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Derrick had preferred wine. Like her. The next door she opened revealed her stash. She reached up. The bottle she snagged slipped from her fingers and plopped none too gently onto the counter. Thankfully it didn’t break.
“Oops.” She might be a little more buzzed than she’d realized.
She was a lot buzzed.
A bottle of wine didn’t generally have this effect on her. She hadn’t eaten since ... she couldn’t remember when. She was tired. Oh yeah. She was ripe for the alcohol to go straight to her head. Damn it.
Oh well, why stop now? She opened the bottle, chugged a long swallow or two that attempted to overflow. Okay, maybe three. She placed it back on the counter, took a breath. She turned around and surveyed the shitty kitchen.
“Why the hell did you do this, Derrick?” she shouted to the walls, the ceiling, the damned original floors he had claimed to love so much.
She wobbled around in a circle as if seeing the kitchen for the first time. “What was the point?” she demanded of the places he had touched.
The wine forgotten, she tramped back to the bathroom and stared at her reflection. Hair still slightly damp and hanging in unbrushed, knotty tufts. Face flushed from the fire and the wine, not to mention the severe scrubbing.
“Why me? It’s not like I’m rich.” She laughed. “The Judge has all the family money. Did you hope to get to her through me?”
Finley closed her eyes and attempted to slow the spinning in her head. “Finley O’Sullivan, this is your life. Full of secrets and lies and spattered in blood.”
She opened her eyes and glared at the woman staring back at her from the mirror. The blonde hair peeking past the black dye mocked her. She wasn’t that person anymore. She couldn’t be. Didn’t know how to go back. The ache of loss welled so fast she lost her breath. She shook her head. “I don’t like you anymore. Maybe I never did.” Finley grabbed a jar of face cream she hadn’t used in months and banged it against the mirror. Veins spread like a spider’s web through the glass, casting her reflection into broken pieces.
She placed the jar back on the counter. “There.” She nodded with approval. “That’s more realistic.”
Where had she left that bottle of wine?
Headed for the kitchen, she stalled in the living room and stared at the worn sofa she and Derrick had snuggled on so many times.
Another bolt of outrage rushing through her, she flung the cushions from the sagging frame.
Maybe she’d burn this piece of crap too. She grabbed at the cushions, hugging two to her chest, and headed for the back door.
She paused in the kitchen, felt something wrong with one of the cushions. She dropped her load. There was a lump or something. She fell to her knees and picked up each cushion, one at a time, and examined it more closely. On the bottom side of one there was something. Not really a lump but an uneven spot. Probably nothing. Maybe a knot of hardened foam. Her gaze moved over the fabric until she found the zipper. The damned thing didn’t move easily, perhaps because she was inebriated; it took a slow, hard tug with much grunting involved. Once the zipper was all the way open, reaching inside wasn’t any easier. The threadbare fabric was stretched tight over the foam. Both smelled far more unpleasant than she’d ever noticed before.
Ignoring the scrub of the zipper over her skin, she pushed her hand deeper inside, toward the slightly raised area.
Plastic. She felt plastic. Not hard plastic but soft, like wrap or a flimsy bag. Her fingers tightened on the plastic and pulled it toward the zipper opening.
Once the plastic was wrestled free of the fabric and the foam, she saw that it wasn’t just plastic but a bag. Like a gallon-size storage bag.
Photos.
The bag contained photographs.
Suddenly sober, Finley pulled the sides of the bag apart. She watched her hand, as if it belonged to someone else, reach inside. Her fingers closed around the cluster of photos and pulled them free of the bag.
Like she was looking in a mirror, her face stared back at her.
There was a photo of her coming out of the courthouse. Another coming out of her office. Yet another at her then-favorite coffee shack.
Before.These were photos from beforethatnight ... before she met Derrick. Her hair was its natural blonde color. Her smile the one without a care in the world ... the one she used to wear. The self-assured, well-adjusted woman in the photos no longer existed. In one the photographer had caught her midstride. The confidence in that stride. The top-of-her-game posture. All gone now.
Her throat felt suddenly dry.
Had Derrick taken this shot?
She moved on to another one. This one was of her standing on the rear balcony of her Woodmont condo. She blinked in disbelief. Judging by the angle of the shot, the photographer’s lens slanted downward, he had to have been on the balcony of an upper floor and to her left.
The person behind the camera had been in the building—her building.
