The Sinner - Molly O'Keefe Page 0,7

was so tired from exams my eyes felt like sandpaper, I framed out the perimeter, sketched in the existing buildings.

It was lunacy that they’d been looking for a handyman. I’d shown up at that door without a plan, with nothing but rage and revenge and guilt and they handed me a god-damn job.

For a guy with no plan, who hadn’t seen luck in years, that was pretty fucking lucky. And that Erica, my assistant had played along. Well… that was a gift I didn’t deserve. And I should call her. I would. But not yet.

Because, while I waited for Vanessa O’Neill to show up, I had to actually work. And the job was huge. More than one man could do in months.

The house, The Manor as the women called it was an aging stunner. It sat alone on the road, about a mile and a half from town, surrounded by a few acres of wilderness. She was a grand dame falling on hard times—the black trim was peeling and a few of the white hurricane shutters were missing slats. But the bones of the house were solid. Elegant. Built to withstand the Southern weather, and to look good doing it. And that courtyard was a diamond in the extreme rough.

In another time working on that house would have been exciting.

Now it was just work that did not distract me. Not from what I was here to do. Find the proof that would exonerate my father. Find the proof that would destroy the O’Neill’s.

But the woman… Savannah O’Neill she was another story.

It was wrong to want her like this. To think of that long fall of white blonde hair wrapped around my hand. Those curves of hers that she’d tried so hard to hide behind that white blouse and grey pencil skirt. The seam in the back of that grey skirt had a tiny bit split, and I’d imagined how easy it would be to tear that skirt. Right up the back.

To see what she wore underneath it. To see how many layers of prim I would have to get through before I found the hot, wet woman beneath.

Wanting her like this had to be criminal like all things were that touched the O’Neill family. I didn’t used to be this way. This rabid. This base. I wanted women, liked women. Fucked women. I had once thought myself in love.

But this, what I was feeling right now? It was new. And maybe it was because I had blood on my hands but I couldn’t shake this lust.

The things I wanted to do to her. My God.

I sat there thinking about sin, and punishment and the crimes that parents passed onto their kids until the sky turned gray, pink at the edges, and a new day came to save me from the night.

I dressed in the work clothes that I’d packed when I left St. Louis. Heavy pants, a grey shirt. Work boots. I grabbed a coffee at the bakery next door but none of the food. It had been months since food looked good. These days I ate when I was hungry, which wasn’t often.

I drove toward the O’Neill house, but as I turned left onto the country road to the Manor, I could see a police cruiser. With its lights on.

Was Vanessa back?

The statute of limitations for the theft of the jewels was past, so no one was getting arrested for that except my father who’d been rotting in his jail cell for years. But were Savannah and Margot guilty of newer crimes?

My foot pressed on the accelerator, dust flying up behind me in the rearview mirror.

The duality of it was perfect, though I had to admit there was something in me that balked at the idea of Savannah’s cool beauty in a hot desperate cell like my father’s.

But if it was what she deserved, then so be it.

Do the crime, do the time, as my father always said when the guard led him away from the visiting room table.

I braked to a hard stop just behind the cruiser and threw myself out the door. No press. No throngs of cops. Just one cruiser with its lights going and the old house, looking sadder in the bright morning sunlight.

I found everyone in the living room where it was still cool and dark, the windows shadowed by the veranda out front. The cops I expected to see leading the women away sat in spindly Queen Anne chairs, dropping sugar from their