Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 76517 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76517 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
A hot thread of embarrassment traces through my veins, the way it does anytime I think about him for too long.
I close the lid of my laptop and trek to the kitchen to heat up a frozen lasagna for lunch, the kind that smells better than it tastes but only costs ninety-nine cents. While I wait for my ancient microwave to do its thing, I walk to my room and change out of the blouse I wore for the video call and into an old T-shirt with a hole at the hem and a stretched collar. The unparalleled comfort of worn-out clothing is the only luxury I have these days.
The microwave dings, and I go back, twisting my hair into a messy pile on top of my head along the way and mentally mapping out this week’s renovation schedule. But something catches my eye on the way—an imposing shadow by the front door.
Gasping, I jump behind one of the pillars in the front hall, peeking out just enough to find a masculine figure standing on my porch.
He knocks three times.
My heart lurches into my throat, which is suddenly drier than the Sahara.
In all the time I’ve lived here, I’ve never had any unexpected visitors save for the occasional neighborhood kids selling cookies and magazine subscriptions or the handful of neighbors who dropped off a casserole or two after Donovan passed.
“Hello?” a man’s voice calls through the door. “I know you’re home. Your car’s in the driveway . . . and I can hear you moving around in there.”
I peek around the pillar once more, trying to get a better look, though the way the sunlight shines in on the east side of the house paints him as nothing but a tall, dark mystery man.
“Annie?” he calls. My blood turns to ice. It’s not my name, but it’s close enough. “Annielynn?”
Again, close enough.
He knocks a second time.
“I’m not leaving until you come out,” he says. “And I’ve got nowhere else to be right now, so . . . I can play this game all day.”
I freeze like a doe on a midnight highway.
“I’m Lachlan,” he says.
My killer has a name—and I like it.
But that’s not the point.
“Lachlan Byrne,” he adds, pressing his face closer to the glass, though due to its opacity I can’t make out his features clearly. “Donovan’s brother.”
Apparently my killer is also a liar. Donovan never had a brother. His mother passed when he was eleven, and his father died a few years before we met. If he’d had any siblings, he would’ve told me. That’s the sort of thing you tell someone you’ve just pledged to spend the rest of your life with.
Then again, he failed to tell me he’d pocketed my life savings.
Tiptoeing to the dining room, I peek out the window that overlooks the driveway—where an olive green F-150 is parked behind my car. I clamp a hand over my mouth, drawing on a mental image of the guy from yesterday . . . the rugged version of Donovan with the copper eyes and messy auburn hair.
“Hello?” He knocks again, his tone demanding this time.
Scraping my skepticism off the floor, I clear my throat, remind myself I’m surrounded by hammers, crowbars, sanders, and saws, and answer the damn door.
“The name’s Anneliese, not—” I say before I lose my voice entirely. Yesterday I saw him from several yards away, and his resemblance nearly knocked the air from my lungs. But now, standing mere feet from this man, it’s like looking into the eyes of Donovan himself. I attempt to speak once more. Nothing but air makes it past my lips.
Lachlan peers past my shoulder, into my messy house, before settling his heavy gaze back onto me.
“Anneliese,” he says in a cool, collected manner before leaning against the doorway with the conviction of a man who owns the place. “Let me guess . . . my brother told you I was dead?”
“No,” I finally manage to say. “He never told me you existed . . .”
His full lips—Donovan’s full lips—inch into a smirk.
“Of course,” he says, as if the revelation amuses him.
I don’t want to believe him. I don’t want to believe that Donovan once paged through an entire scrapbook filled with shot after shot of his parents with just one child and intentionally neglected to mention there was ever a second.
But given everything that’s come to light since his passing, it wouldn’t be completely out of the question.
“I didn’t see you at the funeral,” I say. I didn’t speak to many people that day, but I’d have noticed if someone looking nearly identical to Donovan were standing graveside.
“I was out of the country.” He doesn’t elaborate.
“I’ve never seen a single picture of you in any of the photo albums.”
A painful expression colors his handsome face, but it’s gone in an instant.