Never Tell (Detective D.D. Warren #10) - Lisa Gardner Page 0,1
was tinier than the last, but it was ours. And being young and handy, we’d fix it up, open it up, then sell it for oodles of money.
Now I walk down a narrow hallway where half the wallpaper hangs down in pieces, and do my best not to notice.
Family room. Den, really. With Conrad’s beloved La-Z-Boy, a modest sofa, and of course, an enormous flat-screen TV. The recliner is empty. The TV is off. The room is empty.
Door open, I remember again.
Our garage fits only a single vehicle, and even that is a perk in a Boston neighborhood. Conrad parks his Jeep on the street. Which I check now. Because I’d spotted it pulling into the driveway and, yes, there it is. Black Jeep. Situated at the curb straight outside. A prime spot I can already imagine he was thrilled to get, as even with parking permits there’s more demand than supply. Hence his kindness in giving me the garage.
It’s okay, honey. I don’t want you walking down the street alone at night. I like knowing that you’re safe.
Dead woman walking. Dead woman walking.
Don’t vomit now.
And then …
Then …
“Door open,” I whisper. And I finally notice what I should’ve noticed from the very beginning.
• • •
SMELL. I’D BEEN listening for the sound of my husband. The clatter of silverware in the kitchen. The thump of his recliner banging back in the family room. But there aren’t any sounds. No sounds at all.
The house is hushed. Quiet. Still.
As if it were empty.
Smell.
The stairs leading to the second floor are like the rest of the house, narrow, confining, creaky. Conrad tightened the bannister three months ago. When I broke the news. When we both stood in our bedroom and stared at the little stick. My hands had been shaking so hard he’d had to take it from me.
I remember feeling ill then, too. Willing myself not to vomit, though it had been the near-constant queasiness that had led me to take the pregnancy test. A marriage is a mosaic of a thousand moments, a hundred precious memories. That day, watching his hands close around mine. Strong fingers, seamed with calluses. Steady, as they took the pregnancy stick away from me, held it closer to him.
I had that surreal feeling I sometimes get. Where I’m not present in my own life, but even all these years later, standing in my parents’ kitchen again. Holding the shotgun. Smelling all that blood.
And Conrad, being Conrad, looked right at me. Looked right into me.
“Evie,” he said. “You deserve this. We deserve this.”
I loved him again. Just like that. In that moment, I adored him. We held hands. He cried. Then I had to pull away to vomit for real, but that made us both laugh, and afterward he’d wiped my face with a washcloth and I’d let him.
A thousand moments. A hundred memories.
That pain again, deep inside me, as I lean heavily against the wall, away from the bannister I no longer trust, and work my way up the narrow staircase.
Smell.
The odor hits me hard now. Nothing faint, teasing, ambiguous. This is it. Had I known all along? Turning into the drive? Pulling into the garage? The interior door open, open, open.
What had my subconscious suspected, long before the rest of me had paid attention?
Upstairs, not the bedroom, but the second tiny room, Conrad’s office, looms to the left. That door is open, too.
Sounds to go with the smell. Sirens. Down the street. Growing louder. Coming closer. But of course.
My parents’ kitchen.
My husband’s office.
Blood.
Dark, viscous. A spray. A pool.
I can’t help myself. I’m sixteen. I’m thirty-two. I reach out. I touch the spot closest to me. I smear the red across my fingertip. I watch the way it fills in the whorls of my fingerprints.
My father. My husband.
Blood.
More noise. Banging. So far away. Shouts and demands and orders.
But up here, none of it matters. There is just me and this final moment with Conrad. His body fallen back into the desk chair, the back of his head sprayed on the wall behind him.
I fear what I will see on the computer screen before I even look. But I force myself to do it. Take it in. Register the images. This is my husband’s computer. This is what my husband was looking at before he died.
Harder banging now. The police. Responding to reports of shots fired. They will not be denied.
“It was an accident,” my mother whispers urgently in my ear. “Nothing but an unfortunate accident.”