AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Ten blocks or twenty, what did it matter?
She ran home at a quicker pace, only slowing when she reached the corner of her street. At the corner, beneath the streetlamp, she leaned over, hands on knees, and breathed deep, slowing her heartbeat as Dave strained on the leash, sniffing at the shrubbery that lined one yard. “Okay, okay,” she said, and walked toward her house.
As the cottage came into view, her heart twisted. She remembered walking through the place when she and Jay had been looking to move from their apartment. “It’s perfect,” she’d told him as they’d walked through the rooms.
“You think? Isn’t it a little small?”
“What? No! Look, you have an office and we can get a hide-a-bed or a Murphy bed for guests and we can convert that empty attic into kind of a loft/work space for me. It will be perfect.”
“What about kids?” he’d asked.
“We’ll figure it out. Oh, come on, Jay. We’ve been looking forever. This is the place!”
He’d laughed, run his fingers through his hair, then said, “If you’re sure.”
“I am! I love it!”
“Then we’ll put in an offer!” And he’d wrapped his arms around her and spun her in the living room.
She hadn’t lied. She had loved the house. For the few years they’d been here, she’d absolutely adored this little spot. A lump formed in her throat. But she’d loved the house because it had been theirs. Together.
“It’s time to move on, Kris. You know what you have to do.”
She walked the half block to her house and slowed at the edge of the yard, the grass sprinkled with leaves and a few sticks from the last storm. Hard as it was, she needed to pull herself together for the baby’s sake. While keeping Jay’s memory alive for her child, she had to get on with the rest of her life. Part of that might be moving out of the cottage. She and the baby needed a new start, a fresh beginning, their own place to make new memories so that she wasn’t surrounded by the past and reminded of a future that would never be. She would have to find a house or condo or apartment that hadn’t been invaded by the person who had taken her husband’s life, the nutcase who seemed determined to terrorize her.
But, there was more.
Running away from the past and building a new future wasn’t enough.
Somehow she had to unmask the unhinged prick who had killed Jay, bring him to justice, and purge him from her life, and then find a way to carve out a new life for herself and her child.
“I’ll do it,” she said to the night air. “I swear. I’ll do it.”
“That’s my girl,”she heard Jay say, but his voice was far away and faint. A whisper. As if he, too, were letting go.
She turned her head to reply to him, as if he were right beside her, and caught herself. He was gone. Of course.
“Get real,” she whispered, and started up the walk, tugging on the leash.
It tightened.
Dave didn’t budge.
Growled instead.
His hackles rose, hair standing straight up on the back of his neck and his lips curled as he stared, long and hard, across the street to the alley separating the neighbors’ lots.
A little shiver raced down Kristi’s back.
She squinted, saw nothing, not so much as a shadow.
But the dog gave out a low growl, his gaze still fixed on the dark alley.
“It’s nothing,” she said, as much to herself as the dog. “Come on.”
He didn’t move.
“Dave!” she said more sharply. “Come!”
