Page 107 of Ardently Yours

Reese unlocks my wrist, and I straighten, rotating my hand.

“Hey, Mr. Muscles, my turn,” Rochelle says when he steps away.

Reese snorts. “You’re the one who threatened me with a dirty shovel.”

“Because I was scared of you,” she says.

“You exhumed a corpse from the dirt-floor basement of The Rosalind Theater,” Arden says.

“Yes, but I can explain,” I say.

“Can you?”

“Greg Wilson is obsessed with wanting to put a hydraulic lift under the stage. I ran interference with RealFreedom to keep them from doing anything with that basement. Then Rochelle took over for me as liaison, but they’re doingPeter Panin the fall, and Greg wanted his pirate ship to rise from the floor, and don’t think I don’t see the irony, because I absolutely do. But since the summer theater programs take place outdoors, that makes spring and summer ideal for renovations, and that sneaky usurper went to RealFreedom behind Rochelle’s back to tell them we needed a lift installed as soon as possible. And, as I’ve mentioned, RealFreedom has been an angel about anything we ask for, so they immediately agreed. But no one told Rochelle because Greg, correctly, guessed she was blocking the project, and if it hadn’t been for RealFreedom including her in an emailto Greg, we’d have never known that they plan to start digging to pour concrete tomorrow.”

He doesn’t blink, but he does slowly lift one eyebrow.

“Oh. You mean . . .” I say.

“Who? Why? When?” His voice is utterly flat.

“Are you asking as my defense and giving me attorney-client privilege? Or are you asking as a prosecutor and the guy whose staff member caught us?”

“Goddamn it, Charlotte.” His hands slam down on the table top as he rises. “I’m asking as Arden. The man who loves you and wants to know what the fuck you’ve been hiding,” he roars.

I jolt and Rochelle makes a “meep” sound. Tears flood my eyes, and I blink hard trying to keep them at bay.Don’t cry.I can’t think when I do. Rochelle’s sniffles are real now.

“It was an accident.” I shake my head. “No. That’s the wrong word. You went after Jeremy Polford with a sting operation. But you called his best friend to be there to arrest him, so Calvin Marsh told Polford.”

He nods. “Yes. I know.”

“Polford said it was my private investigator that set up the sting. He said I caused all his problems. He saw Rochelle and me leaving the pediatrician’s office with Bronnie. He followed us back to her house, which is in the middle of nowhere. While she was inside, he came after me with a gun. He said he was going to kill Bronnie and me and Rochelle and make it look like I was depressed, and it was murder/suicide.”

Arden looks like I slapped him. “In the crosshairs.”

I lift one shoulder. “Rochelle snuck up behind him while he was monologuing like some action movie bad guy with the gun in his hand. When he turned his head because he heard her, I knocked the gun out of his hand and Rochelle smacked him on the head with her garden shovel.”

“It was all me,” Rochelle says. “He went down. He was dead. I killed him. Then I wrapped his body in a tarp, drove it to the theater, wrapped him again in a paint-covered backdrop, buried him six feet deep, sprinkled a bunch of kitty litter on top of him, and I, uh, told Charlotte I’d kill her too if she ever, you know, told on me or whatever, so she had to keep my secret because . . . I’d have done it too. I’m a badass.”

“That isn’t true.” I glare at her, then look back at Arden. “I killed him. She put a dent in his head, yes, but his eyes opened when I bent over to check on him, and I panicked because I was still afraid of him, and I grabbed the shovel out of her hand, and I hit him again. All she did was protect me, and I’m the one who murdered him. It was my idea to hide the body in the basement because the ground outside was frozen, but they used to keep a space heater down there, and there are heat guns for projects, so we could kind of thaw as we went, and Mabel was off her feed so we couldn’t give him to the pigs.”

Arden wipes a hand across his jaw.

“I made Rochelle help me because I, you know, told her I’d shoot her or shovel her if she said anything, so she had no choice.”

“You liar,” she says. “Don’t listen to her. She still had stitches on her hoo-ha and was wearing adult diapers. She couldn’t have done it. It had to be me.”

Arden lifts a hand. “Neither of you considered calling the police to report that he’d come after you?”

Rochelle and I stare back at Arden in silence. Finally, I burst. “Gee, no, Arden. I wasn’t calling the people who tipped him off to come murder us in the first place. When I reported Jeremy Polford for assaulting me when I was fifteen, I had bruises on my body and his blood under my fingernails, and they did nothing. What were they going to do if they came out to find Rochelle andI didn’t have any marks on us, an unregistered gun, and Jeremy Polford having clearly beenbrained from behind?”

I wait for him to tell me how disappointed he is in me. For him to explain how if we’d only followed the right steps, we wouldn’t be here today with Rochelle and me headed to prison with funk under our fingernails.

He stands.

A sob rips out of me. Snot runs from my nose. “I couldn’t have done it differently. Or if I could, I didn’t know how. It was desperation, and I know you said there’s never an excuse, but—”

“I was an idiot.” He drags me into his arms and holds my head against his shoulder. “Shhh, Charlotte. Ah, Charlotte. You’re okay. Everything is going to be fine. I’m so sorry for not being someone you could trust with this from the beginning. I put you in danger. I caused this when I didn't consider the potential consequences for you. Every bit of your suffering over this can be traced back to me one way or the other. You were right not to trust me when it happened. I had blinders on, and I'm so damn sorry. Never again, Charlotte. I swear it.”

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