Saturday, October 17
Silas and I pull into the garage at my house and I’m frozen in the passenger seat. We’re in my car since the opener is programmed directly to it. This is our only way inside, since I’ve become a little too dependent on the keypad lock on the door in the garage and don’t carry a house key anymore.
“I don’t know if I can go in.” The police were done days ago, but it took a while to get a cleaning service that specializes in crime scenes here and there’s no way I was coming back until they were done.
Technically, I’m free to move home, but my parents think it’s too dangerous since the police still haven’t made an arrest. But honestly, I’m not sure I could stay here even if Ben’s killer is caught.
Silas puts the car in park but doesn’t cut the engine. “You don’t have to. I can run in and get it.”
He starts to get out but I stop him. “Wait. Just give me a minute.”
“Whatever you need,” he says as he settles back in his seat.
“I just feel like if I don’t go in now, I’ll never be able to.”
A mix of emotions rolls through me. Even though I know Ben isn’t on the floor of his office, that’s all I picture when I think about going inside. The ache in my chest flares when faced with walking into the house he loved. The house he spent so much time perfecting. The house that has always felt more his than mine.
I don’t want to be one of those people who sugarcoats all the bad times with someone just because they’re gone, but grief has a funny way of making the good moments we shared shine brighter in my memory. The misgivings and concerns that drove every single action I made last weekend seem minor now.
I give myself a few minutes to center myself in reality, mentally listing all the reasons I snuck back here and climbed in the attic to spy on Ben exactly a week ago. Those rose-colored memories can’t hold up against the fact that we’re here to find the key to a dead cop’s gun safe so we can retrieve evidence that Ben was going to use against my brother. It’s a horrible way to think about it but the only thing that grounds me.
“Not trying to rush you but we only have a small window of opportunity to get into Foster’s house while his wife is out this afternoon.”
Silas created a situation where Mrs. Foster would be away from home. The Corbeau Police Department will be honoring Kevin Foster today by having a small reception and presenting his wife with a plaque. I’m impressed Silas was able to throw that together in a couple of days.
“Okay, I’m…I’m ready.”
He wastes no time getting out of the car while I’m moving at halfspeed. I follow him to the door and tell him the four-digit code to unlock it. Silas bounds into the kitchen once it’s open, while I’m still stuck in the garage.
He’s back by my side when he realizes I didn’t enter behind him. “You do not have to do this.”
“Yes I do.”
He holds out his arm and I clutch it like my life depends on it. Slowly, he pulls me through the door.
A strong antiseptic smell hits me the second we’re inside. He leads the way to the kitchen, and there’s a stillness in the air as if the house knows it’s been abandoned.
That stupid mum is still sitting on the counter, the same one I felt so smug that I had already bought when Ben questioned why I was at the feed store. How naive I was to be worried about him catching me in a lie. The tiny flowers are withered and dead from lack of water, as if this house has sucked the life out of everything inside it.
I move to the small desk where I pay bills and keep my calendar and pick up the glass jar that holds all my pens and markers. I dump the whole thing out and sort through them until I find the key.
“Just where he left it.”
Silas is driving us back to Corbeau. We left the house as soon as we retrieved the key. He asked me if I wanted to grab any clothes or other items, but I couldn’t bring myself to go any further inside than the kitchen.I twist the key in my hands and think about how drastically my life has changed in the last week.
“Was Ben killed over this?”
It takes a while for Silas to answer me. “That’s my guess. When Ben first came to Dad and me to tell us about Hank getting Paul’s file, he was freaking out. Worried how it would look if the truth came out now. How it would hurt his practice. Dad lost his shit though and was less worried about Paul and more about how much other evidence Foster had been stockpiling over the years. Paul Granger’s case would blow back on me and Ben, but everything else would destroy Dad.”
I can only imagine how pissed Dad was. “So what did Ben do once he realized that?”
“He turned on us immediately. You could see it in his face. Almost hear the thoughts rolling around in his head. How much control he’d have over us if he got to it first.”
The trees pass by in a blur as I stare out the window and process everything Silas is telling me. I’m embarrassed about how naive I’ve been. How my entire family knew more about my husband than I did.
I can’t look at Silas when I admit, “I always felt like Ben and I were better than Mom and Dad. Superior to them. I mean, I knew Ben wasn’t perfect and pushed the line of what was legal, but I had no idea how far on the other side of it he really was. Or that Dad was helping him. I feel so stupid.”
“Don’t feel like that. I’m glad you didn’t know. I was relieved you were blissfully unaware. Ben’s problem is he didn’t understand what becoming a member of this family meant. Dad wanted to control him like he did us. At first, he was okay with it because Dad made sure he got some big clients and won those cases. But then Ben realized you couldn’t just takethe parts you wanted, you were stuck with all of it. Ben would have made the most out of having this wealth of information to hold over all our heads.”
