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Look up Bentley Fox.
Who the fuck was Bentley Fox? His dad? A husband or a son I didn’t know about? Jesus, what if he was married? But no, Emerson wouldn’t do that. I knew he wouldn’t.
My fingers trembled as I pulled up a search screen, and what I saw made my blood run cold. It was him. Emerson was Bentley and…
Headline after headline. Interview after interview. Quote after quote. All the same.
Bentley Fox Arrested for Murder
Daniel May Stabbed Twenty-Two Times. Boyfriend Arrested.
No signs of forced entry.
Nothing stolen.
Fox claims he came home and passed out on the couch.
We loved Bentley, trusted him. We treated him like family, and he took our son from us!
Daniel wanted more, and he was planning to break up with Bentley. Maybe Bentley thought if he couldn’t have Daniel, no one could.
Everyone knows he did it.
He’s been known to have a temper.
Twenty-two stab wounds.
Crime of passion.
Bentley Fox on trial!
I can’t believe he got off! I can’t believe he’s not going to be punished for taking our boy away from us.
My phone tumbled to the carpet. I hardly made it to the toilet before I emptied my stomach of everything inside. Dry-heaved until my throat hurt, before leaning against the bathtub, room smelling of vomit.
He’d been on trial for the murder of his boyfriend.
For twenty-two stab wounds.
Not knowing what else to do, I curled up on the bathroom floor and cried.
For the first time in my life, I called in sick on Monday.
“Sammy? Are you okay?” Mama asked after quietly opening my door.
“Yeah.”
“Are you sick?”
“Yeah.”
“Is there something I can get for you?” she asked softly and full of concern. “I can make you chicken noodle soup and hot tea like I always do when you’re not feeling well.”
“No.” What could she do about me discovering that the man I’d been spending my weekends with had been on trial for the murder of his boyfriend? He’d gotten off, sure, but Daniel’s family still seemed to think he did it. How could Emerson have slept through it? Why had he come home that night and slept on the couch?
How? How? How?
“I’ll check on you in a little while, okay? Or go to the store if you need something. You just let me know.”
“Okay.”
Tuesday I went to work.
“You all right, Sammy? You don’t seem like yourself,” Carly, one of my coworkers, said.
“Still gettin’ over bein’ sick, I reckon.”
When I got home, I could see the worry on Mama’s face. She’d never had to give it to me before. It was usually the other way around. “Wanna play a board game or something tonight?”
I didn’t know what to think, what to do. “No, thanks. I’m gonna head to bed early,” I told her.
I spent most of the night researching Bentley Emerson Fox.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Emerson
I checked my phone almost every hour on Monday. Nothing.
Tuesday. Nothing.
Wednesday I’d completely shut it off, then left it in the barn, where I wouldn’t be tempted to just grab it and check.
I’d done it.
I’d put a stop to this.
That was all that mattered.
I went to Iris’s for breakfast on Friday morning. I didn’t know what in the hell I was thinking. That I would see Sam there? Even if I did, it wasn’t as if I’d approach him to talk to him. He now knew that my boyfriend had been murdered, while I’d been home. That I’d been tried for that murder, and even though they had no evidence and I was found innocent, there were still plenty of people who believed I did it.
Hell, I would believe the same in their situation.
Hunting Sam down probably wasn’t the best course of action.
But I wanted to see him.
Wanted to talk to him.
Wanted to touch him.
I didn’t want to be alone.
It was all I’d craved for years, and now that I’d have that back, the thought of it left me cold inside, made me feel like I was withering away.
Molly watched me from the other side of the diner.
Did she know?
Had Sam told her?
She turned away.
My waitress approached.
I ordered coffee and a cinnamon roll to go and left.
Part of me thought that maybe he would still come. I wasn’t supposed to think that, to want it. The house felt quieter, emptier, each of the sixty minutes after the time when he usually arrived going by agonizingly slow.
He was an hour late.
He wasn’t coming.
That had been the plan. Why didn’t it feel as right as I’d thought it would?
But then I heard it, the soft rumble of a car engine in the distance.
Closer.
Closer.
Gravel crunching beneath tires.
I pushed to my feet. Just as I made it to the door, I heard the vehicle stop. When I opened it and went outside, Sam was climbing out of his truck.
Thank you.
I’m sorry.
I’m glad you’re here.
You shouldn’t have come.
My feet moved without direction from me, until I was standing in the middle of the porch. I wasn’t sure what to expect when he reached me. I hadn’t thought about what I would say because I hadn’t thought he’d come.
