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Back We Were Killers Once Save as PDF
Chapters (65)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Notice
  3. Dedication
  4. One
  5. Two
  6. Three
  7. Four
  8. Five
  9. Six
  10. Seven
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Twelve
  16. Thirteen
  17. Fourteen
  18. Fifteen
  19. Sixteen
  20. Seventeen
  21. Eighteen
  22. Nineteen
  23. Twenty
  24. Twenty–one
  25. Twenty–two
  26. Twenty–three
  27. Twenty–four
  28. Twenty–five
  29. Twenty–six
  30. Twenty–seven
  31. Twenty–eight
  32. Twenty–nine
  33. Thirty
  34. Thirty–one
  35. Thirty–two
  36. Thirty–three
  37. Thirty–four
  38. Thirty–five
  39. Thirty–six
  40. Thirty–seven
  41. Thirty–eight
  42. Thirty–nine
  43. Forty
  44. Forty–one
  45. Forty–two
  46. Forty–three
  47. Forty–four
  48. Forty–five
  49. Forty–six
  50. Forty–seven
  51. Forty–eight
  52. Forty–nine
  53. Fifty
  54. Fifty–one
  55. Fifty–two
  56. Fifty–three
  57. Fifty–four
  58. Fifty–five
  59. Fifty–six
  60. Fifty–seven
  61. Author’s Note
  62. Acknowledgments
  63. Also by Becky Masterman
  64. About the Author
  65. Newsletter Sign-up

Gemma-Kate cleaned up the kitchen while I straightened up the small messes the burglar had left. I folded the clothes back into the drawers and closed them, shut the lid on my jewelry box and the drawer with the wedding rings in it, and went into the library. I wasn’t sure whether to just leave it to Carlo to put everything back the way it was, or whether it would bother him less if he didn’t see what someone had done. There I was, protecting him again like some delicate flower, a man who had known prison life and once admitted to thinking of bludgeoning someone to death with a champagne bottle.

I sat down before the bins in the library closet. I had never opened this closet, never noticed the bins. I could look in them now. Just a little. I took the lid off the top bin and found paper yellowed with age, and carbon copies of old papers, with dates going back to the seventies when he got his PhD in philosophy and the late sixties when he was in seminary. There was a badge from a conference, identifying him as SPEAKER. I thought I would ask his permission to look through more of these papers, because it made me feel closer to him as a young man. I had never seen photographs of him from that time. What had he looked like with his hair all one shade of dark brown, without the lines in the face I loved, eyes not yet sobered by life, some half-finished creature? I felt a sudden mush of missing, stronger than what I’d felt with all the personal and professional distractions of my time in Florida not too long ago. It seemed like forever since I’d dropped him off at the observatory, and it was only four hours. Is this what it was like to love someone? To be held in a kind of thrall that can hurt without warning, despite every intention not to care so?

Ah, here was a photo after all. It showed a couple, youngish from my point of view, dressed in waders, in the middle of a running stream. She was petite and willowy, with her hair tied back in a ponytail, the way I often wore my hair. Vulnerable, needing him, she clung to the man as if frightened that the river would carry her away. Her mouth was wide open in that kind of a laugh. He had one arm supporting her, while his other arm held out a fly-fishing rod. He was grinning at whoever was on the bank taking the picture. I got to thinking about the first time I’d worried about losing Carlo, and figured seeing this photograph right after I saw the wedding rings was what made me think that way.