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Soon, he pulls into the empty parking lot of a hotel, the windows of which are dark, then leaves the car to see if the hotel has vacancy. He comes back a few moments later, his dark hair soaked and fat raindrops clinging to his eyelashes.
“It’s closed,” he says.
“They’ll probably all be around here. It’s the country,” I reply. “Why don’t we just call my parents and spend the night at their apartment?”
The look in his eyes is something between embarrassment and frustration.
“The last thing I want is to wake your parents in the middle of the night to tell them you and the baby have no roof over your heads anymore.”
I sigh and try to not make it an exasperated one. He worries too much, and he’s too protective. It’s getting better though, and I kind of see his point. My parents will just panic and that won’t do anyone any good. As for failing to notice the roof was leaking over my office, they’ll see that as my fault more than his. They already think I work too much.
“Let’s go to Ljubljana and find a hotel there,” I suggest. "I’m sure there are places open in the capital.”
He jumps at the idea and speeds out of the parking lot and down the dark road. He always drives too fast, and ironically never seems to factor that into worrying about me. But he is a very good driver.
“It’ll all work out,” I say quietly after a while, trying to convince him as much as myself.
“It always does. And we’ve faced worse odds,” he says and grins at me.
He’s not wrong.
“At least now we have the chance to rebuild the house and make it into even more of a home,” he adds.
And he’s not wrong about that either.
* * *
As I predicted, neither of us could fall asleep once we got a room at the hotel that rises above Ljubljana’s main train and bus station. So we spent the night dreaming up ways on how we can make our small house into something better than it already is.
Though by the time the sky outside the huge windows was already a silvery grey and I finally dozed off, we decided that the house is just perfect the way it is, with its large open living room and kitchen that look over the vineyards and green rolling hills, the two cozy bedrooms—one for us and one for our daughter—and the small room that I use as my office. We could use a second bathroom, probably, but it’s not absolutely necessary.
It’s almost ten AM now and Mark has already gone to start solving the problem, leaving me a note that he’s going to get a contractor to look at the damage and that he didn’t want to wake me.
I’m debating on whether to call my mom and break the news to her now or wait until we know what kind of time we’re looking at before we can go back home.
This hotel room is comfortable enough, with a huge bed, writing desk, and even a small loveseat by the window, but I already see all the ways trying to spend the day in here isn’t going to work. Being pregnant at forty is no joke, and lately, I’ve been having trouble finding comfortable spots even in my own home. Not to mention that I have no access to a fridge stocked with all my absolute must-have foods and drinks here.
The sky outside is overcast and just as slate gray as it was at dawn, but that’s nothing new during winter in this city. That’s another thing I love about living in the country. We get sunshine even in winter.
I can just about see the apartment building my parents live in through the window. It’s about a ten-minute walk from here, maybe twenty since I’m currently not as fast as I used to be. I already know visiting my parents today is a decision I will end up making and there’s no point in putting it off.
Surprisingly enough, my mom has already called me three times this morning, I realize as I take my phone from my purse. So either Mark already told them the news, which I very much doubt, or she sensed something was wrong. Even though she’s been known to sometimes have weird premonitions, I doubt that’s the case today.
Plus, she never calls more than once in the space of an hour unless it’s an emergency, and here I have three missed calls from her between eight and nine-thirty.
I dial her number, trying not to imagine that something even worse than our roof caving in happened last night.
“Mom, is something wrong?” I ask in a breathless, panicked voice as soon as she picks up.
“Oh, no, I’m sorry, we’re both fine,” she hurries to explain after a brief pause. “It’s something else.”
I sit on the edge of the bed, only just now realizing that my racing heart is making me lightheaded, which is not something that usually happens.
“What?” I ask and try to ignore that too.
“It’s Milo. Sana’s son,” she says. “He’s been arrested this morning. They think he’s responsible for the murders, you know, the ones where the victims were found by the river?”
I swallow hard past the lump in my throat. “Yes, I know. I’ve been following the case.”
“There was another stabbing late last night,” Mom says. “And Milo was picked up in the area and arrested. But he didn’t do it. Sana is beside herself. Can Mark do something?”
I assure her I’ll talk to him and tell her I’m coming over now, then gloss over her questions of why I’m in the city and not at home. There’ll be plenty of time to answer them later.
Sana is one of my mother’s closest and oldest friends. A Bosnian hairdresser and beautician, and a single mother to a twenty-something son, who has been in and out of trouble with police since his teens. Mostly drug and gang-related kinds of trouble. She’s done just about everything under the sun to try and straighten him up, including years of all sorts of counseling and even sending him abroad for school, but nothing’s really worked. She’s failed more than she had succeeded in keeping him on the right path, as she puts it.
I know Milo too, not well, but enough to be sure he’s not the person behind these stabbings. He does not fit the profile of the killer I’ve been researching for the last two months or so—the person, most likely a man, who stabs his victims through the heart with a single, practiced motion, then gently poses them as though they are sleeping. And from what I’ve uncovered, or think I’ve uncovered, this killer has been active for a long time. Milo was probably still a baby when the first murder happened, or maybe he hadn’t even been born yet.
But are the police going to believe me this time?
So far, they’ve dismissed me both times I’ve tried to present my findings to them.
