Identity

“Okay. Thank you. They have to find my car so they can find who did this. Then they have to go to prison forever.”

“You bet your ass, sweetheart. Don’t you come into work tomorrow. Don’t you come in until you feel you can. You understand?”

“I want to—need to—go to Nina’s family tomorrow. I don’t want to intrude tonight. I just feel I shouldn’t be there tonight. And Sam … The police said they’d talk to him, didn’t want me to tell him yet. I’m not stupid, they want to make sure he wasn’t here. He’d never have hurt her, but they need to talk to him. I need to talk to him tomorrow.”

“If you need anything, there are plenty of people who’d jump to help. You matter around here, Morgan.” He gave her a pat on the knee.

“I’m going to see about fixing that door.”

When, long after midnight, she was finally alone—it seemed like days rather than hours—she looked at the card one of the cops had given her. For a crime scene cleanup.

The crime scene they said they’d cleared, like a table of dirty dishes.

The crime scene where Nina had died.

But she wouldn’t call them. It was Nina, and she’d do it herself. The last thing she could really do for someone she’d loved like a sister.

So, late into the night in a house that echoed with silence, she got the bucket, the scrub brush.

They’d taken the laptop—evidence. They’d taken photos and videos and dusted for prints. The detectives had talked to her—questions, questions, over and over. But they’d left the blood behind on the floor, the doorjamb, the wall just inside her office.

It took a long time, longer because she’d gotten sick once, then broken down twice. But she managed. She’d do it all again in the strong daylight if she needed to.

She tossed the takeout, allowed herself a single glass of wine in hopes it would help her sleep.

And in the quiet, in the empty, she lay down in Nina’s bed, hugged the pillow that smelled like Nina’s shampoo.

Though she thought she’d emptied herself of tears, she wept again.

As dawn broke on another April morning, she finally drifted into the peace of sleep.





Chapter Four



Morgan tread water in a well of grief. She couldn’t sink, couldn’t allow herself to just go under. She had to talk to the police again. Answer questions, make formal statements. It kept the grief fresh and the water in the well deep.

Nina’s family had become her family, and she couldn’t help them if she sank. She sat with them, mourned with them, did her best to help with the funeral arrangements.

Both her bosses insisted she take a week off, and coworkers dropped off food. Casseroles, pasta dishes, ham, chicken.

She shared it with Sam. If he wasn’t with Nina’s family, he was with her.

He had his own well.

She sat with him while they both picked at the latest casserole.

“Still no word on your car?”

“No.” Since he’d brought wine as his contribution to the meal neither of them much wanted, she sipped at her glass. “I guess it’s gone. The cops don’t say that right out, but what they do say makes it pretty clear. I filed the insurance claim today.”

He gave her hand a sympathetic rub. “Nightmares?”

“Yeah, well.”

“Me, too. Offer’s still open for me to stay any night you want, or for you to bunk with me.”

“I know.”

“Or if you have a bad one, just call me.”

Now she rubbed his hand. “Same goes. Bill’s been great about lending me his car, but I need to start looking for one. Before I go back to work.”

“If you want help with that, just ask.”

“Thanks.”

She didn’t mention the insurance payoff would be a hell of a lot less than she’d paid for the car—already used and with significant mileage—minus her high deductible.

But that was a problem for another day.

“We finished packing up her room today. Nina’s sister and mother and I.”

He nodded, met her eyes. “I stopped to see her parents before I came over. The photos you helped them choose for the service are perfect.”

“They don’t blame me.”

“Because you’re not to blame.”

“My head knows that. Or it’s almost got that. But … I never, never imagined anyone breaking in here. Honestly, what did the son of a bitch get out of it? Even the car isn’t worth that much. If I’d put in better locks, or invested in an alarm system.”

“Stop.” This time he took her hand, held it. “Stop that. She texted me her boss sent her home—so we could say what if her boss hadn’t sent her home. We could say what if I’d come over to bring her some cold medicine, make her some soup or whatever. Plenty of what-ifs. But the fact is, nobody’s to blame but the person who did this. Nobody.”

Because she knew that, she nodded. And still.

“It was so hard to box up the last of her things, Sam, and take them out of her room. To go back in there alone, and there was nothing left of her there.”

“She loved living here with you. I knew I was going to have a hell of a time talking her into moving in with me because she loved living here with you.”

Tears rose into her throat, burned there. “You were going to ask her?”

“I was going to give it a little while longer.” With a half smile, he tapped the side of his head. “Strategy. I know we’d only gotten serious for a few weeks, but I’d been serious about her a lot longer.”

“She knew.”

“Did she?”

And in his eyes she saw the sorrow, as immeasurable as her own.

“Oh yeah. You weren’t a fling for her, Sam. It would’ve taken some convincing, some time, but she’d have said yes.”

“How are we going to get over her, Morgan? What are we going to do without her?”

“I have no idea. I think about how we painted her bedroom before she moved in. I only had this place a few weeks before she did, so Nina was here right from the start, really. She had that lilac paint in her hair, on her face by the time we’d finished.”

Morgan could see it, could see Nina, as clear as yesterday.

“And how she showed me how to plant flowers, and how she wouldn’t take no, and dragged me to my first Ramos family dinner.”

“Nothing like them.”

“She wanted to set me up with her brother, Rick.”

Sam swigged some beer. “Yeah, well. No.”

That teased a half laugh out of her tight throat.

“I remember the night she brought you into the Round so I could size you up.”

“We had tequila shots.”

“You did. And oh God, the night we made dinner. When I came home from work, she was standing right over there. The kitchen looked like she’d set off a bomb. She was wild-eyed because she’d successfully made the marinade for the chops.”

“It was a really good night.”

“An excellent night.”

He pushed more food around his plate. “You still haven’t heard from Luke?”

“I think, like my car, that’s gone. He never answered my text or call about Nina. Some people just don’t handle, or don’t want to handle emotional upheaval.”

She shrugged. “It’s good to know before things went anywhere.”