In the kitchen I heat up the water and use it to make the maté, a caffeine-intense herbal beverage that some Argentines and Uruguayans drink all day long. Since I’ve never acquired a taste, I make black tea for myself. It’s cooler today than it was yesterday, so I carry a tray with our drinks to the coffee table in the great room instead of thegalería.
Minutes later, Sebastian reappears, his graying-black hair still tousled and damp from the shower. He plops down beside me and stretches his long, slim legs out on the coffee table. The house feelsrightagain.
“I assume no news is good news,” he says. “Other than what happened to our four-legged roommate.”
I’d planned to wait a little bit before bringing up Logan, giving Bas time to decompress from his trip and fill me in more about his visit, but with a question that straightforward, it wouldn’t be fair to wait.
Plus, a weird guilt has begun to seep its way through me. There wasn’t a single moment last night or this morning when I noticedeven a stir of emotion for Logan again, and yet I can’t get rid of a slightly tawdry feeling, like I’ve drunkenly kissed another man behind Sebastian’s back.
“Well, actually, thereissomething,” I say.
And then I walk him through it—Logan’s arrival and the news he shared. Bas’s face remains neutral as I speak, but I sense the muscles of his body tensing. Which catches me off guard. I’d somehow pictured him taking the situation more in stride.
“Wow” is all he says when I’ve finished. “You had no idea he was coming?”
“No, none at all,” I say. “Bas, I would have told you if I had.”
“Of course. It’s just such a surprise, him turning up that way. It must have been very strange for you.”
“Yes,” I say, feeling my defensiveness recede. “And to be honest, I’m still really rattled by it.”
Sebastian narrows his eyes. “Do you think he figured out I was going to be away?”
Another question that throws me slightly for a loop.
“Sweetheart, I never mentioned to anyone you were going to BA, so,no, he hadn’t a clue you were gone—unless he flew a drone over the property in advance.”
He reaches over and gives my hand a squeeze. “I’m sorry to be focusing on the wrong thing, it’s just such a shock ... the business with Ruck. How are you feeling about it?”
This is more the Bas I know. Curious about my reaction to something before even getting all the details.
“Still slightly sick to my stomach,” I say. “I’ve always prayed I’d die without ever hearing his name again.”
“Do you think what he said might be true?”
I shake my head. “No, definitely not. The information about the two other missing womenistrue—the police have already unearthed their remains. But the part about Melanie has to be a lie.”
“Because . . . ?”
“Because all the evidence says he did it!”
“And he was found guilty, of course.”
“Well ... not specifically for Melanie’s death.”
“What do you mean?” he asks.
I’ve shared bits and pieces about the story with Sebastian—you don’t start a new relationship and leave out the fact that your daughter was brutally murdered—but I’ve also stuck with a decision I made from the start not to do a big information dump. Beyond despising the idea of rehashing everything, I worried it would be both a burden to him and weirdly toxic to our relationship. He was better off not knowing every detail, especially the more gruesome ones.
And yet we can’t be talking about this now without me offering more. I take a quick sip of tea before continuing.
“He was tried in Plattsburgh, New York, a city about two and a half hours north of where Mel went to school, for the rape and murder of two college students—Sailor Abbott and Amanda Kline. Sailor went missing in early September, right after the school term started, and her body was discovered by hunters in a wooded area a few weeks later. Though the police had DNA from the semen, it didn’t match anyone in their system. But they got incredibly lucky with the next murder in the area—in early November. A cop spotted Ruck on the road and thought he looked suspicious, so he decided to tail him for a while and caught him trying to dispose of Amanda’s body in the woods along the road. She’d been killed the same way Sailor had, and the police matched Ruck’s DNA to Sailor’s body.”
“How does Melanie fit into this time frame?” Bas asks, his brow furrowed.
“He murdered her in between—in mid-October—when he’d gone to stay with his sister in Cartersville, supposedly to help her pack up her house but probably looking for a fresh killing field. The police had no real suspects initially, though Mel’s ex-boyfriend was on their radar for a while. But after Amanda was killed, one of the state police in theCartersville area got wind of the cases up north and connected all the dots. We ended up attending parts of the trial.”
Bas’s expression darkens even more. “Oh, Bree,” he says. “It pains me so much to think of you going through this ... So why was he brought to trial for the two Plattsburgh murders but not for Melanie’s?”
