28.Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Hank

It feels strange to be back in Laketown on Tuesday afternoon. It shouldn’t, given the sheer amount of time I’ve spent here over the last four years, but I’m not the same man I was when I left. And it’s not just me. Bonnie said something similar about herself on Sunday night as we made the drive to Derek’s Malibu house. The house that was, I’ll be honest, opulent to the extreme.

I have no idea why a man needs that much space for himself, but spending a night in a guest room bigger than my entire house really put into perspective the level of fame and wealth Derek has. When taking that into account, plus an afternoon spent watching Derek pace shirtless on his back patio while chatting on the phone in full Russian with who knows who, it’s clear that Bonnie actually feels something for me if she’s willing to pass on him to be with me. So I guess that’s nice .

If anyone fits the definition of a manly man, Derek does.

Speaking of manly men… After reluctantly dropping Bonnie off at her trailer, I stop by June’s hardware store before coming back to my house so I can fill her in on everything that happened in Sun City and Los Angeles. June appropriately freaks out and asks a million questions, as if she thinks maybe I’ve been forced into acting differently. I’m glad for her concern, but I can only handle her skepticism for so long before I tell her that I will see her on Thursday when she delivers my groceries, which seems to calm her down.

It’s at that point that she tells me she and Jonah discovered someone sabotaging the film production after yet another thing went wrong on set. They’re now in a tentative relationship, which is a story I’m going to need to hear at some point.

Now I’m home, and I’ve been apart from Bonnie for less than an hour and already feel an ache in my chest where she belongs. That’s probably why I’m still standing on my porch instead of going inside to shower and settle back into routine. It’s a routine I don’t actually know if I can go back to because it all feels wrong. I have the end of my novel to type out and probably a million emails to ignore, but I’ve been staring at my door for the last five minutes as if I’m worried I’m going to find a dead body inside.

Hot Scoop would love that. Their last story, posted yesterday afternoon, was rather tame, and I stopped reading halfway through because I didn’t care what they had to say. But they would probably enjoy another murder mystery in my life, and I’m tempted to set something up so they can keep pretending they’re doing some great work by sharing information that doesn’t need to be shared. Maybe June would be up for pretending to be dead. Give her a little excitement in her quiet life, though she already seems to have found that with Jonah.

“Okay, this is getting ridiculous,” I tell myself and grab the door handle .

But that’s when I realize what feels off, and I look up at the corner of the porch where a broken and dirty web sits empty.

“Heather?” Alarm shoots through me as I search the awning for any sign of my spider friend. She’s nowhere to be found, and I even search the whole exterior of my house to no avail.

Maybe it’s a bad sign that I’m this attached to a little spider, but there’s a physical pain in my chest as I try not to think about what might have happened to her. She’s been living on my porch for months, and to think she’s gone…

This loss feels far stronger than it should, and I push open my door before I dwell too much on my attachment to the arachnid. Maybe a shower will help clear my head. But when I get inside, everything still feels wrong, and my anxiety starts to spike as I take in the little space. It’s all so small. And I don’t just mean compared to Derek’s mansion. This house is tiny . It’s the kind of place someone comes to visit for a week, not somewhere to spend all his time.

It’s also…dusty. Like no one has been here in months.

“Please tell me it wasn’t always like this,” I say to the house in general, knowing there’s no one here to answer.

There has never been anyone here, and I think that’s the problem.

I can’t be alone anymore.

Gripping my bag tighter, I make my way to my bedroom to at least unpack and get cleaned up, but my feet slow halfway there of their own accord. Right in front of the door to the second bedroom. I almost can’t bring myself to look at the block of wood separating me from Shelby’s studio, but neither can I keep walking down the hallway. I’m frozen in place. Frozen in time. Not sure what I need to do.

So I grab my phone and send a text with shaking fingers.

Hank:

Heather is gone.

Thankfully, the response comes almost immediately.

Bonnie:

The spider?

Hank:

Yes. I’m worried about her.

I know it sounds pathetic.

Bonnie:

Not pathetic. It’s cute that you care so much about her even if she’s creepy.

I chuckle, appreciating the levity when I’m on the verge of spiraling.

