Page 51 of Cut Off from Sky and Earth
“You’re right.” She nods, but her grimace lets me know I’m even worse at providing emotional support than I thought I was.
I spread two warm blankets over the sheets and smooth the covers while she slides a pillowcase onto the pillow and plumps it up. I hand her an unopened toothbrush package and a travel-sized toothpaste tube from the bedside table.
“Get some rest.”
“Good night, Alex.” Her voice is soft.
I walk through the first floor and turn out the lights. Then I throw some water on the dying embers in the fireplace and double-check that the doors are all locked before I head upstairs. I hear the water running downstairs as Emily gets ready for bed, too.
I spread thick night cream on my face, neck, and scars, then rub what’s left of the heavily scented lotion into my hands and feet, and my thoughts turn to Tristan. I saw the expression on Emily’s face when she told me a red-haired woman had been stabbed to death in their small community. She has doubts about her husband.
I do, too. But if he wanted to kill her, Emily Rose would’ve been dead a long time ago. So either this is all a massive coincidence—which frankly seems impossible—or he’s playing a different game with her. What’s your angle, Tristan? I assign the question to my subconscious with instructions to work on it overnight.
I climb into bed, pull the blankets up to my chin, and fall asleep to the sound of the snow turning to a driving rain. Rain is good. Rain is better than snow for the utility companies and road crews—just so long as it doesn’t end up as ice.
As I drift to sleep, I feel an odd intimacy, almost a bond, with the woman in my guest room, and I wonder if she feels it too. We’re strangers, but we share a bone-deep understanding of how a single violent night can change your whole life.
Twenty-Eight
Emily
* * *
As I brush my teeth, Alex’s words run through my head. You can’t build a marriage on lies. In my heart, I know she’s right. She’s also right that my marriage rests on a shaky foundation of lies thanks to both Tristan and me. I think—I hope—his lies are the same as mine: lies of omission, silences that shouldn’t be. Somehow this seems less serious than actively lying. This is what I always tell myself to justify keeping Cassie’s murder from him.
Still, I’m struggling to wrap my mind around the enormity of all he’s kept from me over the years. His troubled childhood. His father’s suicide. The fact that he has a brother. What else has he kept from me?
And if Tate is as dangerous and unstable as Alex thinks he could be, there’s no excuse for not telling me about him, just in case he turns up at our door someday. Or is there? Could there be a very good reason for Tristan’s reticence? A reason I’m not seeing.
I should do what Alex suggests and sleep on this, but instead I pick up the telephone on the bedside table. I need to say good night. I need to hear his voice. Maybe that will untangle this knot in my stomach. I dial his mobile number and look around the tidy, sparsely furnished room while I wait for him to pick up.
“Hello?” He answers with a polite, reserved tone, and I realize he doesn’t recognize the number.
“It’s me.”
“Em? Where are you?”
“I’m calling from Alex’s house.”
“What’s wrong? Are you okay? Why are you there?” He rapid-fires the questions at me.
“I’m fine. The storm hit,” I tell him, “and the power went out in the cabin. I’m staying at the farmhouse tonight.”
“With Alex?”
There’s something in his tone. Worry? No, fear. I say, “Well, yeah.”
“Be careful.”
“What does that mean?”
He blows out a breath. “She’s a stranger. We don’t know her.”
Well, that’s not exactly true, now is it?
“Actually, you probably do know her,” I tell him.
“You mean because we both grew up in Windy Rock? I told you, I don’t remember her.”
