44

With the cold came the kiss of the holidays in Kent Wood Manor. Trading pumpkins for pines, the residents adorned their porches with wreaths dotted with cranberries and fat plastic snowmen. In a week there would be another party—not a Gala, thank god; Victoria couldn’t have handled that. This would be a quieter event with hot cocoa and ice skating. Holly-jolly families would travel the block, caroling and casting votes for best decorations.

Life, as they said, was indeed moving on. Everyone was fighting so hard to maintain normalcy. Sympathy cards had waned, and the meal train had expended its supply of air-fryer friendly packages. The neighbors actively avoided mentioning her dead husband while planning cookie swaps and Secret Santa assignments. Outward appearances of mourning were packed away neatly in totes and stored in attics alongside Halloween decorations and outgrown clothing.

Fear remained, but they dressed it in a bow and called it a gift. The gift of appreciation. Of not taking a single day for granted. Of holding your loved ones tight.

Victoria hadn’t sold her soul, but she might as well have rented it out.

And the more she thought about X and his ambiguous motivations, the more she realized that she was fine paying that price—as long as he stayed out of her way.

Whoever he was.

That was part of the issue. It was difficult to stay the course when she didn’t know who was building the obstacles.

She’d stayed an extra half hour in the office, wanting to avoid another run-in with Jeff. Finally turning onto her street, Victoria’s mind bluescreened as she took in the chaos unraveling in front of her. Police cars. An ambulance. The perimeter around the Knottier house was crawling with activity.

Betty’s husband stood at the base of the stairs. His usual composure abandoned, he ran a hand through his hair and gestured wildly at the house while an officer motioned for him to calm down. For some reason it was his glasses that Victoria focused on, slightly askew on the bridge of his nose. It would’ve taken all of two seconds to straighten them out. A twitch of his nose. Instead, he left them crooked.

The flashing red-and-white lights cast shadows over her face as Victoria parked and joined the group of neighbors huddled around the scene.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

Mary Sparrow blew into her wrinkled hands with tears in her eyes. “Oh, it’s horrible,” she said, her voice thick with emotion. “Just horrible.”

“Did something happen to Chelsea?”

Betty’s daughter was a junior in high school and it was no secret that she’d been struggling with drug addiction. Breaking her wrist stealing a base during a softball game had allegedly led to a reliance on painkillers, of which there was no short supply in the Manor. Although Betty had done her best to tamp down the rumors, shielding her daughter from the worst of the stigma by organizing fundraisers and anti-drug awareness campaigns, Chelsea was a teenager. Breaking rules was what they did.

A wail erupted into the night. Victoria turned to the source, absorbed in the collective gasp that issued around her. Two paramedics emerged from the house, stretcher in tow. A white sheet was spread over a lifeless form. Victoria’s vision doubled, and when she blinked she was in that small room in the basement of the hospital. The closed-circuit screen fuzzy yet the body, his body, so incredibly crisp.

The dry rasp of the sheet as the ME peeled it away from his lifeless form.

She bit her cheek and winced as her mouth filled with the iron taste of blood. The jolt of pain broke apart the image in her mind, but the paramedics remained, as real as the flap of skin she tongued at in her mouth.

Whispers carried in the wind as the paramedics carefully navigated the stairs and path. The officer speaking with Dave put a hand on his shoulder and shook his head when he started to move forward. Dave crumpled, elbows on his knees and fingers buried in his hair, convulsing next to an LED Santa with rosy red cheeks and a burlap sack.

Poor Chelsea, Victoria thought.

A second cry echoed through the crowd, breaking her concentration. Victoria craned to see who had lost it, but everyone seemed equally confused. Moments later, a disheveled, fair-haired girl stumbled through the doorway into her father’s arms. Moans heaved from her chest in heartbreaking arcs, ebbing and flowing with her breaths.

Oh shit, she thought. Chelsea wasn’t on that stretcher.

Her phone vibrated against her leg. Victoria felt every nerve freeze in anticipation as she slowly drew it from her pocket. She’d come to associate the buzz with X and was dismayed to see Warren’s name on the screen.

A single word, loaded with venom.

Whoops.

“It’s Betty,” Mary said, gripping Victoria’s forearm. “Betty’s dead.”