a few sightings of the couple with the children, we were able to nail them down. They already had two more kidnapped kids in their RV when we found them.”
“Jesus, that had to be awful.”
“It was. It lasted what felt like forever. I didn’t get to call home often, but Helen knew the score. This was nothing new. The night we found the kids, I was desperate to get home. Hold onto my wife even though we’d been fighting nonstop for the six months prior to that. My heart was shredded, my mind filled with images of dead children and mourning families, and I wanted nothing more than to fill my mental tank with the goodness of home. So, I took the red-eye home. Didn’t call. She had no idea.”
“Honey…” I squeezed my arm around his middle and pressed my face into his chest, already expecting what was to come.
“I walked into the house and noticed the clothes all over the living room floor first. My wife’s. And a man’s. Like a dead man walking, I went straight to my bedroom. I’ll never forget the sound of hearing my wife in the throes of pleasure, screaming the name Luca as she orgasmed. I knew that sound. Had been hearing it for eight years when I made love to her.”
My eyes filled with tears, but I didn’t interrupt. I couldn’t. Something inside me knew he’d never told this story in detail to another soul. As much as I hated everything he was saying and what it cost him to say it, I knew I needed to listen. To be there for him in this moment so he could fully move on to the beauty that the two of us could have without this past transgression in the way of his happiness.
“I pushed open the door, watched as if I were outside of my body as she rode my brother. He then turned her over and fucked her sloppily and very hard. And I watched the entire thing as she came again screaming out like she only ever did with me when she was drunk and randy as fuck. Which is another thing. The room was pungent with the smell of liquor and sex. They’d been at it a while. It was my job to know these things. Take in a scene. Scents. Sounds. The little things you are trained to notice at a crime scene. Which is probably why I stood there until they finished. Then when my brother got off and fell on top of my wife, sated, I pounded on the door.”
“Jesus,” I whispered, still holding him tight around the waist, the tears tracking down my cheeks and wetting his shirt.
“The two of them were so far gone, their eyes glazed with booze and euphoria it’s like they didn’t even know what they were looking at. Until my brother’s eyes widened, he stared at me, then at Helen with horror in his face. And he said one word, as though it was torn from his throat. Brother.”
I closed my eyes imagining everything he said and feeling the intense waves of hurt flooding my entire being.
“I left without a word and crashed at a hotel. Drank myself into oblivion until the next day when I called Ryan. He picked me up and I moved into his spare bedroom.”
I pressed off his chest and looked into his eyes, while he reached for my glass and set both of them, now empty, on the side table. Then he cupped my cheeks and wiped away my tears with his thumbs.
“You crying for me, sweet girl?”
My lips trembled as more tears fell. “Yeah, because it was an incredibly sad story. I’m sorry you lived that, especially after all you dealt with on the case prior to it. To come home to that…” I shook my head and sniffed. “It’s inconceivable.”
He pressed his forehead to mine. “At the time, yeah, it was. Which is why I’m so fucked up about women. Especially women I’ve saved, since my ex-wife was one of them.”
I lifted my eyebrows in question.
He sighed deeply. “There was a party near campus. Ryan and I were there picking up girls, shooting drinks back. You know how it is.”
I nodded with a grin, wiping at my eyes.
“Some jock was out of his mind, having a bad trip on acid. He was dating Helen. She was fighting with him, telling him to stop freaking out and to calm down. The guy pulled a gun