trusted people. Esme wasn’t a profiler, but some of these conclusions were obvious.
Lynette probably trusted her assailant, until things turned dark.
The bedsheets were white and recently laundered. The room smelled sweet. There were lilacs by the window. Esme almost approached them to inhale their scent but then remembered what brought her into this room in the first place. She wheeled toward her husband, who was staring at the contents of the jewelry box.
“Let’s start simple,” she said.
He looked at her. His eyes were sad. “Fine.”
“First, I am not a prostitute and you are not my pimp. Don’t ever, ever offer my services without consulting me.”
“I thought you’d want to help.”
“That’s so beside the point!”
Rafe shrugged. That obnoxious dominance he’d displayed with Sheriff Fallon had been replaced by a mournful smallness. His gaze shifted back to the jewelry box.
“Second, since when have you given a damn about what I do? Since when have you done anything but criticize and ridicule my job? Eight years ago, you forced me to quit! Two days ago you accused me of ‘knowingly and willfully killing our family’!”
“I know what I said.”
“What’s changed?”
“Lynette is dead.”
“Were you close with her? Had you even spoken to her since the reunion?”
“No.”
“Then what makes her so special that you’re willing to upturn everything you’ve believed in and argued?”
“I would think you’d be happy,” replied Rafe. “Your husband finally values what you do. I would think you’d be thrilled.”
“Thrilled? I’m dumbfounded! I need you to explain this to me, Rafe. I need you to do it now and I need you to do it so I understand, because at this moment I have no idea who you are.”
“Someone I knew has been murdered. I’m asking you to help find who did it. It’s what you tell me you do, Esme. Why is anything else relevant?”
“Because it is!” She caught her own reflection in the vanity mirror. The tips of her ears, poking out from her shoulder-length brown hair, were scarlet. As sure a sign as any that she was pissed off. “How can you not see how this has to do with us?”
Rafe ran a hand over his face and let out a long sigh. Then he reached into the jewelry box and took out a pair of teal earrings.
“She wore these once,” he said.
Esme’s brow furrowed. “I don’t understand.”
“Please don’t make me… It’s not important….”
“Jesus, Rafe! Were you in love with her?”
“No! No. I never was in love with her. That’s the… Okay, fine. You want to know the whole truth? You want to know the story? You want to know why this is tearing me up inside?”
“All I’ve ever wanted is honesty.”
He chuckled at her for a moment, then proceeded.
“Honesty. People say they want it, but when they get it, they get it all right. You’re heuristic. You always have been. You trust your instincts. I trust my intellect. But with Lynette Robinson…no, I wasn’t in love with her. But she was in love with me. God knows why. She never told me, of course, but she didn’t make a secret of it, either. The way she looked at me in class. The way she smiled at me whenever I got up to make a presentation. Her face would light up, and her eyes—she had these great eyes. Blue like, I don’t know, a calming swell of the ocean. I liked that she was in love with me. I wasn’t especially popular and some days were pretty brutal, but no matter what, she’d be there with that look of love in those blue eyes and that…helped. And I wish I could have loved her back. But I didn’t.”
“We can’t choose who we love,” said Esme.
“But why?” He looked at her. “Human society is based on our ability to exert free will over ourselves and in our interactions with others. I’m a sociology professor, for Christ’s sake, and I still don’t know what makes love so exceptional. I know it is exceptional, and I know I love you, very much, but I also know it has very little to do with my brain, and that’s a little scary. So, back in high school, I asked myself, Why can’t I love her back? Why couldn’t I choose to think about her the same way she thought about me? And I followed the course of thought to its logical conclusion and decided that it was because of her weight.”
“You were a typical, superficial, pigheaded—excuse the expression—teenage boy.”
“No, I wasn’t. Typical teenage boys