Chapter 41

I wanted to rush to the bar where Kelsey had worked as soon as I discovered the identity of the matchbook, but I couldn't because William and I had been invited to the Thompson family estate for dinner.

I hadn't seen any of the Thompson family since the party after William was first released.

"They're all very excited about the wedding," William assured me repeatedly in a way that suggested that they were harboring reservations.

The matchbook had to wait. I carried the knowledge of it home with me and began to get ready. It took some searching, but I'd managed to find a dress that Anna Leigh had worn to a friend's bridal shower on an upscale resale site that was perfect for a Thompson family get-together. I paired it with earrings that William had bought me at the farmer's market that looked like a pair that Emma owned.

"You look beautiful," William said when he came home.

I had an irrational urge to tell William about the matchbook, not because I wanted to confront him, but because I'd gotten in the habit of telling him the most mundane details of my day: the things I'd eaten, the way my body felt, lies about the progress I'd made on my novel. That was the pleasure of having a partner. There was always someone to tell things to regardless of how small or stupid those things were. It proved to be incredibly difficult not to tell William about himself.

I watched as William changed out of his work clothes, buttoning up a clean shirt. Did you hire someone to kill Kelsey Jenkins? I thought. While you were writing letters to me, were you communicating with someone else and giving them instructions to kill? Was she murdered only to draw attention away from you or was it something else? A weak pour, a miscalculated bill, or a rejection of your advances?

William sprayed on his cologne and smiled at me.

"Ready to go?" he asked.

It was never clearer to me that he was unable to read my mind.

At the Thompson family estate, a maid greeted us at the front door and led us to the formal living room where Mark stood next to a drink cart with a glass of amber liquid in his hand. Cindy sat on the couch, already drinking something out of a martini glass.

"It's my future daughter-in-law," Mark announced when we came in. He hugged me and shook William's hand, a formal gesture from a father to a son.

Cindy eyed me for a minute, taking in my appearance before getting up to greet us.

"Nice to see you again, Hannah," she said.

Everything she said carried a double meaning. Even as she told me that it was nice to see me, her greeting carried with it a stench of disapproval. Her iciness wounded me. Despite myself, I longed for her approval. Even though her son had possibly killed several women, her tone implied that I still wasn't worthy of him.

"What would you like to drink?" Mark asked.

"I'll have what she's having."

I gestured toward Cindy's glass, hoping that she would take my order as a gesture of goodwill. I wasn't usually a martini drinker, but I also didn't usually dine inside mansions.

Bentley strode into the room as Mark handed me my glass.

"Hannah," he said, and kissed me on the cheek, leaving me with the feeling of his lips even as he pulled away.

"Bentley," I said politely.

Virginia and the two children trailed in behind him. The boys wore button-down shirts and bow ties, their hair carefully combed. They hugged their grandfather before sitting primly on the couch next to their grandmother.

"I'll have a glass of milk, please," the older one said.

"Me too," echoed the other.

They were curious children, like adults tucked into tiny bodies, nothing like the rambunctious babies my friends had started to push out. William told me that Bentley's children, much like himself, were primarily raised by a series of nannies. Eventually, they would enroll in the same private schools that he and Bentley had gone to, their admission secured through legacy status.

I sat down on the couch across from them.

"How old are you?" I asked.

"I'm five," replied the younger one.

"I'm eight," said the older one after regarding me with a watchful eye, not unlike his grandmother.

He already looked like Bentley. I could see his entire future like a movie. He would be the rich, popular kid in high school. He would go to his father's alma mater and rush his fraternity, where he would be a shoo-in. He would meet a woman who looked exactly like Virginia and after an appropriate amount of time they would get married. He would join his father's law firm, which by that point would be Bentley and William's law firm unless William killed me first.

I asked for a refill of my martini. William sat next to me on the couch and placed his arm around my waist.

"What are you learning in school?" I asked.

"I'm learning to read." The younger one beamed.

The older one sneered at me like it was a stupid question and I was relieved when the maid came in and announced that dinner was ready.

"Wine?" the maid asked after we were seated, and I eagerly accepted, downing the rest of my martini.

"So, Hannah, what do your parents do?" Mark asked.

The meal started with a salad served on delicate white plates. I crunched a crouton between my teeth.

