EPILOGUE

A year later

The young couple loved what they saw, and they saw everything. Here a nursery; perfect for little Jimmy or Julie, now just a glint in their eye but soon, fingers crossed, a double-line on a pregnancy test. There a game room, for him of course, he was the gamer, the pool player, the darts enthusiast, but she liked to dabble. Here a spare room, for when their parents came over to visit. There a second spare room, for when he pissed her off and she decided the spare room was too good for him.

There were possibilities for a conservatory; a place to while away their summer nights and their spring holidays, to get drunk and watch the sun go down, to party and revel in their friendships; and an aviary, home to their two squawking parrots, which cost a small fortune and were doted-on hand and foot.

It was perfect.

“I still don’t understand why you’re selling this place,” he declared as he stood outside the house, fondly looking at the large facade, his wife tucked comfortably in the crook of his loving arm. “And for so cheap.”

Joseph Lee reciprocated their friendly smiles and then turned back to his house, his home for many years. He gave them a casual shrug. “It’s complicated. Let’s just say I need a new start.”

“What about the neighbors?” he asked, deciding to change the subject in case the homeowner changed his mind. “Are they okay?”

Lee instinctively glanced over the road. The menacing structure of house 23 glared back.

“Does anyone live there?” the man asked, following Lee’s gaze.

Lee calmly shook his head, a somber chill invading him. “Not for a while. The owners were a—” he paused, looked at them each in turn, smiled as broadly as he could. “A little crazy. They’re not around anymore. Solicitors are still going over the estate, you know how it is.”

“Ah,” the man said with a nod. “Bureaucracy.”

“Something like that.”

“And the rest of the neighbors?”

Lee glanced up and down the street. Curtains flickered, curious heads were already on the lookout. He caught the gaze of the next-door neighbor, an elderly woman, and she ducked back into her house, out of sight.

The same woman had pestered him at every opportunity she had over the last year. After the incident in the street, over which Lee had been cleared—his vengeance ruled as self-defense, the whole mess judged to be the work of others—the little old lady had bugged him and annoyed him at every opportunity. She insisted he was a serial killer, even tried to get him evicted from his own home via a number of bizarre applications to a powerless council.

He didn’t mind. He was leaving now, but it had nothing to do with her. If anything, he wanted to stay just to annoy her, and others like her, of which there were many.

“They’re okay,” Lee lied. “You’ll have a good life here, I can see it.”

The man and the woman exchanged smiles, shook Lee’s hand, and then bid him good-bye. The house would be theirs in a little over two weeks.

When the new homeowners had departed and the curious, beady eyes of the neighbors tired of the actionless scene in front of the Lee household, Joseph looked at his house for the last time. He wouldn’t be staying there tonight, or at all. He’d already moved out, his belongings—everything of value, and nothing of Jennifer’s—were already in his new house. A house miles away from the backward town that had annoyed, angered, and accused him for two years.

His thoughts were interrupted by a sharp report from a car horn. He turned around to see a car pull to a stop behind him. Its occupant, a young woman wearing sunglasses to shade the glaring afternoon sun—her long golden hair draping over her sun-beaten face—climbed out of the car and offered Joseph a warm smile.

“Saying your good-byes?” she said.

He grinned and walked up to her. They kissed, hugged. He stood back, his hands on her shoulders, his eyes gazing into hers.

He had met Emma not long after the ordeal. She was a nurse and had helped to patch him together after Patrick Rose and the Lechnens’ had beaten and broken him. They became close, and he had told her everything. She became as infatuated with him as he was with her.

She wasn’t rich, wasn’t high-class, and wasn’t elegant. She was young, pretty. A little pudgy around the waist but beautiful for it. She was sometimes shy, rarely outgoing, but often introspective, thoughtful, and meek. She wasn’t what he would have thought of as his type, yet from the moment he first saw her, first heard her speak, first received her tender and healing touch, he knew she was perfect for him. She was everything he needed and wanted, and, most importantly, she looked nothing like Jennifer. Or Zala.

“Let’s go home,” he said softly.