“Other than that, it was pretty pointless,” I say. “Seems to me like they don’t even know where to start.”
A steady sheet of rain erupts outside, and the house is filled with the sound of millions of fingers tapping on the roof, eager to get in. Daniel glances out the window before walking over and cracking it open, the earthy aroma of a summer storm gushing into the kitchen, mixing with the scent of a home-cooked meal. I stare at him for a while, the way he glides around the kitchen so naturally, cracking pepper into the skillet of sautéing vegetables, rubbing Moroccan spices across a slab of pink salmon. He flings a dish towel over one husky shoulder, and my heart surges with warmth at the perfection of it all. The perfection of him. I’ll never understand why he chose me: damaged Chloe. He acts as though he’s loved me since the moment he met me, the moment he knew my name. But there’s still so much about me that he doesn’t know. So much that he doesn’t understand. I think about the small pharmacy hidden in my office—my lifeline—that collection of faked prescriptions that I used his name to obtain. I think about my childhood, my past. The things I’ve seen. The things I’ve done.
He doesn’t know you, Chloe.
I try to shake Cooper’s words out of my mind, but I know he’s right. Excluding my family, Daniel knows me more than anyone else in the world, but that isn’t saying much. It’s still surface level. It’s still staged. Because I know if I were to show him all of me—if I were to show him damaged Chloe, expose my rancid, pulsing core—he would take one whiff and recoil. He couldn’t possibly like what he’d see.
“Enough about all of that,” he says, leaning over the counter as he fills up my diminishing glass. “How was the rest of your week, then? Did you get any wedding planning done?”
I think back to Saturday morning, the morning Daniel left for New Orleans. I had intended on getting some wedding planning done—I had opened my laptop and responded to some emails before the news of Aubrey Gravino filled my living room, the memories trapping me inside my own mind like a car submerged in water. I remember leaving the house and driving mindlessly through town, coming across the search party in Cypress Cemetery, finding Aubrey’s earring, leaving minutes before her body was discovered. I think about Aaron Jansen, visiting my mother, the theory he shared with me that I’ve been actively trying to deny all week. It’s Friday now; Aaron predicted another body would turn up by Monday. So far, it hasn’t, and every day that goes by, a small weight is lifted from my shoulders. A moment of relief that he might be wrong.
I think, for a second, about what I should tell Daniel, and I decide that I’m not ready for him to know me yet—not this side of me, at least. The side that self-medicates to calm my nerves. The side that joins a cemetery search party in an attempt to find the answers to questions I’ve been asking myself for the last twenty years. Because Daniel doesn’t let me hide; he doesn’t let me be afraid. He throws me surprise parties and plans a wedding in July, spitting in the face of all my irrational fears. If he knew what I had spent my week doing while he was away—drugging myself into a stupor, entertaining a reporter’s fictional scenario, dragging my mother into it all despite her inability to protest, to talk back—he would be ashamed. I’m ashamed.
“It was fine,” I say at last, taking a sip from my glass. “I decided on caramel cake.”
“Progress!” Daniel shouts, before leaning farther over the counter and kissing me on the lips. I return the kiss before pulling back slightly, taking in his features. He analyzes my face, his eyes searching every surface of my skin.
“What is it?” he asks, dipping his hand into my hair. He cradles my skull, and I lean into his outstretched palm. “Chloe, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” I say, smiling. A band of thunder rolls gently through the room, and I feel my skin prickle; I can’t tell if it’s reacting to the bolt of lightning that flashes outside or the way Daniel’s fingers are caressing my neck, making slow circles in the spot of delicate skin just beneath my ear. I close my eyes. “I’m just happy you’re home.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
It’s still raining when I wake up, the kind of slow, lazy rain that threatens to pull you back to sleep. I lie in the dark, feeling the warmth of Daniel beside me, his bare skin pressed against mine. His breath rhythmic and slow. I listen to the drizzle outside, to the low rumbles of thunder. I close my eyes and imagine Lacey, her body half buried in the mud somewhere, the rain washing away any traces of evidence that might have been left behind.