Hank:

Could you get away for a little bit?

Bonnie:

Miss me already?

Hank:

Yes.

I want to check on Shelby’s studio. But I can’t do it alone.

Bonnie:

I’ll be right there.

And she is. I only have to wait fifteen minutes before she’s walking through my door. I haven’t moved from my spot in the hallway, my bag sitting by my feet and my eyes locked on the studio door. I can’t even pull my eyes away to look at Bonnie until she takes hold of my hand.

“Whoa, Hank, your hand is freezing.” She cups my fingers between both her hands and lifts them to her mouth to blow warm air. “You don’t have to do this if you’re not ready. ”

“I think Heather was…” Okay, this is really going to sound crazy. “I think she was here to help me move forward from Shelby.” Yep, that sounds as stupid as it feels, but I haven’t been able to think about anything else for the last fifteen minutes. Even though Bonnie hasn’t said anything, I keep talking because I need someone else to understand what I’m feeling right now. “Heather showed up right when I started writing this latest Gabrielle Frost book. And she was the first one I willingly told about what happened to Shelby. It was when I was talking to her that I realized I needed to try harder with you and let someone else in. And now that Heather has disappeared…”

I press a hand over my heart, hoping I can keep it from beating right out of my chest. “It feels like Shelby is really, truly gone.”

“Oh, Hank.” Bonnie hugs my arm, but she seems to decide that it isn’t enough and wraps her arms around my torso, pulling me into a tight embrace. It’s her hug that breaks me, like knowing that she’s here to hold me together gives me permission to let all the pain out.

And I fall apart, sobbing in the middle of a narrow, dim hallway as my loss tears through me and leaves me shredded and raw. She’s gone. The woman who changed my life, gave me hope, made me feel real love for the first time is gone . And I can never get her back.

How can anyone survive a pain this acute?

It could be an hour or it could be just a couple of minutes, but eventually my grief runs dry. The cracks start to close. I feel empty, but I also feel like I’ve finally let go of a burden that has dragged me down for so long and left me trudging through life under its weight. I’ve still been clinging so hard to the life I knew, but it’s time to finally let it go.

Time to move forward.

I need to let go of Bonnie too—physically. I can’t keep her here forever, and she still has a movie to finish.

A murder to solve .

I’m not sure how to feel about the idea that I’ve fallen for the woman who is putting my late wife to rest, but I have. She sparked life back into my soul and made me want to live again, not just because I want to be with her but because she helped me feel love again.

Love .

With that word filling my whole being, I tilt my head back and dry my eyes with my sleeve, noticing with a pang that Bonnie was crying right along with me. I didn’t want her to cry, but it makes me love her all the more. “I haven’t scared you off yet?” I ask, my voice as raw as my heart.

She shakes her head. “Not even a little bit.”

I might if I tell her that I love her. It feels ridiculous and impossible to think I have fallen this far this quickly, but I knew I loved Shelby within less than a week of meeting her. For me, love is the sort of thing that creeps up on me and grabs me from behind, which is a really terrible metaphor when I think about how I nearly killed Gabrielle with a phone charger from behind in this last book.

Last book . Standing here with Bonnie in my arms, I suddenly know how the book is going to end.

“I think I’m ready,” I say, switching from our embrace to holding her hand far tighter than she’d probably like me to. “At least, I hope I’m ready. I’ve never been good at goodbyes.”

Bonnie squeezes my fingers, her smile small but warm. “I’m here as long as you need me, Hank. I’ve got nowhere to be.”

“You have a movie to film,” I argue.

“It can wait.”

Turning to meet her gaze, I search for any sign that she might only be saying that to bolster my spirit, but I know better than to think I’ll find any deception. Over the last couple of days, I got an insider look into Bonnie’s life and the way she interacts with the people she’s closest to. Bonnie was so sweet and gentle with Cole even though he clearly hated being coddled. Watching Bonnie laugh with Derek as he cooked dinner for the whole group that night dispelled any lingering fears that she harbored any romantic feelings for him. Even meeting Freya again over a video chat showed me just how much Bonnie cares for people because Freya seemed to relax more the longer she vented to Bonnie, who had great advice for her.

