It’s been a month since Whitney died, and instead of grieving in any kind of normal way, I’ve been circling her death like it’s a puzzle I’m meant to solve. Without closure, I don’t know how to let it go. I don’t know how to move forward without answers.
And so I haven’t moved at all.
When we finish, we carry our plates out to the patio, settling into the soft warmth of the morning as the sun continues to rise. For a few minutes, everything feels still again, suspended in that fragile illusion of peace.
It is perfect.
We are perfect.
I look at Bennett and feel a swell of gratitude, of love, of something steady and real in the middle of everything else that feels uncertain. This life, this home, this man, it’s everything I once wanted. Everything I thought would be enough.
It should be enough.
At some point, I tell myself, I will have to accept that Whitney is gone. That whatever happened to her is no longer mine to carry.
At some point, I will have to let this go.
And then a scream tears through the morning.
It’s sharp and sudden, slicing cleanly through the quiet, through the illusion, through everything.
Bennett and I lock eyes.
We don’t speak. We don’t need to.
We’re already moving.
I follow him through the house, the sound echoing in my head as we push out onto the front porch. For a second, nothingmakes sense. The street looks the same. The houses. The lawns. Everything exactly as it was.
Then I hear it again.
Not a scream this time.
A sob.
My gaze snaps toward Phillip’s house, and through the hedge I see movement, a figure bent low in the grass. Chrissy.
Bennett is already moving, cutting across the lawn, pushing through the hedge without hesitation. I follow close behind, my pulse roaring in my ears, my breath catching somewhere in my chest.
He stops abruptly.
I nearly run into him.
“McCullough, stop.” His voice is different now. Firm. Protective. “You don’t want to see this.”
My stomach drops. “See what?”
“Trust me,” he says tightly. “Go back inside and call the police.”
“The police?” I shake my head, already stepping around him. “Why?—”
The words die in my throat.
“Oh my God.”
Phillip lies crumpled in the grass, his body twisted at an unnatural angle, the front of his head… gone in a way my brain refuses to fully process. Blood has soaked into the lawn beneath him, dark and spreading, staining everything it touches.
Chrissy is on her knees beside him, her hands pressed to her face, streaked with red. Her nightgown is smeared with it, the pale satin ruined, as if she’s been dragged through something she can’t wake up from.
