myself to leave her all alone and thank fuck for that.
The moment I noticed it was Jared who stepped out of the car, I reached for my phone, hastily dialing nine-one-one. I wasn’t sure if Lottie had a restraining order against him, but just in case she did, I didn’t want to throw away the one chance I had to get him out of the goddamn picture.
“Police, fire, or ambulance?”
“Police,” I said, kicking open my door the second I saw Jared shut the front door behind him.
“What’s the emergency?”
“My wife’s stalker has just entered our home,” I said. I made my way up the front porch steps as silently as I could while rattling off Lottie’s address. “I can’t stay on the phone. Come quickly.”
I hung up and shoved my phone in my pocket, hoping they showed up before I beat the ever-living daylight out of him.
“Please just leave,” I heard Lottie say, her voice muffled through the crack in the door. My fists shook, my body pulsing with rage, but I held out. I didn’t need a murder charge.
“I’m not leaving until you understand that everything I did was for you!” Jared barked. Something rattled just inside the door. I hoped to God he wouldn’t do anything stupid, but considering he already was, that hope seemed lost. “Why can’t you take two seconds to see that, Charlotte?”
“Because I don’t care about anything you did, whether it was for me or not,” she snapped. “I don’t want you. You have to come to terms with that.”
