"You're right," she agreed as Jake brought out their food, placing the plates on the table. Her stomach growled in anticipation, but she didn’t continue talking until he was out of earshot again. “We should make a list of people to talk to tomorrow. Callum and Emily might be worth visiting, and I'd like to drive to the site where her body was found. We need to try to puzzle together her last twenty-four hours of life. No one has done that yet.”
After finishing their dinner, they exited the restaurant, giving Hannah a wave as they did. Kelly could feel a pit of guilt in her stomach for even entertaining the thought for a moment that Hannah could be involved.
There was simply no way. Hannah adored Lori. She’d never seen the two of them have even a teenage eye roll fight. They’d been good, close friends.
“Are you okay? You’re very quiet?” Ben asked as they walked to the car.
“I am,” she assured him. “Just getting ready for what we have to do tomorrow.”
The evening was still chilly this time of year, and Kelly wrapped her sweater around her against the cool night air. There was a crescent moon in the sky playing peek-a-boo with the gray clouds that had rolled in earlier in the day.
The streets of Bergen seemed darker than she remembered, the shadows deeper, the spaces between streetlights wider. Or perhaps it was her adult perception that had changed. Someone in this little town had gotten away with murder for more than a decade.
Were they laughing at everyone, smug in the knowledge that they would never be caught? Did they know she was back to find them?
She wouldn’t stop until Lori could rest in peace.
Chapter
Nine
"You okay?"Ben asked from the passenger seat, his voice gentle in the early morning stillness.
The sun was barely up, and she hadn’t had a sip of coffee yet to deal with any of this.
“Of course. I’m fine.”
She was lying through her teeth, and she had a feeling that Ben knew it. His gaze was sharp and assessing. He also wasn’t stupid. He knew…
She wasn't okay. She hadn't been okay in this town since the day they'd found Lori's body.
She'd insisted on leaving before most of the town was awake, hoping to avoid curious stares and whispered conversations that would inevitably follow her and Ben as they visited the landmarks of Lori's last day alive. One of the tasks they hoped to do while here was put together a timeline of the twenty-four hours before Lori’s death.
"I will be," she amended, offering him a tight smile. "It's just being back here, driving these roads again. It makes everything feel so immediate, like it all happened yesterday instead of more than a decade ago."
Ben didn't rush to fill the silence that followed, a quality Kelly was growing to appreciate about him. Unlike most people who offered empty platitudes or changed the subject when grief became uncomfortable, he seemed content to sit in the discomfort with her. He didn’t speak just to hear his own voice.
The streets of Bergen were quiet in the early morning light, almost innocent, as opposed to last night. The fresh morning air should have made her feel invigorated, as if anything and everything was possible, but it only made her wrap her sweater around her more tightly.
She made a left turn onto Maple Avenue, slowing as they approached a two-story colonial with pristine white siding, black shutters, and a white picket fence enclosing a perfectly manicured lawn.
"That's it. That's Lori's house."
She didn’t know why she was whispering. It was only the two of them in the car.
Pulling across the street, she put the car in park but left the engine running. The house looked exactly as she remembered it, except for the For Sale sign in the front yard. The flower boxes beneath the windows were empty now, no longer bursting with the colorful blooms Elizabeth Powell had meticulously maintained.
"The Powells weren't just well-off," Kelly explained, her eyes fixed on the house where her friend had grown up. In a way, she’d grown up there, too, if she counted all the hours she’d spent there. "They were Bergen royalty. Robert Powell owned half the commercial real estate downtown, including the hardware store. Elizabeth was on every charity board that mattered. When they spoke, people listened."
Ben studied the house with careful attention, his gaze methodical as it moved from the wraparound porch to the dormered windows on the second floor.
"It's a beautiful home," he observed quietly.
"When Lori was grounded, she used to sneak me up to her bedroom window there on the left," Kelly said, pointing. "Her parents were strict about her curfew, and if she was even one minute late, she’d be grounded for a week. We'd sit on her window seat and talk for hours after she was supposed to be in bed. Looking back, I don’t know how her parents didn’t hear us. I think they had the television on loud in their room."
The memory caught in her throat, unexpected and sharp. How many times had they sat in that window, planning their futures? College, careers, the places they'd travel together. The men they’d marry, the children they’d have.
All the promises neither of them had known Lori wouldn't live to keep.
