bringing up his name. They think that’s why he did it. His death being an admission of guilt.”
My mouth goes dry. “What do you think?”
“I think he was too busy sabotaging himself. And I don’t think he would hurt anyone else, not like that.”
I’m at a loss for what to say. Silences with Blake were never comfortable. As far as my perception went, he seemed like a man with a thousand secrets, his personality split between the man he wanted to be and the side of himself he couldn’t fight. He was both tyrant and sweetheart, and you never knew where you stood with him. I’m not sure the man liked me, but I truly believed he loved his ex-wife with his whole tortured heart. I’d witnessed that love firsthand. Adoration clear in his features every time he looked at her or spoke of her.
“Whatever you’re thinking, you can tell me. If his death doesn’t provoke anything else, the least it should do is provoke some honesty. I want so much to say I knew him better than anyone, but I didn’t see this coming. I wonder now if I ever knew him at all.”
“What you knew you loved, and he knew it, Amanda. He knew it. I don’t think I tried to know him enough, but I do know he loved you. That I’m sure of.”
“Thank you,” she whispers.
I don’t have to, but I speak the truth because she deserves to know I don’t think ill of Blake, not in that way. “I don’t think he took part in whatever happened to those women, and I agree he was too hard on himself.”
She opens his nightstand drawer and begins to trash the contents. “You know one of the reasons he asked me for a divorce is because he didn’t want me to suffer for him anymore. He told me when we got married that he felt calm for the first time in his life.”
The words are eerily familiar. “Lucas said something similar to me when we got together.”
“How is he?” She grabs another box and begins to tape it up.
“I wish I knew. He’s just taken on a significant role. I think he’s hiding.”
Amanda pauses with a new box in hand and looks over to me with concern. “That’s not good.”
“I agree, and he won’t listen to me. He’s not ready, but he seems to think it’s the answer.”
“The job is what made him sick. It made him so sick,” she whimpers. “There is no answer. I’ve looked everywhere, his laptop, his emails and at every fucking piece of paper in this apartment. There’s nothing. There’s no reason, no answers. And I still can’t believe he did it sober.”
Curiosity wins my idle tongue.
“When was the last time you talked to him?”
“The night before they found him. We were supposed to head down to my mother’s in Santa Barbara and spend a few days together. I just knew it wasn’t over between us, ya know? At least I was hoping he was thinking along the same lines as me. I was so excited. I was going to spend the morning getting pampered, and then I was supposed to pick him up. The landlord said he was blaring music and he had left the door unlocked. Every part of it was intentional. And I can’t stop picturing him going through the motions.” She cringes as tears glide down her face as if it’s now second nature to talk through her anguish. It probably is. “I was leaving for the salon when I got the call,” she says, her voice weakening as she drifts off in thought. “Maybe he was never planning on coming. Maybe he just used it as an excuse to talk to me one last time. He told me he loved me. Those were his last words to me. At least he gave me that. But nothing in his tone said goodbye. Nothing.”
She visibly swallows. “All I kept thinking on the way to the funeral home was the biggest problem I was supposed to have that day was picking out what shade of nail polish I would wear. I was nervous but in that good way. I know it might not seem like it, but we had a decent marriage, Mila, for the most part. It was just so hard to love fire and ice. I never knew where we stood one month to the next. But his ambition, his need to be absolutely everything got in the way