Bonnie is almost never disingenuous. She wouldn’t be now.

Holding tightly to her hand, I lean down and press my lips to hers. “Thank you,” I whisper, and then I grasp the doorknob and push it open.

The door creaks from disuse, and it’s almost comical how much dust rises in the air from the breeze it creates. It’s four years of untouched time, and both of us cough as we take our first steps inside. Sun streams in through the windows, and a part of me wishes I had known the curtains were open because anything in here is probably ruined from so many months of exposure.

“Wow, she was…” Bonnie frowns as she takes in the chaotic space. “Prolific.”

I laugh. It’s the last thing I expected to do when coming into this room, which only makes me laugh more until I almost can’t breathe.

Bonnie is being generous. The room is filled to the brim with canvases and easels and random art projects that don’t even make sense. At one point Shelby decided she was going to become a potter, so there’s a wheel in the corner that she only used once because she was always too drawn to oil paints, and there’s a whole box of yarn from the time she decided to take up crochet but got too frustrated with the process. Literally every surface is loaded with something, whether it be supplies or works in progress or cups that long ago held paint water.

“She was a mess,” I say once I stop laughing. “It drove me crazy, so I allowed her this room to use however she’d like so her mess didn’t extend to the rest of the house. It was even worse in Denver. She had the whole garage. ”

Though I don’t want to let go of Bonnie’s hand, I need both my hands to lift up a fallen canvas and set it on the easel it fell from. It’s a half-finished painting of Laketown in the fall. She probably took a reference photo standing right in the middle of Main Street, and I can only imagine how many times she nearly got run over to get the perfect angles.

Just behind it is a complete painting of Shelby’s childhood home, one full of warmth and nostalgia in the obvious time she took to make it perfect. I take a picture of it, and though I hesitate for a moment, I send it to her parents before I can talk myself out of it. Whether or not they respond, they would probably love to have this one. If nothing else, they deserve to know it exists. They deserve a lot of things I didn’t give them in my grief.

It’s time to fix that.

“She was amazing,” Bonnie says, looking through a stack of canvases leaning against the far wall. “You said she was a curator, right? Did she ever sell any of these or put them in the gallery?”

I move to her side and wrap her up, pulling her against me. I thought it would be difficult coming in here, but now that I’m getting a flood of memories of Shelby sitting hunched on a stool while she painted, I just feel sad for letting all of this stay locked up and unseen for so long. “No, she never shared anything she painted,” I say. “That’s not to say I didn’t push her to hang some of her pieces in the gallery to try to make some space. She painted for the sake of painting, and that was fine by her.”

“Is that…?” Bonnie points to a painting sitting halfway tucked behind a blank canvas. “Did she repaint a Monet?”

I chuckle. It’s still unsettling to feel so happy in this room, but I’m going to credit it all to the woman in my arms. “She spent almost all summer on that the year before she died. I think she was trying to see how close she could get it? She and her coworker were having a contest to see if they could fool the other, though I don’t know if they ever got to the testing stage. It was where I got the idea for the forgeries in the book.”

Bonnie spins around so she’s facing me. “We didn’t really talk about the Hot Scoop article after it dropped yesterday. How are you doing?”

I shrug. “I barely read it. Not the second half, anyway. I just wanted to make sure things were good with you.”

Grinning, she leans up and kisses the tip of my nose. “As long as you’re around, I think things will be great. The internet loves you. And the way you look at me.”

“And how do I look at you?”

Pink splashes across her cheeks. Mixed with her smile, it’s a truly beautiful sight. And I say that while surrounded by my late wife’s incredible artwork. I shouldn’t be able to stand here so easily and think about how much I’ve come to love someone new, but it almost feels like Shelby is trying to tell me that just because the sun has set on something spectacular, it doesn’t mean I won’t find equal beauty in the sunrise.

Bonnie bites her lip. “You look at me like you’ve found something you thought you’d lost. Like you were living in black and white and now you’re seeing color. Like the sun has come out after a month of rain.”

“And here I thought I was the writer,” I murmur, brushing my nose against hers. “With you and Kasey around, I might as well retire now.”

