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There was no sign of her anywhere. It was proper and expected, lacking all the flair and warmth she offered. That notion ebbed between the cracks in my armor, nagging at me.
“You know, I was hoping we’d see you back around here again.” The elderly voice made me turn. Ellen Whittaker stood on her front walkway, head tilted to the side with a sad smile as she watched me. Three years and the older woman looked the same, right down to her dark sweater and pristine hair. I gave up half a grin—it was all I could manage.
“How are you, Ellen?” I asked because it was the polite thing to do.
“Alive and kicking.” She chuckled. “But I’ll take it. Are you back for good, dear?”
“That’s the question of the year, isn’t it?” I muttered and blew out a long breath of air. I scanned the house once more, trying to grasp something I recognized. “Did she not decorate this year?”
“She hasn’t decorated in three years.” My gaze snapped in her direction. “We all miss her kooky little pumpkin displays. Grief is a funny thing, isn’t it? It takes things you never thought it would.”
“Yeah,” I whispered, but I barely heard her. I was stuck on the fucking notion that Genevieve hadn’t decorated for Halloween in three years. That wasn’t her. Numbly, I waved at Ellen and started up the steps. “Have a good day, Ellen.”
I let myself in with my key because I still kept the stupid thing on a keychain she’d given me. For as much as I’d tried to separate from her over three years, I never managed to let Genevieve go.
The house was bland.
That was the only word I could think of to describe it. Picturesque? Maybe that was a better word for it. Besides the neatly stacked and perfectly labeled moving boxes scattered throughout the first floor, it looked like something out of a magazine. Everything was plain and perfect, clean and neutral.
This wasn’t our fucking house. Our house was filled with a wild array of colorful blankets and pillows. It had ridiculous knick-knacks on every available surface and photo collages on the wall. Our house was filled with a dozen or more half-filled water bottles, cups, and mugs left everywhere when she was distracted. Our house was a home—lived in, cared for, and full of memories that echoed off every surface.
This house lacked everything that screamed Genevieve. It was as if she’d vanished from existence, packed away inside a box where no one could see her bright colors and brilliant personality.
This house felt wrong down to its very studs.
I stalked through the first floor, taking in the absence of detail. It fucking broke my heart. There wasn’t a shred of evidence—not real anyway—that the woman I fell in love with lived here. And there was no fucking way all that shit was packed already in a handful of boxes.
Even the coffee mugs she had laid out next to packing paper on the counter were all wrong. No color, no adorable designs, no wild shapes. They were all simple, plain mugs in crappy fucking white.
“Shit,” I whispered to the empty house. Had she been living like this for three years?
Did I do this to her?
I was afraid to look upstairs, but I had to. I had to fucking know how bad it was. My expectations for coming to see Genevieve hadn’t been high—a blowout fight was the top of that list—but finding our house like this… I didn’t know what the fuck to do with that.
Our house wasn’t remotely the biggest in Cedar Harbor. It was a quaint three-bedroom house with the rooms crammed around a cozy bathroom on the second floor. The first room at the top of the stairs was ours.
And the door was shut. Which was fucking odd because Genevieve hated closed doors. It gave her anxiety. She craved the openness.
The guest bedroom across from our room was open, and I peeked inside, unsure of what I’d find. Her clothes were neatly folded and sorted on the floor in piles dictated by season from what I could tell. The bed was lived in with its wrinkled sheets and her satin pillowcases.
Fuck me. Was she sleeping in the guest bedroom?
I leaned against the doorframe, closing my eyes and running my hands over my face. Fuck, I needed a minute. There was so much shit to take in before I dared to figure out what the hell was going on with our room. The pit of my stomach had long since dropped out, and my heart pounded hard in my chest. I had a fucking feeling I knew what I’d find, but I wanted to be wrong.
More than anything, I wanted to be fucking wrong.
But I wasn’t.
In three years, the room hadn’t fucking changed. My clothes still hung in the closet and filled the drawers. Guitar picks and random shit littered the top of my dresser, half-burnt candles were scattered throughout the room, and dust covered everything. My duffel bag still sat in the same fucking chair, open and half-full next to an extra pillow and blanket.
The only thing different was the bed. The sheets and blankets had been stripped off and tossed into a corner. An empty bucket and brush sat next to the bed while a tarp was thrown over the bare mattress. I sank against the dresser. I didn’t need to fucking lift the damn thing to know what was under it.
Her panicked cries and pleas in the middle of the night pulled my half-drunk ass out of my sleep.
The haunted sounds echoed off the walls, and I swallowed hard. My eyes and nose burned with painful tears as I took in the broken room that she’d hid away behind a goddamn door and pretended as if it didn’t exist.
Genevieve wasn’t hurting.