"My dad is retired and my mom's a teacher," I replied.

"How nice that she gets summers off," Mark said and laughed.

I worried what my face was doing as I bit my tongue, thinking of how my mother would respond to the comment. My mother still didn't know about the engagement, though she knew I was seeing someone. She tried calling occasionally and I answered every few calls, giving vague responses when she asked about my whereabouts.

"Don't worry, Mom, I'm safe," I assured her.

Even though I could tell she didn't believe me, she never questioned any further. I suspected that she didn't want to know.

"What did your dad do before he was retired?" Mark continued to press.

Mark, I understood, was the kind of man for whom work meant everything and I knew that my answers could only disappoint him.

"He worked in data management. I never totally understood what it was that he did," I said apologetically.

William shifted the conversation to discussing football and I was grateful for the distraction. I excused myself, citing the need to use the restroom. My plea was legitimate; my bladder was uncomfortably full, as the maid had continued to fill both the water and wineglasses and I had continued to drink.

I didn't mean to snoop. I really didn't. I already had the matchbook to investigate, and the results of my last estate search—the notes—had yielded nothing of interest. Somehow, I found myself wandering past the bathroom door that Cindy had directed me to and toward the rest of the first floor.

I didn't care about the living room or the foyer. It was disarming how few personal effects the Thompson family décor contained. One of the affordances of wealth, it seemed, was the ability to erase yourself. Instead, I headed straight for the closed door that I'd noticed at the back of the house, a room that I'd seen Mark abscond to with several of his business partners during the party.

The room turned out to be an office paneled in a dark wood. There was a fireplace on one wall that seemed larger than necessary for Georgia's weather. On top of the fireplace was a taxidermied stag head and I thought uneasily about the picture I'd found in William's room of him and his brother smeared with blood. On another wall was a row of shelves that contained books that were too pretty to be anything other than decorative. The wall across from that was covered in guns.

The guns were mounted like they were precious paintings and not items whose sole purpose was inflicting death. There were big guns and little guns, which were the only descriptors I knew how to use. Guns that looked like they killed quickly and antique guns that killed slowly. What, I wondered, did Mark need all of those guns for?

"This isn't the bathroom," a voice behind me said, and I jumped.

"Bentley," I said. "You scared me." I was grateful that it was him and not Mark. It wasn't as though I thought Mark would shoot me for my intrusion, but it didn't seem entirely out of the realm of possibility.

Bentley grinned.

"You were gone for a while and I thought I would check and make sure you found the bathroom," he said.

"I found the bathroom. I just—"

"Wanted to see the house? That's understandable. This place is monstrous. Virginia is hoping that they'll pass it down to us, but in all honesty, I would rather sell it."

"That's funny. I thought this sort of place would be your style."

"Nah, I like something a little more modern."

Bentley strolled deeper into the room and looked around like he was seeing it for the first time.

"Why does your dad have all these guns?" I asked, gesturing at the wall. "Does he hunt or something?"

"Something like that," Bentley said.

I raised my eyebrows at him.

Bentley shrugged.

"My father likes expensive, violent things and guns fill all of his parameters. He used to take us to the shooting range when we were kids, but I don't know how much he actually goes anymore."

I looked at the wall and frowned. I thought about the box in William's desk, the weight of the gun when I held it in my hand, and the things stored beneath it; the gym card, the hair tie, the bookmark, and the pack of cigarettes with the matchbook tucked inside—a matchbook that I now knew came from the bar where Kelsey had worked. I wasn't yet sure how Mark's gun collection connected to it all or if it even did, but being alone with Bentley provided another kind of opportunity.

Bentley knew things about William, things that other people didn't or were unwilling to admit. William is a complicated person. He can be dangerous, he'd told me the first time that we talked. It was possible that he could help me figure out how the matchbook had gotten into William's desk drawer, how William could be connected to Kelsey Jenkins's murder even though he'd been in jail at the time of her death.

Besides, even if he didn't know anything, I'd been dying to tell someone about the matchbook. The forum was off-limits because it would mean outing myself as William's fiancée, a woman I'd previously insulted under my anonymous username. I couldn't tell William because I would have to admit that I had snooped through his things and in the best-case scenario that made me a bad fiancée and, in the worst, it was possible that admission might send him into a murderous rage. Telling Bentley was almost like telling William. His face, in the dim light, nearly identical to his brother's.

