Noah balances the pizza box as he exits his car. He knows Grace said she wanted a quiet night, but he’s not buying it. Plus, he wants to ask about what he found in that banker’s box. He doesn’t like keeping anything from her. He checks the time and knows the boys will be asleep. He hopes Grace hasn’t eaten too much. She can never refuse 312 Pizza.
He uses his key and tentatively whispers into the hall. “Grace?” He slips the pizza in the kitchen, walks down the hall, and hears the shower running. He doesn’t want to startle her, so he tiptoes back to the living room and glances at her desk. The box is gone, but he does a double-take as he sees a familiar-looking journal. Where has he seen that before? Feeling like a snoop for the second time, he opens it and quickly learns that it’s Lee’s. He’s just about to close it, when something catches his eye. Despite his better judgment, he reads as fast as he can, absorbing the words. His body begins to heat, as if exerting himself. His palms grow clammy, and he suddenly finds it hard to breathe. He reads a few sentences about Lee’s past. He flips back a few pages to gain some context and gasps when he reads the next paragraph. Words jump out at him. That night. Wasted. The man in the dark. If this is true, then …
“What are you doing here?”
He reluctantly pulls his attention from the journal to find Grace in a bathrobe with a towel wrapped turban-style around her hair. He holds the journal in the air. “I was just reading.”
She tightens her bathrobe, walks to him, and plucks the journal from his fingers. “That’s not yours.”
“Have you read this?”
Grace shrugs.
“Come on.” Noah resists the urge to roll his eyes. Of course she’s read it. Who would ever refrain from reading their dead best friend’s journal when it’s lying right here?
“Come on what? These were Lee’s private thoughts.” She looks so earnest, he almost believes her.
He drags a hand over his face and glances around her desk. “I need to ask you about something. Something I just read. And something I saw the other night.”
The silence hangs. She waits for him to continue.
“In that box the other day, there was a photograph.”
“Okay.” Grace perches on the edge of the couch and crosses her arms.
Noah attempts to remain calm. “Lee was with someone who looked exactly like her.”
“So?”
He assesses how to frame the question. “So, you said it was her best friend, right?”
“Shirley.”
“Shirley.” Her name sounds foreign on his tongue. “But they look…” Identical.
Grace uncrosses her arms. “I know. They were both hairdressers. Or, from what I know, Shirley wanted to become a hairdresser. Why, do you know her?”
Noah’s heart bangs against his shirt, and he struggles to breathe. “I recognize her.”
Grace cocks her head and looks directly at him. “From?”
“A party.”
“A party with Lee?”
Noah shakes his head. “Lee? No, I don’t think she was there.”
Grace snorts. “Oh, please. Like you can’t remember.”
He recoils. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Grace pushes away from the couch and paces the room. She turns back and her eyes are different, detached. “The choking, Noah. The words you said. I know what happened at that party. I know every fucking thing you did to her.”
His blood runs cold. Grace knows about the party? “What do you mean you know about the party?”
“I know what you did. The choking, telling her you could kill her. I know that you left her in a pile of her own vomit. That’s what I know.”
“I…” No, that’s not how it happened. Vomit? There’d been no vomit. “Where did you even hear that?” He works through the information.
“Lee,” she finally whispers. She lifts her eyes to his, and his heart hardens. “Lee told me about that night. She said that’s how she got pregnant.”
The statement hits as if crashing against glass. The words break apart, but he can’t make sense of them. Her sentences tangle and whip around the circumference of his brain. He’s not sure he heard right. “She said what?”
“The night she died,” Grace says. “She told me she was raped. That Mason was a product of rape. From that party. And that she was blackout drunk. That she woke up while someone was still inside of her. That she was left there, like trash.”
Noah shakes his head in disbelief. His nerves sizzle, almost electric. “That’s not possible.”
Grace shakes her head and waits. “What’s not possible?”
He sits beside her on the couch and grips the back edge until his knuckles are taut and white. “Because I never met Lee until you introduced us.”
She snorts again, and her fingers tremble. “Give me a break. I’m supposed to believe that? After you choke me and say the exact same thing? After you’ve been lying about who you are this entire time?”
“I wasn’t trying to hurt you, Grace. And I haven’t been lying.”
“Of course you’ve been lying!” She removes the towel from her head and shakes out her wet curls. “And those words … it’s what you said to Lee at the party. What you did to her at that party.”
“Grace, look at me.” Desperation takes hold, and he feels like he’s on the verge of losing everything: her, Mason, Luca, his unborn child, the truth, this moment. It all hinges on what he says next.
Grace finally looks at him, and he takes her hands. “I swear on whatever you need me to swear on. It wasn’t her.” The words leave his mouth in a rush, and he steadies his voice, demands that his heart rate come back under control.
She stares, unblinking, so long that he wonders if she’s gone into shock. “Who wasn’t her?”
Time slows. He can hear the ticking of the clock. The ice dispenser making fresh cubes. The way Grace breathes, ragged and unsure, across from him. He is so confused, but not about that night.
Grace impatiently removes her hands. “Who, Noah? Who wasn’t her?”
“The girl at the party,” he finally says. He blinks slowly, frozen in a memory he’s catalogued somewhere in the recesses of his mind. But that night comes hurtling back, and he gasps at the clarity of it. He remembers everything about that encounter, especially her. “The girl in the dark.” He says the phrase dramatically, like something out of a movie. He straightens, looks at Grace, means it. “The girl in the dark wasn’t Lee.”