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This is all wrong. This can’t be.
She attempted to calm down by forcing slow, deep breaths. She washed her hands out of force of habit, dried them, then crossed the room and opened the bathroom door. Oscar Peterson’s piano filtered in. She guessed they’d had enough “Danny Boy” and “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” for one day. She could also hear her father’s voice, talking low.
He’s on the phone with that creep.
She recalled how her dad had tried to include Trey in their festivities, and Miranda had immediately shut the idea down. “It’s always been our day,” she’d whined. Even if she’d loved Trey from the get-go, adored him, thought he was the best thing since sliced soda bread, she still wouldn’t have wanted him there.
Her father, thankfully, understood and let the idea drop quickly.
Not because she didn’t want to interrupt the conversation and her dad’s low laughter, which sounded dirty, making her cringe, but because she simply couldn’t bear to hear, she crossed the hallway into her father’s bedroom.
It looked the same as it always did—the king bed made up neatly with a pale gray quilt, the dresser adorned with a thriving orange orchid and a single photograph taken two years ago when the three of them had traveled to Sicily.
She was ready to breathe a sigh of relief when she saw no pictures of Trey and nothing, in fact, out of the ordinary in the room. Maybe there was a logical explanation for the band. Perhaps it was just a ring, with no meaning beyond adornment.
She paused to gaze out the wide window that overlooked the rusty elegance of Gas Works Park, across Lake Union’s dark waters.
Should I?
No.
It’s an invasion of privacy.
But I’d be protecting him.
Has he ever asked for protection? You’re an adult. Would you want him to protect you?
Miranda had never been much for reining in impulses, so her argument with herself was lost before it began. She simply couldn’t walk out of that room without doing a little snooping.
She pressed her ear to the closed bedroom door—her dad was still on his phone call.
She moved to the narrow hallway that led to the en suite bath. On either side were mirrored closet doors. She knew from past experience that her father’s clothes were on the right side, the dark grays, blacks, and whites that were to his monochromatic taste arranged on hangers and folded on the custom shelves. Up top, a high shelf held boxes of correspondence and old publishing contracts from before everything had gone electronic.
The other side had once belonged to Steve. After he’d left, she distinctly recalled her dad saying he could use the closet space for workout clothes and shoes. He could also use the shelves for more copies of his books, which was an ever-growing collection, what with different editions and translations.
She opened what she thought of as her father’s closet first. It was like a picture—everything arranged with his hyper-neatness, not a thing out of place, exactly as she’d always seen it.
Deep breath, turn, and open the other side. Go on…
Bold colors leapt out at her.
These weren’t her father’s things. She touched the hanging clothes, running her fingers over the distressed jeans, the hoodies, the T-shirts. An odd thought—these aren’t the clothes of an attorney. They’re the clothes of mutton dressed as lamb.
Trey.
Stacked beneath the clothes were plastic storage boxes in a pale shade of purple. They were translucent enough that Miranda spied papers inside these boxes, envelopes of various sizes, folded and unfolded sheets.
These could tell Trey’s story.
How much time had passed since she’d slipped in here? Did she have time to sort through the paperwork? Maybe grab a few shots with her phone? And maybe even get a glimpse at who the man was?Reallywas? Would he be dumb enough to hide nefarious secrets only a few feet from where her father slept every night?
Or doesn’t he have nefarious secrets at all? Are you just paranoid?
She reached out and gingerly opened the top storage box. Her gaze immediately fell upon an innocent-looking document: a handwritten receipt. Two things jumped out. One was the name on the receipt: Bruno Purdy. The second was that it was a receipt for a long stay at an Aurora Avenue motel, dated in February. Those shitholes on the north part of one of Seattle’s longest north-south streets were dumps, breeding grounds for the lost, the drug-addicted, the alcoholics, the cheaters, and the kind of people one found hiding under figurative rocks.
Was Bruno Purdy really Trey? That would explain why she was never able to find any connection at all for him online. Was this motel his actual home and not the downtown high-rise condo he’d mentioned? She reached to lift the receipt, see what was underneath.
The decision whether to probe any further was snatched away.
