“It should be somewhere in the front hall closet.”
“Lead the way.”
The house was cold and eerily quiet. The only sounds were the swishes of their winter coats and the creak of the wooden floor under each footstep. She made her way through the kitchen, down the hallway, to the closet between the front door and the L-shaped staircase that led upstairs.
Sean’s words echoed in her mind, firm and urgent over the phone line just a few hours before the terrible news of his death came in. The bag is in the closet, under my coats.
She had cleaned the house of most of the reminders of him, but for some reason, his clothes had been difficult. She still wasn’t ready to catch a glimpse of the bare closet where his shirts and coats and boots used to be. So she had avoided this spot.
Ellie slid open the left door, Sean’s side, and knelt on the floor in front of it. She peered in, ignoring the catch of her breath as she pushed aside the neat lines of boots and shoes. No bag. What was going on? Maybe she wasn’t remembering correctly. Maybe he’d said, The bag is in the closet, under your coats? Of course, she’d been in and out of her side countless times this winter, but maybe she’d missed something. Her heartbeat ticked up as she closed one door and slid open the other, pulling out the racks from under her jackets. Still nothing. She stared at the closet.
“It’s not here,” she whispered.
Michael was silent.
“It has to be here. Sean mentioned it the day—” She swallowed and forced herself to finished the sentence. “The day of the accident. It was one of the last things he said to me.”
The last thing he’d said was I love you. Those words had gotten her through the lowest of her days, when she couldn’t get out of bed, and she could still hear both the urgency in his voice and the love. He had loved her, she told herself. She bit her lip and looked up at Michael. His jaw was set and the corners of his mouth curved downward.
“You need to go,” she said. “You’ve already put yourself in enough danger. I can do this on my own.”
“I believe you can do this on your own, Ellie,” he said softly. “But I don’t want to leave you alone.”
His gaze was so intense. Everything in her rang with the feeling that radiated from him. I will protect you. I will make sure you’re safe.
“But we only met a few hours ago.” It was supposed to be evidence that he could let her go, but it was also a plea. Do you want to put yourself at risk for me?
“Yes,” he said in a tone she couldn’t read.
He looked down at her as a strange mixture of emotions rolled through her, strong enough to throw her off balance. The connection as she looked in his dark brown eyes was both familiar and new, both a balm and a disturbance deep inside her. She’d loved Sean, and she always would. So what was this attraction? Ellie looked away.
Michael cleared his throat. “What exactly are we looking for?”
“A small duffel bag, about this big.” She gestured with her hands. “Black, rectangular, with a zipper on top.”
“Any ideas about where else to look?”
There was so much churning through her mind, but she forced herself to focus. “It has to be somewhere I don’t usually look, or I would have stumbled over it these last few months. I thought about it after the accident when I was in Santa Barbara, but I was in shock and sort of...forgot about it—at least until Aidan threatened me.”
She could rule out the kitchen, the living room, two of the bathrooms, her bedroom...
“I’ll check the extra bedrooms upstairs, and you can check the garage.” She gestured to the door off the hallway. “We should split up to save time.”
“I don’t like the idea of splitting up,” said Michael. “Both our chances are better when we’re together.”
His voice was soft, almost tender. And her fears echoed inside her, fears of finding herself alone again, fears that begged her to run far away from this house. But she couldn’t listen to those fears. She needed a way to stop running, so she forced herself to shake her head.
“We need to get out of here as soon as possible.” When he looked like he would protest, she added, “My decision.”
Michael frowned. “At least let me come up with you for a quick scan of the second floor. Please?”
His hand brushed against the sleeve of her coat. His touch was too light to feel through the fabric and yet she still reacted. His touch filled her with warmth, a warmth of safety in an unsafe world, a warmth of closeness. She met his dark, expressive eyes and her cheeks heated. “Follow me.”
She climbed the stairs, trying to block out the familiar feeling of regret that came with all the reminders of the life she’d lost. Everything left unsaid, unresolved. But as she turned the corner of the landing, toward the next flight to the second floor, she saw Michael come to a stop in front of an old photo of Sean and her that she’d hung in a cursory attempt to make the house feel more like a home. They were sitting on the ledge in the Grand Canyon, wearing matching Cal State Fullerton T-shirts and hiking boots. Sean wore a baseball cap turned backward, and her hair was tied back into a ponytail that fluffed out behind her head.
“You two look happy,” he said, studying the photo.
“We were...back then.” Back then. The last two words slipped out before Ellie could stop them. Her breath caught in her throat, but the words were already out there, the betrayal hanging in the air. This wasn’t the kind of thing she was supposed to say about her own marriage. Especially not after Sean’s death. “I don’t mean we weren’t happy. It’s just that things got...complicated.”
Michael nodded, his gaze still fixed on the photo and its bright silver frame.
“Sharing your life with someone does get complicated.” He turned to her with a hint of a smile. “At least, that’s my experience.”
Ellie let out a breath. Maybe it wasn’t a betrayal. Maybe it was just honesty. She bit her lip and continued. “I grew up on our family’s ranch up north, and Sean is from Santa Monica, but something about us matched when we met.”
“Where did you meet?”
“Church service. It was the first week of my freshman year in Fullerton, and I knew no one. I was convinced I’d made a terrible mistake, traveling so far from home. But when I met Sean, everything changed. I knew I was in the right place.”
Michael smiled. “Sunny and I met in college, too. San Jose State.”
“Were you opposites or two of a kind?”
“Some of both. I was like you, a country boy, and she was a city girl, from San Francisco. But we had a lot in common, starting with the fact that we’re both from Chinese American families. Or she...was.”
He turned away.
She wanted to ask more questions, but it was clear this was hard for him to talk about. Also, they needed to get out of the house.
