other documents. But Theo wanted it done. After a final upward stretch—an audible pop as she managed to crack that one persnickety vertebra in her spine—she reached for another envelope.
This one wasn’t sealed. It wasn’t addressed, either; just a crinkly white envelope with a blue line around the edges. Kate opened the flap, and a set of photographs tipped out into her hand.
She flipped over the first photograph and froze.
It was a color photograph of a man in his fifties. His eyes were oversaturated blue, glowing up from sun-ravaged skin. He was wearing only an undershirt, so thin from washing you could see his wiry chest hairs pressing against the fabric. He had a bandanna pushed back over his sweaty hair, and thin leather bracelets on his wrists.
Kid.
That Miranda had photographed her friend was not exactly a surprise. It was the setting that came as a shock. He was sitting on a bed, framed in front of a familiar headboard—large, rectangular, made of gray oak.
It was the headboard of the bed upstairs.
Kate flipped to the next photo and instantly blushed. Kid was on his back, the camera above him, pointing straight down. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, and his arms were tensed forward, as if he was holding the photographer by the hips. His eyes were screwed shut in pleasure. There were four more photographs, apparently taken at the same time. Six in total. Different expressions on Kid’s face. His eyes open. His hand reaching up behind the camera, and black tendrils falling into view as he gripped Miranda’s hair. In one, her thigh had moved into the frame, cutting off the corner of the image. It was close enough to the lens that you could see the cellulite. The bluish tint of her skin.
That was as much of Miranda as you got. The rest was all Kid.
Kate sat back on her heels. It seemed monumentally stupid of Miranda to store photos of her lover—her lover naked, in her bed—in the house she shared with her husband. Maybe Jake had found the photos. Or found the two of them together, gotten angry.
Or maybe Miranda had tried to end the affair, and it was Kid who got angry, Kid who had hurt Miranda. That would explain why he had been so aggressive with Kate, and so worried about what she would uncover.
Drumming her fingers on one knee, Kate thought about the virulence in his voice that first day at Esme’s shop, the hidden threat … And how he had pointed her to Hal …
She couldn’t sit still. The light through the window was turning the room hot and stale. She glanced up at the ceiling—the master bedroom above, the bed where the photos had been taken. Sweat under her arms. Bug under a magnifying glass. She put all the photos back in the envelope and got to her feet.
Theo was in his office. He didn’t hear her approach, so she had a moment to lean against the door frame and watch him. He was hunched over his keyboard, lit blue by the computer screen and framed by the remnants of his childhood. The soccer participation pennants, the wrinkled movie posters. His long legs blocked the file cabinet she had tried to break into, all those weeks ago. The monitor rippled with lines of code, and his fingertips flew across the keyboard. His lips moved slightly as he typed.
Fondness stabbed her, so sudden it was nearly painful. It felt like longing. Which made no sense. He was still here.
She knocked on the door frame. “Yoo-hoo,” she said.
He turned in surprise, then smiled. Sometimes when he looked at her, she felt like a stained-glass window, bright and translucent, scattering light as the sun passed through her.
“I’ve hit a stopping point,” Kate said. “I thought you might be ready for a break.”
His smile widened. “Yes. A hundred percent.”
He launched himself up from his chair. Came to her, wrapped his arms around her from behind, a kiss on the side of her neck as her face pressed against the beveled door frame. She felt his hand at her hip, nudging her down the hall to the master bedroom.
“No,” she said. The image of Kid and Miranda in that same bed was still fresh in her mind. “No, not there. Here.”
“Here?” He frowned. “The bed doesn’t even have a mattress on it.”
She gave him an arch look. “I didn’t know you were so picky.”
They fell together onto the unswept floor, laughing, kissing, his hands sliding down