Page 2 of You Know Why

It is just so unfair.

Hi. Hello. It’s nice to meet you.

My name is Eden.

On Christmas Eve eleven years ago, at approximately 7:04 in the evening, my younger sister Chloe was murdered.

Justice was not served. Her killer walked free. Evil walks among you. Could be your next-door neighbor. Could be your ex. Could be your spouse, your lover, raising and loving your children.

You don’t know the people around you the way you think you do. We all keep secrets. We all hide our true selves. We move through this life seeking meaning, connection, purpose, and we brush elbows with evil. Most of the time, we don’t even know it. Most of the time, it passes us by, pretending to be normal. It looks at our cat pictures and garden shots and selfies, walks behind us in the grocery store, serves us drinks, follows us home.

Evil lurks. It does not make its presence known. Once evil steps into the light, it loses its power. Only then does it strike.

Evil visited my sister. Evil took her life as carelessly as breathing. Evil got away with it.

For now.

I am going to make this right.

Just watch.

Part One

I cannot escape death, but at least I can escape the fear of it.

—Epictetus

Eleven Years Later Two Weeks Before Christmas

December 11

Foreshadowing

Brooklyn

Nashville, Tennessee

It started like so many of the rest, the day my husband disappeared.

We woke to the sound of our children giggling, the aroma of coffee wafting through the house, and sun streaming in through the slit in the blackout curtains, because sunlight was the only thing that worked to rouse Trey properly. He hated alarms. They reminded him too much of sirens, startling him awake and making him jumpy all day. Sunlight is best. Children are better.

For a few minutes that precious morning, everything was normal. My husband: feigning sleep. Our kids: tearing in with joyful screams, flinging open the curtains, calling for their father to rise. The dog: hopping around with us. Me: already awake, looking at the flight details.

The kids started jumping on the bed, and Trey grabbed them with his strong arms and pulled them into the covers, faking a snore as he pretended to fall back asleep. They called like little blue jays, giggling and rolling until the dog leaped onto Trey’s stomach, and he sat up with an overly theatrical “Ooof!” scattering them all like seed corn in the bed. The children laughed in delight; the dog barked in time, and I just shook my head and joined them.

Every day was like this. Joyous. Loving. Silly. Full of nonsense and happiness. The way a young family should be. Ten years of marriage behind us now. Our eldest, Andrew Edward Locke IV, fondly referred to as Four, nine years old, and his sister, Neve—it’s Irish, the proper spelling is Niamh, which is on her birth certificate, but too many people had trouble with the pronunciation, so we spell it phonetically now—two years his junior, are the lights of our lives. They are the best kids. Bright, fun, growing into their personalities. Four looks like Trey, with dark hair and clear whiskey-brown eyes. He has inherited his father’s brains and acumen with numbers. Neve looks like me, but prettier, with sunny-blond hair and to-die-for curls, a cerulean gaze from that perfect heart-shaped face. She is softer, gentler. Heartbreakers, both.

The kids were extra jazzed because their aunt Margot, my twin sister, was coming to help bundle us all off to the airport and then stay home with the dog. We were all excited to go on vacation—a bona fide vacation. Trey instigated this trip, and when pushed later, I will admit it was out of character. Trey was a homebody. He hated vacations. Hated to travel, period, though he had to for work. He drove everywhere, though. He and planes didn’t get along.

The rest of the time, he worked from home and was perfectly content ambling around our neighborhood, triangulating between home and town on foot or bicycle. Walking the kids to school, hitting the gym, and returning to the nest. Maybe grabbing a coffee on the way. He was intensely shy, my husband. His family was his world. My world, too. We were living a quiet, happy life on a peaceful, happy street in a calm, happy town. Everything was perfect.

Which is why I was completely shocked when, the day before my world imploded, Trey popped into my home office with the words that upended everything. You have to understand, Trey was a steady, calm presence in my life—in all our lives. Rarely off kilter, always in control. Too much control sometimes.

“Brook? Brookie?” Trey is calling me from the kitchen. I start to get up but hear his footsteps drawing closer. Sure enough, seconds later he appears at the French doors to my office. He is grinning his head off, knocking on the glass, full of glee and excitement.

“Brooklyn. Love of my life. I have a surprise for you.”

“You know I don’t like surprises.”