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Prologue
Ten Years Ago
When Gretchen woke up that morning, the day seemed like any other in her parents’ too big house, but that all changed when a car came to a screeching halt on the other side of the tall privacy fence surrounding the pool.
“Mom! Mom!”
Gretchen’s head snapped up at the alarm in her older sister’s voice. Abigail never yelled. She was too frigid and detached to allow her emotions to drive her to yelling.
“Mom!” Abigail burst through the gate, stopping when her green eyes landed on Gretchen. Their eyes were the only thing they shared. “What areyoudoing here?”
She’d asked herself the same question every day since graduating high school two months ago. “School doesn’t start for another week. I had nowhere else to go.”
She had tried to find anywhere else to be to avoid her family’s home. Ever since her mother shipped her off to boarding school six years ago, she rarely came home. Thankfully she didn’t have much longer until she could move out permanently and stop pretending she belonged in her mother’s cold house.
“What brings you by?” Gretchen forced her hair into a braid, letting it swing down her back in a long blond rope.
“Oh, where is she?” Abigail responded without an answer and burst into the house.
Gretchen followed silently behind her. Nothing ever got Abigail this excited.
“Have you heard?” Abigail asked.
“Heard what?” Her mother sipped absently from her teacup.
“Beth Reynolds,” Abigail replied. Beth Reynolds was the mother of their brother’s best friend.
“Please don’t speak of that woman in my house.” Disgust dripped from her mother’s voice before she went back to her tea.
Abigail ignored the request. “She was murdered in her own bedroom.”
“Murdered.” A well-manicured hand went to her mouth. “What?”
“Her husband. He shot her.”
Her mother’s mouth fell opened. “Her husband?”
Abigail nodded. “Finn saw him running out.”
Gretchen’s thoughts flashed to Finn and the letters he’d sent her when her parents first sent her away to school, asking about her swimming and her life but never her schoolwork.
“No.” Gretchen wasn’t aware she’d spoken until her sister turned to her.
“Gretchen, you shouldn’t be eavesdropping,” her mother chided as if she were still a child.
Gretchen ignored her. Stumbling out of the house, she ran down the street, through the gates of her stuffy neighborhood and to the part of her small town everyone pretended didn’t exist. As she turned the corner, she spotted the police tape circling the single-story house Finn had grown up in. A small group stood across the street, watching the police carry out evidence.
She slowed, scanning the crowd for Finn, ignoring the looks from the neighbors standing idly by. They knew her, everyone in town knew her family. Her mother would no doubt be scandalized that Gretchen was there.
Two men from the coroner’s office pushed out a gurney carrying a body. Gretchen fixed her gaze on the man behind them, staring at the ground with his hands shoved into the pockets of his worn jeans, and his dirty-blond hair hanging in his face, down to the collar of the army-green tee he wore. He hadn’t shaved, and the dark stubble of his beard could be seen even from a distance. Her eighteen-year-old heart would know him anywhere.
Finnegan James.
~ ~ ~
Finn stared at the ground, ignoring the crowd of gawkers standing across the street. If he looked up, if he saw the grins on their faces saying they’d seen this clusterfuck coming all along, he’d break. He followed the coroner, not knowing where he’d go or what he’d do now, relieved to be done with this house and this family.
“Surprised he didn’t do it sooner,” someone whispered, followed by, “I always knew they were both crazy as shit.”
