After refilling his and Kate’s wine glasses, Luke loaded the dishwasher, then joined her back at the kitchen table, aware that the long stems on his favorite glasses didn’t fit in the top rack. First-world problem. But he liked how they looked. A little hand-washing had never hurt anyone.
He watched Kate trace the rim of her glass with her index finger, her stare aimed at a tomato stain on their white table cloth.
“You know that cologne you smelled on your mother?” he asked.
“Yeah?” She looked up and squinted at him, her head tilted.
“That had me thinking.”
“Please don’t change your cologne.”
He smiled at her, amazed at her ability to diverge from subjects as painful as the death of her parents. The murders of her parents.
He, too, had experienced the events that had ensued—and rocked their entire small town. He’d been disturbed by it for years. How she’d managed to remain sane was nothing short of amazing to him.
She was quite the woman. Different from the others he’d dated before. Far less dramatic. Far less crazy. But he still worried that he might have done something that could trigger her to snap at him. They’d only lived together for a year. Although he enjoyed getting to know her little quirks and tics, he’d probably just seen the tip of the iceberg. He was waiting for the figurative other shoe to drop—if it was ever going to.
So he twisted a few options in his mind about how best to broach the topic and settled on what seemed more natural: the truth. Just re-arranged in time, assuming she’d go down the path he expected her to take.
“Do you remember what you told me in the car on Sunday, after your session?”
A line appeared between her brows. “I’m not sure I do. I was pretty emotional.” She brought her glass to her lips.
“About your dad’s wounds being less personal than your mom’s?”
“Oh! That part. Yeah. And the sheriff confirmed she was stabbed several times in the chest. My dad wasn’t. Whoever killed them knew my mother.”
He inhaled deeply, pushing his luck as he voiced his original plan. “So… This had me thinking that perhaps we could go through the boxes you brought back. You know? The photo albums and such? Maybe we could find a lead there.”
Kate shook her head. “I so don’t have time for this right now, Luko. We’ve got that serial killer on the loose. I need to focus on him.” She took another sip of her wine.
Luke smiled as he stared at his own glass, still full.
She’d answered just as he’d expected. He didn’t bother to remind her of her department’s policies or the conversation she’d shared with him about what her supervisor had already stated about her spending too much time at work.
He just had to push his luck a tad more.
“Would you be okay if I did?”
“What?” she asked, one eyebrow higher than the other before downing the rest of her glass.
“If I went through your boxes?”
“Be my guest!” Kate said before standing up to rinse her glass off in the sink. “I’m going to bed—”
“Good, because I already did,” Luke confessed, about to find out whether begging for forgiveness would be easier than asking for permission. Or was he about to see a new side of Kate? He stood tall and watched her slowly rotate to face him.
“You did what?”
Not sure if her brows were slanted due to anger, misbelief, or just exhaustion, he voiced the safest words that came to mind as he bridged the gap that separated her from him.
“Don’t get upset.” He wrapped his arms around her. “I was sitting in my office the other night. Out of curiosity—or boredom perhaps—I opened the top box. I found an old photo album. Some cute photos of you as a kid. Before I met you.”
“Okay…” Kate returned to her glass, squirted a bit of liquid soap onto the sponge and proceeded to wash her glass by hand.
He stepped away from her. “I also found other things.”
“What things?” Kate dried her glass then returned it to the cupboard.
“Letters. Unopened letters. Addressed to your mom.”
“What? Where?” She unplugged the sink, the sucking noises of the liquid draining down the pipe covering her words.
“Underneath those photo albums. Didn’t you pack those boxes?” Luke asked.
“Some I found in the attic. I brought them as-is after peeking in and finding photos. Others I packed myself, going through the stuff on the shelves, in dressers, on walls… You found unopened letters. Addressed to my mom?”
Luke nodded.
“Did you open them?”
“No! I wanted to talk to you first. See what you thought.”
“What was the date on them?”
“That’s the thing. They weren’t stamped by the post office. No paid postage. No return address. But your mom’s full name and mailing address is hand-written on those envelopes. The address where you lived as a child.”
“Someone other than the mailman could have put them in the mailbox. I’m gonna get my evidence kit out of my car. I want to see them. Now!”