"I found something," I said.

"What?"

"I found a matchbook in William's closet. It's from the bar where Kelsey Jenkins worked."

Bentley stopped his pacing to look at me, his face momentarily dropping its jovial veneer.

"That name sounds familiar," he said.

"Kelsey Jenkins, the woman who was murdered during William's trial," I said, incredulous. Surely, he knew who Kelsey Jenkins was. Sometimes I felt like the only one who remembered the women, their names already lost to William's infamy.

Bentley looked away, his glance shifting toward the wall of guns.

"Are you snooping on my brother?" Bentley asked. He picked up a cigar that rested on the desk and examined the label.

"I wouldn't exactly call it snooping."

Bentley raised an eyebrow. His face was still serious, but there was a playfulness to the movement.

"Okay, fine. Maybe I am snooping. In any case, I need someone to go to the bar with me. Do you want to go?"

I regretted the invitation as soon as it came out of my mouth. If there was anything that a person wasn't supposed to do while engaged to an acquitted serial killer, it was go to a bar with the killer's brother to investigate a murder.

He put the cigar down.

"Yes," he said.

We made the type of eye contact that carried an intimacy with it. The weight of our actions wasn't lost on me, a fiancée and a brother investigating the person that they claimed to love.

Before either of us could say anything else, William appeared in the doorway.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

He had that look on his face, the one that he got when he was upset and was trying to hide it.

"Nothing. I'm just giving Hannah a tour of the house," Bentley replied quickly.

"Dinner is getting cold," William said, like he had made the food himself.

We followed him back to the table. Bentley's older son was describing his part in the school play where he'd been cast as the lead. I watched Mark as his grandson spoke. He was recontextualized for me after seeing the wall of guns. He cut into his steak, smearing it through sauce before putting it in his mouth and chewing aggressively. I thought about when I had first met him and how I'd mistaken him for being friendly because he acted friendly with a lot of people and smiled often. I'd since realized that a smile could be used as a weapon and friendliness used to cover underlying anger.

I made a mental note to write Father has gun wall in my notebook as soon as I got a moment alone.

Two things happened during dessert.

The first was that William got down on one knee and opened a box. Inside the box was the biggest diamond that I'd ever seen, which to be fair wasn't particularly meaningful as I didn't spend a lot of time looking at diamonds.

"I'm proposing again," William said. "Properly this time."

I regretted, a little bit, spending the day wondering whether or not he was a serial killer as he talked about how special our time together was and how the longer we lived together, the more he loved me.

He slid the ring on my finger. I hoped that they didn't have any remnants of chocolate on them from the soufflé. It was too big and the diamond immediately slipped to the side.

William frowned.

"We'll get it resized," he said.

The diamond was overshadowed by the second thing that happened.

"Not to steal any of your thunder," Bentley said. "But Virginia and I have an announcement too."

I opened and closed my fist, fiddling with the ring on my finger.

"We're pregnant," Virginia said.

Cindy let out a screech of joy. Their eldest child rolled his eyes. William delivered a strained "Congratulations."

"This is exactly what we needed after the year that we've all had," Mark said.

"We're so excited to bring a new life into this world," Virginia replied.

William was dejected in the car.

"I know that I'm supposed to be happy for my brother," he said. "And I am. It's just, I wanted that to be a special moment for you. For us."

"It was special."

"My brother, he has this need to be the center of attention. What were the two of you talking about in the office, anyway?"

"Nothing," I said, staring through the window into the darkness.

"Nothing?"

"He was telling me about the house."

"Oh." His utterance carried doubt with it.

In bed, William fucked me voraciously, the way that he had when he first came to my hotel room and it had been months since he'd last touched a woman.

"I want you to have my baby," he said when he finished. His breath was hot against my face.

"It's something to talk about."

"I'm serious. I want us to have a little baby. I want him to have the kind of life that I never did."

I thought of the Thompson family estate, the maid that waited upon the family hand and foot.

"Okay," I said. I kissed him on the cheek.

I was self-conscious when his cum dribbled out from inside of me when I got up to use the bathroom. There was something constraining about the thought of a child, like being tied up in a bad way. To think about forever monitoring my own progeny to see if they had any signs of being a killer.