“Kristi, don’t!”
“Don’t what?” she’d demanded. “Don’t leave now? Don’t write my story? Don’t be the person I was meant to be?” She’d felt her temper rising, her anger exploding. “Maybe I should quit being Kristi Bentz and be satisfied with just being Mrs. Jay McKnight.”
“Just?” he’d repeated.
“Yeah, like it’s some big honor.” And then she’d said it. The words that had haunted her since she’d spit them out. As she’d reached for the door handle, she’d glared at him and with all the venom in her heart said, “I don’t know why I ever married you!”
And then she’d stepped through the door and into the night.
Less than two hours later Jay McKnight, the man she’d spat such hateful words at and the love of her life, lay dying in her arms. She wondered if he ever really trusted that she loved him with all her heart.
Of course as he’d lain bleeding in her arms, she’d vowed her love, begged him to hang on, that they had so much life yet to live. Together. Mentioned the baby. Their baby. But had he heard her? Over her cries for help and tears and his own labored breathing, had Jay known she loved him, had always loved him? That he would be a father?
Dear Jesus, she’d been a stubborn idiot. Their fight had been stupid. And it hadn’t been the first. Her career and Jay’s perceived danger of it had been the sticking point of most of their arguments, and more often than not she’d found herself finding solace in a bottle. They would fight, make up, make love, and she usually had ended up drinking too much.
Tears filled her eyes and spilled, as they had every day since the attack. She saw Jay’s jacket, hung over the back of one of the dining room chairs where he’d always left it, and she blinked, carrying the jacket into the bedroom and reaching for a hanger in the closet.
Then she stopped, her fingers hovering over the bar holding all of her husband’s clothes. This jacket had not been in the dining room earlier.
She was certain of it.
Right?
Her tired mind scrambled back to the day and the weeks earlier. The night of the murder Jay had been home, she’d left him, and yeah, the jacket could have been draped over the back of the chair as it always was. It was so common as to be part of the landscape. But in the intervening days between the night Jay was killed and today, she’d kind of cleaned up. Not entirely. She hadn’t had the energy, but she was almost certain she’d hung this jacket in this closet.
Or had she?
A cold breath of unease brushed against the back of her neck, causing the hairs at her nape to lift.
No one had been in the house.
She kept it locked and—
Turning slowly, she surveyed the bedroom and studied the night table on Jay’s side of the bed. Had things been disturbed? His watch was missing, but he’d been wearing it. His phone wasn’t plugged into the charger as it, too, had been on him that night. And he’d been carrying his keys, which he sometimes left on the table beneath the lamp. She’d moved the remote to her side of the bed and everything looked the same except—
Her heart nearly jumped out of her chest.
Where was the picture that always stood on the nightstand, the small, framed photograph of Kristi and Jay on their wedding day, she still wearing her veil tossed back over her hair, he with his tuxedo tie undone and dangling? In the shot, they were laughing, sharing the joy of the day in the aftermath of the ceremony, and it was Jay’s favorite picture.
Now it was gone.
Disbelieving, she strode across the room and peered at the floor around the nightstand, ignoring the dust bunnies that had collected. Her gaze scraped the entire area.
Nothing.
Oh. Dear. God.
With trembling fingers she opened the single drawer.
The photograph lay faceup on his e-reader, pens, notepads, and earphones. But the frame was cockeyed, the glass cracked, splintering in one corner. As if it had been dropped.
Or thrown.
She thought about their last argument.
The furious, ugly words spat out so harshly, intending to cut deep.
Had Jay been so angry with her for leaving to have thrown the picture against the wall, or so unthinking as to knock it over, and then what? Stuff it into the drawer when he’d cooled off?
Or had someone else been in the house, inside their bedroom? Fear crawled through her insides and she had to tamp it down. Once more she rotated slowly, like a toy ballerina on a jewelry box that was running out of power, slowly winding down. She eyed every inch of the room, her nerves stretched to the breaking point. She felt violated and scared and angry. Really angry.
Who would dare to come into her house? To mess with Jay’s things? What kind of a—
“Calm down, Kris. Think. You can’t prove that anyone was here. Find the evidence!”
“Damn it, I’m looking for it!” she said aloud.
She heard her voice, saw her image in the full-length mirror propped in one corner, and she gasped. She was wan, thinner than usual, all of her vitality gone. Her hair was a tangle and she couldn’t remember when she’d last brushed it. She was still holding Jay’s jacket in a death grip, her knuckles showing white, the collar of the jacket wadded in her clenched fingers.
She told herself to calm down. To not go off the deep end. To think like a rational person.
But her emotions were ragged and torn, her anger pulsing in her temples, her fear and outrage coagulating in her guts.
“Pull it together, Kris. You can do this.”
Slowly her fingers unknotted and she tossed the jacket on the bed before walking through the house. Testing the doors and windows, scrutinizing every room and finding nothing more unsettling.
Yet.
But there were hours and days and weeks to come. She had to find some kind of inner strength. Finally she was convinced nothing else was out of place. She hung the damned jacket in the bedroom closet, then snapped blinds shut and pulled down shades before forcing herself to settle onto the oversized couch. Rubbing her shoulder, she recalled how the doctor had told her with a knowing smile that the wound was “healing nicely,” and once more she’d heard again how lucky she’d been that her injuries hadn’t been worse.
“Yeah, right,” she muttered, but the headache that had come with the concussion was long gone and she could rotate her arm, lift it over her head, and even lift small items without much pain. “Lucky,” she reminded herself.
Snagging the remote for the television and clicking it on, she watched the local news, but Jay’s murder of two weeks earlier wasn’t mentioned. Still a little edgy, she pushed herself from the couch and found her way into the kitchen where an unopened bottle of Merlot was waiting for her.
As it has been for half a month.
She felt the need of a drink, the anticipation of the buzz, the warm, cozy feeling of just a glass. Or two.
It wasn’t just the life inside her that made her hesitate, it was the dance with alcoholism that had claimed her father, even though Rick Bentz was not her biological father.
“Close enough,” she reminded herself as theirs wasn’t what anyone would call a traditional family. She considered Rick her father; he’d claimed her as such and that was that. She wouldn’t go down that dark path of her conception. At that thought she touched her abdomen. This child wouldn’t know his or her father and that, in and of itself, was sad.