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Lock gave me a curious look, but didn’t seem upset. I pulled my robe off the hook and slipped into it. As I tried to walk out of the closet, Lock stopped me, lightly gripping my forearms.

“Hey,” he said. “Come here. I love you. Don’t be too long.” He kissed me.

“I love you too,” I said as I moved past him and headed back downstairs. I went to the kitchen, not sure what I wanted there. Certainly not anything else to eat. I was too keyed up, nearly crawling out of my own skin.

Lock had given the ribbon to many women. Red Silk Romeo. It was a calling card! Or was Piper lying? What motive could she possibly have? Although, the moment I thought about it, I knew.

She wanted to upset me in exactly the way she had. I slipped off my smartwatch and tossed it on the counter. The ribbon slipped further down my wrist.

Did she want to make me jealous? She was talking about girls Lock dated when he was in college, more than a decade before I met him. Why on earth would Piper think that would unsettle me? It had. But not for the reason she thought.

I found myself walking into Lock’s study. Eli was more the type who would solicit women through a dating app. He was cheating on Piper right under her nose. Lock warned me when he first introduced me to him that Eli had a roving eye. Lock said Eli indulged Piper’s pyramid scheme of the month to keep her out of his hair. Even tonight, I saw Eli leave the ballroom a minute or two after Anne Bowling had. For all anyone knew, they’d had a tryst in the cloakroom.

I combed the bookshelves. I knew they were all here. I found them on the third shelf, just above my head. I pulled the small stool from the corner and climbed up.

Another of Lock’s old-fashioned habits… he still printed out photographs and put them in albums. I was grateful for it. It had given me a way to get a glimpse of who Lock was before he came into my life.

But there were no baby pictures. If Olivia and his father had ever taken them, they hadn’t been preserved. There were two whole albums devoted to Bennett, but not Lock. Whenever I asked him about it, Lock got that hardened expression and I let it drop. Olivia had probably burned them after Bennett died as another way of punishing her surviving son. Of making him feel like he should have been the one who drowned.

After flipping through a few of the albums, I found the ones I wanted. The first contained photos from Lock’s college days. Piper and Eli were in so many of them. Laughing. Looking young, happy, carefree. Lock had a couple of girlfriends in some of them. Three that I counted. One he’d told me about. Emily Twomey, a biology major from Utah. They dated for almost six months. Piper once told me it was the longest romantic relationship he had had before me.

In the photo, Emily had one arm around Lock. Her hand rested on his shoulder. Peeking out of her sleeve was a jeweled tennis bracelet, not a ribbon. I didn’t know if that made me relieved or angry.

I put the book down and picked up a more recent one. It was six years ago. The first fundraiser gala Lock had thrown for Bennett’s Place.

I found a group shot of Lock, Eli, and Piper standing together in formal wear. Piper beamed up at Lock while Eli had his arm around her. Lock had brought a date that night. She was pretty with a chic blonde pixie cut. She wore a strapless dress. There was nothing on her wrists.

“Mina?”

I jumped. The album fell out of my lap and hit the floor. Several pictures fluttered out.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I’m just… I was…”

He came further into the room and saw what I’d been holding. He stooped down and picked up the photos—the one of him, the blonde, and Eli and Piper had fallen face down. He stared at it.

“What were you looking for?”

My emotions bubbled just below the surface. My blood was lava. I didn’t know how I could hold all of this in much longer.

Lock rose to his full height. The concern in his eyes speared through me.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing…”

“Stop it,” he said, his tone sharp. “You’ve been acting strange for hours. For weeks. Is it your car? Baby, we’re going to find out who did it. If it will make you feel better, I’ll hire private security to shadow you for a while. I know it’ll make me feel better.”

“No. I don’t want that.”

“You have to let me protect you.”

“I’m not in danger,” I said.

“Then what?”

I couldn’t take it. For weeks I’d walked around in fear. In doubt.