The Girl from Widow Hills - Megan Miranda Page 0,40

seen them, just sitting there in a case in their hall. Officially ruled suicide, but I’ve heard things.”

“What sort of things?”

She shrugged. “Like I said, I knew his son, Jared. I was a couple of years younger, but my brother was friends with him, used to hang out up here a bunch. Mr. Aimes built this house for him, to keep him here. Expected his son to stay right here, can you imagine? My brother said it was oppressive. Mr. Aimes liked to control things, it seems.”

She kept talking, but I was picturing the gun under the sink. The cabinet down the hall full of shotguns. The one he tried to give me for protection. Maybe Elyse was wrong; maybe it was a gunshot and not a box cutter. Maybe that was the sound that drew me outside to begin with—

“His son took off soon after. I think, until then, it was his mother that kept him here. But after?” She shook her head. “I think it’s telling that he couldn’t look at his father after. That he couldn’t live here anymore. Mr. Aimes held on to this place for years, hoping he’d come back. Jared got married, has a kid. Tell me, Olivia, have you seen his son visit in all the time you’ve been here?” She let that sink in as she made herself more comfortable, settling back in the chair. She didn’t even need me to answer.

I used to believe most people were good, or at least had good intentions. They mobilized to save you. They rallied in a crisis. The people of Widow Hills demanded more action, and they got it.

I believed that firmly until the ten-year anniversary, when I realized that some of those same good people felt they were owed something. That there was a scorecard, always, being kept. And I had not reciprocated what had been owed. By then I was firmly in the negative.

“How long ago?” I asked, because I was living in his house. A house I’d once thought was a happy place, a place built with two hands and good intentions.

“Would be about a decade now,” she said. And the place had sat empty all this time. “No one wanted to live so close to a man who was a suspect in his wife’s death, unofficial or not.” She shook her head. “He shouldn’t be keeping all those guns there. Not at his age.”

I didn’t know what to say, because I agreed. But I also wondered if I’d run there last night because I knew he had them. Because there was safety in that illusion.

“Just be careful here,” she continued. “Be careful who you trust. You’re walking into something with history, and you don’t know the whole story.”

I thought of Rick in my backyard early this morning. Rick asking me about my conversation with the detective. Had he been concerned that she’d already told me and was there to do damage control?

But. He’d covered for me. He could’ve easily said: I found Liv asleep outside the night before. And as far as I knew, he hadn’t.

Detective Rigby pulled the folder from under her notebook. “Okay, I’ve got something to show you.” Like she’d accomplished what she’d set out to do. A part one to guide the story, shake something loose in me. Change the framework of the context. “He’s not from here, the man you found.” I could feel Bennett standing just on the other side of the kitchen entrance. Detective Rigby’s story had worked its way inside, changing my perspective.

Maybe it was an intruder.

Maybe Rick had seen him first.

It would explain why he was awake when I showed up, why he didn’t take out the gun for protection—because he already knew what had happened.

The detective had a photo in her hand, and she laid it on the coffee table. I held my breath, thinking it would be a photo from the scene. Eyes closed, life drained from him.

But it wasn’t. In the photo, the man was alive. He had salt-andpepper close-cropped hair, deep-set eyes, and a completely neutral expression. The white of the background made me think license or passport.

“Oh,” I said. Those eyes. Under the ball cap. A tip of the head. The way his mouth moved when he said my name. Olivia, right?

“Do you know this man?” Detective Rigby asked, leaning closer, like she could read something in my expression.

“No,” I said. “Yes. I don’t know him, but I saw him once. I don’t know who it