In Her Eyes by Sarah Alderson (ebook reader for pc and android TXT) 📕

And he knew about you and Nate, the voice in my head whispers. Is that enough of a motive combined with the fact he was bankrupt? Perhaps it is. How else does it explain what he was doing in Oxnard, meeting those men and giving them money?

Goddamn it, I’m going around in circles. I open the door to the study and scan the room, my gaze falling on the blood spattered all over the cream rug, dried now to a dark brown the color of rust, before moving on to the safe. It’s set into the floor, normally hidden seamlessly beneath the floorboards. The door is open and I take a step closer and peer inside.

It’s empty, of course.

I don’t know for sure what happened in here – I haven’t been allowed to read Robert’s statement. All I know is what he told me before he was arrested, which was only the barest details.

Robert opened the safe for the man – of course he did. June was there and the man was pointing a gun at them. He was hardly going to refuse. Besides, all our things, like my jewelry, were insured. The man punched him and then hit him with the butt of his gun and knocked him out, all because he was moving too slowly, his hand shaking too hard as he opened the safe. The bloodstains on the floor are evidence of the savageness of the beating, as if Robert’s face isn’t testimony enough.

Robert’s laptop has been taken away as evidence and the filing cabinet drawers are all flung open, the files emptied. The police must have taken everything. Everything except for a painting on the wall – another one of mine, a landscape view of the valley, and a couple of framed photos on the desk. One is of Robert and me taken a few years ago on our wedding anniversary, just after we moved into this house. The glass is broken but the photo is intact. We’re looking into each other’s eyes, both of us grinning. The happiness shines out and seeing it now causes a sharp stabbing pain in my side. We were happy. Weren’t we?

My gaze drifts to another photo of all the children, taken last Thanksgiving. June is pulling a funny face at the camera, Hannah stands behind her, pouting. I remember her sighing and telling me to hurry up and take the damn photo already, she had to be somewhere – I can’t remember where – yet still managing to strike a pose like a pro. And there’s Gene, arm flung loosely around June’s shoulders, staring slightly over her shoulder into space. He was probably high at the time, now I think about it.

I pick the photograph up, swiping at the tears that spring to my eyes, and study the children’s faces, wishing I could step back in time and hit pause on that day, wishing I’d have known to treasure that moment, every imperfect second of it.

Chapter 29

My hand is bleeding. Absently I watch the drops fall like tears onto the kitchen floor for several seconds before it dawns on me that they’re coming from my hand. I’ve somehow walked from the study to here, gripping the photograph of our wedding anniversary in my hand so tightly that my palm has been sliced open on the broken glass.

I set the photograph down and pick up a tea towel, wrapping it around my hand to staunch the blood. It doesn’t hurt – even though the cut runs deep – but it makes me woozy to see the blood welling up. I haven’t eaten in I don’t know how long. I’m not hungry anymore. And I can’t remember the last time I slept for longer than an hour or two. Whenever I do fall asleep I wake with my heart pounding, the image of the man in the razor-teeth mask burned like a sunspot onto my retina. The effect is to make me feel as if I’m wearing virtual-reality goggles – I am sluggish and disconnected from everything around me, dizzy and clumsy too.

Throwing down the tea towel I start gathering up the fragments of glass from the frame. I wrap them in the stained cloth and then cross to the trash can but then stare down at it, confused. There’s a bin liner in it, but it’s new. I remember wiping up the milk that June had spilled and then throwing the wet kitchen towel into the trash along with the empty milk carton. It had been three quarters full.

Nate said Robert hadn’t put the trash out. He claimed Robert lied about it, so why is the can in the kitchen empty? Perhaps Robert emptied it the day we came home from the hospital. Or perhaps the police did after their search.

I open the back door and cross over towards the big wheelie trash containers parked at the side of the garage. Both of them are empty. I dump the broken glass wrapped in the tea towel and then stand there, hands on hips, for a few seconds, puzzling over what happened to the trash from the kitchen. Where did it go?

I wander around to the stairs that lead up above the garage to Gene’s apartment. When I got home thirty minutes ago I texted him to see where he was and he told me he was out buying groceries. I make for the stairs, deciding to take advantage of his absence and search his room for drugs. I should have thought of it sooner. I’m an idiot.

As I start up the stairs, I catch sight of a flash of white out of the corner of my eye. Looking closer, I see it’s a plastic garbage bag, half hidden behind the stairs as though it’s been dropped there and forgotten about. I pull it out and then sit down on the bottom step to open it. The empty milk carton sits on the top, along with