“But what about Gabrielle?”

“Gabrielle is ready to live a quiet life with Captain Stacey.”

Gasping, Bonnie takes a step back. Much to my irritation. “You’re ending the series,” she guesses, and I can’t tell if she loves or hates that idea. My agent isn’t going to like it, but I’ll be sure to tell Mariah I don’t intend to stop writing. It will just be something new. “But if you finish with Gabrielle, what’s next?”

She’s too far away. Reaching out, I grab hold of her shirt to tug her back into my arms. “You tell me,” I say and cover her mouth with mine.

Bonnie giggles into the kiss, which makes it difficult to do it justice, and then she leans away just long enough to say, “You saw me an hour ago, McAllister.”

“Too long ago,” I complain before kissing her again. I take a step forward, nudging her backward, and though we have to navigate paintings and a papier-maché donkey, I manage to get her up against the door. I lean into her, wanting to get the most out of this kiss because this is the first time we’ve been alone since…ever. Even when we were in the limo after our fancy dinner date, there was a driver and bodyguard up front and only a glass partition between us and them. Derek’s house was full of people. Now…

Now I want to show Bonnie just how much I’ve come to appreciate her in my life, and I intend to take my time.

My phone buzzes in my pocket between us, making me jump backward like I’ve been burned. Bonnie laughs breathlessly, but I’m considering tossing the stupid thing out the window because I don’t see a reason why it needs to exist anymore. Outside of being used to contact Bonnie, who will hopefully not be far away from me very often, the phone is useless.

It’s an unknown number calling me, which probably means it’s not something I’m going to want to answer, but I do it anyway. “Who is this?”

“Hello, Hank,” a familiar voice says.

My anger flickers. “Chad?”

“Why did you unplug your landline? I’ve been trying to reach you for over an hour.”

I don’t like the sound of that, and dread fills my belly as I reluctantly step back to give Bonnie some space. “What’s going on? And how did you get this number?”

“Do you really want an answer to that?”

I groan because he’s right. I don’t want to know .

“Anyway,” Chad says, “I’m calling to let you know that I’ll be in Laketown tomorrow.”

“Okay?”

“And I’m bringing a detective from Denver with me.”

I sink onto a nearby stool as my energy disappears. Those words had the same effect as dousing me in ice water. “Why?” I breathe, though I think I know the answer.

Bonnie steps over to me and puts her arm around me. She might not know what I’m hearing on the other end of the line, but she can clearly see my distress. I’m grateful for her support, and I flip the phone to speaker so she can know why I’m suddenly dizzy.

Chad takes a long time to respond, like he knows how much I’m struggling. “They found him, Hank. Shelby’s killer.”

Bonnie gasps, but I feel numb. “It’s been four years,” I rasp.

“Yeah, and a widely read website just broadcasted the story to the world. That stirs things up. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow, but I wanted to give you a heads up. Maybe some time to prepare yourself.”

I never told Chad about Shelby, and I don’t think he first learned about her through Hollywood Hot Scoop . It’s a testament to his friendship that he never pressed for details, even though I’m sure he wanted them.

“Thanks,” I choke out and hang up.

Bonnie shifts so she’s standing in front of me, her hands locked around mine. “What do you need, Hank? Is this development a good one or a bad one?”

I meet her eyes, desperately latching onto the comfort I see there. “I don’t know,” I admit.

“Do you wish he hadn’t warned you?”

“Yes. But also no. I…” I shake my head. “I don’t think there’s any good way to go about something like this. I should be glad they found him, right? ”

She shrugs. “Maybe. But it also seemed like you were ready to let her go, and now you can’t. Not until tomorrow, anyway.”

I take a breath, holding it in my lungs as my heart pounds an uneven rhythm in my chest. I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to sleep tonight. Not with this anxiety leaving me feeling like I’m teetering on the edge of a cliff.

Bonnie squeezes my hands. “Hank? What can I do?”

“Stay,” I whisper back.

She nods, and I pull her into my arms, resting my face into the crook of her neck because she’s the only thing that can keep me from falling. As long as she’s here, I’ll be okay.