Slamming her past behind her.
As she stood on the lawn, gasping and swallowing to keep the sickness at bay, she promised herself she would never return to this house again.
BF called. It’s all set. After graduation, he’s taking R and me away from here. I can’t wait. I’ve so wanted to tell R about it, but I don’t want to ruin the surprise. I can’t wait to see her face when I tell her to pack.
“Rachel, this isn’t me.” Travis’s voice was somber.
“I…I always thought it was,” she murmured. “But…” She flipped the pages of the diary. “Here she says, ‘My bf T is taking me to the show tonight’. But in most other passages, she just referred to you as T. She never mentions T again after prom night.”
“There’s nothing in here about our break-up. I had hoped she would have said something about it, something explaining why she didn’t want to see me anymore.” He sat next to Rachel on the sofa, skimming through the pages.
“She mentions the prom and that’s it,” he continued. “Then she just starts talking about BF and phone calls. There isn’t even an entry for the day we broke up.”
Rachel turned her gaze from the diary to the hard look in Travis’s eyes. She had read the diary over and over before phoning him to come over. She wanted to believe she was right. She wanted to blame Travis Gage for her sister’s death, but the more she studied the words, the more she realized that what he’d said could very well be true.
The thought left her empty inside.
The therapists had explained that no one but Carrie was responsible for her death. She was the one who swallowed those pills. She was the one who made the choice. But the anger Rachel had felt for her sister had become too much to bear. She’d needed another outlet for the pain, someone else to blame. Travis had always been that someone.
Until today.
And now, without a culprit, the strength she had gained over the years dissolved in the pages of the diary. Someone had broken her sister beyond repair, and she had no idea who that person was, or why they had done it. The slightest morsel of closure she had been holding onto had just swung wide open, leaving her feeling angry and exposed.
She took the diary from his hands and rose from the couch. “I’m sorry I unfairly accused you. And I’m sorry you didn’t get the answers you wanted.”
She set the leather book on the counter then moved to the door. “I have things to do, if you don’t mind.”
It was a lie, but the clamp on her throat told her she was pressed to the edge of tears, and she really didn’t want to break down in front of Travis Gage. She’d already stood half-naked in front of the man then all but accused him of murdering her sister. Sobbing on his shoulder would prove to be too much humiliation for one day.
“What are you going to do?” he asked, showing no signs of leaving.
“There’s nothing I can do. The identity of BF died with my sister.”
He crossed a leg over his knee, demonstrating that he was nowhere near rising and leaving for good. Rachel fumbled near the door. She wanted him to leave her to her own self-pity, but she’d already tormented the man enough today. She wasn’t sure how to ask him to leave in a manner that bordered on polite.
“Not necessarily,” he remarked.
She studied him for a moment, trying to understand what he was suggesting. The apparent befuddled look on her face caused him to continue.
“Rachel, I’m a homicide investigator. I work cold case files that are decades old. I’ve solved murders with less to go on than what’s written in that diary. It wouldn’t take much to find out who this BF is.”
“A homicide detective?” Wallowing in her own turmoil, she’d never thought to ask what he did for a living. Then something else occurred to her. “Last I heard, you’d taken over your father’s computer company after he died.”
She cringed as she awaited his reply. Hoping he wouldn’t pick up on the fact that she’d indeed kept some kind of tabs on him over the years.
“I still own Quintac, yes, but it’s run by very competent managers.”
“Isn’t it a multi-million-dollar corporation? I’d think you’d be more focused on keeping it that way instead of working as a detective.”
He shrugged. “The money the company brings in helped me form the cold case unit in the Chicago PD. That’s what I’d rather focus on.”