"I wouldn't have hated her." Kelly's voice broke on the last word.
She pressed her fingers against her lips and took a breath that shuddered on the way in.
"I know," Ethan said quietly. "I told her that. I said Kelly loves you, she'll understand. But Lori was so afraid of losing people. Losing you, especially. You were her best friend, and she thought if she told you the truth, everything would change."
Everything was going to change anyway.
Ben stepped forward slightly. Not to take over the conversation, but to give Kelly a moment. She needed space to breathe, and he could provide it by redirecting Ethan's attention.
"The last time you talked to Lori," Ben said, keeping his voice level and calm. "What did she say?"
Ethan's hand came up to the back of his neck. He held it there, gripping, as if trying to physically hold himself together.
"It was that morning. Before she went to the mall." He stopped. Swallowed. "We talked on the phone for about an hour. I urged her to tell her friends the truth. She said she’d think about it. Maybe she would, but I knew she wouldn’t. She was just so scared.”
The words entered the air and stayed there, heavy and still.
His voice went hollow on the last few words, as if the sound had been scooped out and replaced with empty space.
"She never showed up at the mall," Kelly said.
"I've thought about her every day since then," Ethan said. “Every single fucking day. All I can think about is what our life would have been. Marriage. Kids. I loved her more than anything. Sometimes, I think I see her out of the corner of my eye, and I’ll turn around really quickly to see her, to hug her, but she’s already gone. She was all laughter and sunshine and love. I’ll never forget that.”
The words were simple and unadorned, stripped of rhetoric or self-pity. Just a man stating a fact about his life, the way someone might say they drank coffee every morning or locked the door before bed. A daily ritual. Remembering Lori.
Kelly's shoulders began to shake. The trembling started small, a vibration in her upper body that could have been the evening chill if the evening hadn't been warm. It built quickly, spreading down through her arms, and she wrapped them around herself the way she had the night she'd told Ben to leave the condo. The same protective posture. The same attempt to hold herself together through force of will.
He placed his hand on her back, splaying the fingers between her shoulder blades. Not pulling her toward him. Just there. He only wanted to let her know she wasn’t alone. He would be here for her, but at this moment, he needed to let her grieve.
"Thank you, Ethan," Ben said.
He meant it. The man had just ripped open a wound he'd been keeping closed for years, and he'd done it because Kelly asked. That took something. Courage or exhaustion or both.
Ethan nodded. A single dip of his chin. He looked older now than he had ten minutes ago, standing under the maple tree in his charcoal suit with his hands back in his pockets, his usually serious expression replaced by something sadder and more honest.
“Let us know if there’s anything we can do,” Ben added.
He didn’t have a clue how they could help, but it was a genuine offer.
He guided Kelly away, his hand stayed on her back as they walked, a light touch that steered without pushing. They moved past the garden wall, past the last of the string lights, away from the reception and its music and its laughter. The DJ was now playing something upbeat that Ben couldn't identify and didn't try to. It faded with each step, the bass line thinning, the vocalsdissolving into the warm night air until there was nothing left but the sound of their footsteps on grass and the steady chirping of crickets.
He found a bench beneath a willow at the far edge of the property. The branches hung low, creating a curtain of narrow leaves that swayed gently in the breeze. It was dark here. Private. The kind of place where a person could fall apart without an audience.
Kelly sat down on the bench, and Ben sat beside her. He didn't speak. He didn't offer comfort or analysis or the kind of well-meaning reassurance that people gave when they didn't know what else to do. He just sat there, close enough that their shoulders touched, and let the silence do what silence does best.
Kelly's breathing was uneven. She wasn't crying. Not yet. She was somewhere between shock and grief, a place Ben recognized from his own experience with loss, where the mind was still trying to catch up to what the heart already knew.
Behind them, muffled by distance and willow branches, the reception carried on. The world continued to spin, indifferent to the fact that under a willow tree at the edge of a garden party, two people were sitting with the weight of a dead girl's last secret between them.
One thing was for sure in Ben’s mind.
Finding out who killed Lori was more important than ever.
Chapter
Twenty-Eight
Ben wrappedhis arms around Kelly, pulling her close so she could rest her head on his chest. She'd leaned into him without a word, his chin resting on the top of her head. He could feel each of her breaths slowing down gradually until her entire body was relaxed against him. They weren’t in any hurry. If she wanted to, they could stay like this for hours, while the willow branches swayed around them like a curtain no one could see through.
