The locket her mother had given her caught her eye. It was her most prized possession and lay curled in the crystal soap dish she used to hold it while she showered. Instead of gleaming bright and pure, however, the links of the chain were caked with blood. The delicate filigree etched into the face of the locket acted as tiny channels that’d collected the awful stuff.
It felt like an affront to see something so precious fouled by the terrible evidence of the night’s brutality. She set about scrubbing the necklace with a vigor she wouldn’t have thought possible given her mashed potato muscles.
Only once she was satisfied not a speck of blood remained did she carefully dry the necklace and then slowly open the locket. The instant she saw her mother’s face, she experienced a pang of familiar longing.
She pined for the support of the woman who’d nursed her through childhood illnesses. Yearned for the kind of guidance that could only come from someone who’d known her her whole life—knew her better, perhaps, than she even knew herself.
But that’s not true, is it?she thought joylessly.
Her motherhadn’tknown her her whole life. In fact, her mother hadn’t even known her a quarter of it.
Athena Meadows had died two days after Eliza’s seventh birthday.
Thirty-one…
That’s how old her mother had been when her private jet suffered a catastrophic failure and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off Cape Cod.
Thirty-one…
That’s how oldElizawould be in just five short months.
Her eyes roamed lovingly over the tiny photo held secure in the locket. She analyzed features she knew as well as her own.
Some of themwereher own.
She had her mother’s tilted eyes and wide mouth. They shared the same black hair and slightly lopsided grin. But where her mother’s nose had been short and pert, Eliza’s was long and straight. Where her mother’s face had been round and smooth, Eliza had inherited her father’s square jaw and cut-glass cheekbones.
Eliza was pretty. That wasn’t a humble-brag. It was simply the truth. She had symmetric features and a thorough skincare routine. But Athena Meadows? Oh, Athena Meadows had been drop-dead gorgeous.
The snippet of the Wordsworth poem Fisher had quoted the first time she’d shown him her mother’s picture rang in her head.
“Her eyes as stars of twilight fair; like twilight’s, too, her dusky hair.”
The man couldn’t boil a pot of water without it bubbling over or make himself toast without burning it to a crisp. But he could quote Plath and Whitman as easily as if he were reciting his own social security number.
She loved that about him. Lovedmostthings about him if she was being honest.
Not that he was perfect by any means.
He had no sense of fashion. His wardrobe consisted of well-worn Levi’s and a revolving assortment of plain black T-shirts. He had the palate of a thirteen-year-old boy, his favorite foods being chicken fingers, Hot Pockets, and Uncrustables. And he had this weird habit of pronouncing Wednesday phonetically…wed-nes-day.
No, he wasn’t perfect. He was a human and therefore flawed.
But he’s perfect for me, she thought dejectedly. And knowing he’d never choose her was a singular sort of heartache she’d have happily gone her whole life without experiencing.
As if thinking of him conjured him up, a gentle rap on her bedroom door was followed by the sound of his deep, warm voice. “Ya doin’ okay in there, Liza?”
Liza…
He rarely used her nickname. A shame since it sounded so right in his mouth.
Gritting her teeth, she fitted the locket around her neck and then peeled the towel from her body before giving her hair a quick dry. Slipping on the fluffy lavender bathrobe she kept on a hook behind the door, she cinched the belt tight while padding across her bedroom.
With her hand on the doorknob, she took a deep breath.
It was difficult hiding her feelings from Fisher when she was in full control of her faculties. It was going to be nearly impossible now that every nerve ending in her body felt raw and exposed.
The memory of the day they met crystallized in her mind.
