Page 114 of The Dearly Departed

I pulled the handgun Gerald had provided me with from the waist of my pants and held it at the ready as I turned the doorknob and pushed the heavy wood open to step into an extraordinary bedroom fit for … well, a princess.

The room was clean and orderly. There appeared to be no sign of a struggle. I walked in slowly through a small seating area with a television, a sofa and chaise lounge, casting my gaze this way and that, surveying the grand suite with a wonderous, watchful eye.

Through an open doorway, I saw an enormous bed, complete with a canopy of fluttering fabrics of varying degrees of sheerness. I thought about my room back at the funeral home and the twin-size bed I slept in, even at thirty-five years old, and how horribly it paled in comparison to this.

"You came," said a small, fragile voice.

My attention was drawn again to the bed, where, hidden within the veils, Analise sat in the middle, her arms wrapped tightly around her knees.

From this distance, she looked okay, unharmed.

"You said you needed help," I answered, turning in a circle to take in the rest of the room and quickly realizing there was nobody else here.

We were alone, and as I approached the bed, I saw that my initial inspection had been correct.

She was fine.

"Did you lie to me, Analise?" I accused, tucking the gun back into my waistband and concealing it beneath my jacket.

"It wasn't a lie," she argued weakly without looking at me. "I did need someone."

"Dean is downstairs."

“I don’t want him,” she said, implying once again that she wanted me, as she shook her head and wiped her eyes, and it was only then that I realized she was crying.

My panic rose as I stepped toward the bed.

“What happened?” I asked with urgency.

“Benjamin proposed to me a few months ago,” she replied. “Did you know that?”

“I heard, yeah.”

Of course I had. Gerald had told me when it happened with an air of pride and excitement in his tone, though I couldn’t understand what stake he held in their marriage. Analise was only his stepdaughter, one he didn’t seem particularly invested in from what I could tell, and Benjamin was …

Well, he was still a bit of a mystery to me.

“My wedding is next week.”

“What?” This was news to me, and my heart sped with desperation I couldn’t do anything about.

“Yep,” she whispered, her voice choked by tears and sadness and unmistakable fear.

With their relationship being as drawn out as it was, I’d assumed their engagement would be as well. But then again, with as insistent as these people seemed to be about her nuptials being finalized, I supposed I shouldn’t have been surprised. What the rush was exactly, I couldn't say, but none of it sat right with me—and that went beyond my feelings for her.

If I had a hard time stomaching the thought, I could only imagine how Analise felt.

"And you know what I keep thinking?" she asked, finally looking at me for the first time since I’d entered her room.

"What’s that, Princess?"

The nickname that had once made her disdainful now brought the smallest of smiles to her lips, and for half a second, I felt like I had won, while knowing that, in this situation, I was the biggest loser of all.

"If you had come into the picture sooner, would Gerry have insisted on us being married instead?”

I narrowed my eyes, shaking my head. "I don't know what you're talking about—"

"You are related to him, aren’t you?”