Liv Constantine - The Last Time I Saw You

Lily had hugged her tight and smiled widely, her eyes crinkling. She’d put her hand on Blaire’s cheek. “Blaire, darling, I can’t thank you enough. How lucky I am, to have not only one daughter but two.”

Yes, Kate had lost her mother, and it was terrible, Blaire thought. But Blaire had lost her too—not once but twice.

Kate shuddered, her teeth clenched, as she got out of bed and looked at the bathroom door the next morning. She couldn’t go in there. Not yet. Not while the rotten, decaying smell of the mice still clung to her. And those horrible eyes—every time she closed hers, she saw them, the empty sockets looking back at her. She’d asked her housekeeper, Fleur, to have her things moved into one of the guest bathrooms for the time being. The police had taken it all, the dead rodents and the note, and had swept the room for evidence. If they hadn’t been sure that she was in danger after the text, the dead mice had convinced them, the concern apparent on Anderson’s face as he’d stood at the sink. He’d cautioned her and Simon to keep the details to themselves.

First the text message and now this—who was watching her, waiting to hurt her? The nursery rhyme, with its mind-numbing tune, wouldn’t stop playing in her head, over and over and over, until she wanted to scream. Did the killer have a third target in mind? And if so, who? Simon? Her father? Or, she shuddered to think, Annabelle? And what kind of charmed life was she supposedly running after, anyway? She’d worked her butt off to get into med school and to ace the MCATs. After medical school, she’d spent nearly five years in residency and another two years in a cardio fellowship. Kate had committed her life to saving others’ lives. And her mother had been a generous philanthropist and advocate for women, admired by the community—except, it was now clear, by whoever was sending these notes.

As a precaution, Simon had hired private security. He’d done some architectural work last year for BCT Protection Services, a security firm in Washington, DC. He’d called his contact there, and there were now two guards stationed outside the house and two inside—one off the hallway in the small study, monitoring the premises via computer fed by the outside cameras, and the other doing hourly rounds of the first floor. The police had offered to station a car outside her house, but Simon had convinced Kate that they’d be better off with BCT, who could be on twenty-four hours a day. Anderson had told them that the size and scope of their property would make it a challenge to secure, especially with the huge expanse of woods adjacent to their thirty-five acres, but BCT had assured him they were up to the task.

Kate walked nervously down the hall to the guest bathroom, her robe tightly drawn around her. It was terrifying to think that the killer had been able to slip into her bathroom undetected in the space of a few hours. Granted, the house had been full of people during the reception, but that didn’t make it better. The police and the security team had both done full checks of the house when they’d shown up, but she couldn’t shake the idea that they’d somehow missed something, that whoever had left the mice was in her house right now, hiding somewhere, lurking behind a closed door, listening.

She’d spent the morning in bed, and now she only had a few minutes to get dressed for the reading of her mother’s will, which was scheduled for ten o’clock that morning at Gordon’s office. They’d considered canceling after the threats but decided it was better to get it over with. When she walked into the kitchen in the simple gray sheath she’d chosen, Simon was reading the paper. Her father sat at the table playing Old Maid with Annabelle. He hadn’t gone back to his house since that terrible night, staying instead at the waterfront condo in downtown Baltimore that he and Lily had bought last year as a weekend retreat. Annabelle looked up from her cards and jumped down from her chair. “Mommy!”

Kate gathered her daughter into her arms, inhaling the sweet scent of her strawberry shampoo. “Good morning, sunshine. Who’s winning?”

“Me!” she shouted and ran back to the table.

Kate followed her daughter to the table to lean down and give her father a kiss on the cheek, noticing again the gray cast to his skin and the dullness in his eyes.

“Good morning,” Simon said, closing the paper and setting it on the table in front of him and rising. “How are you feeling?”

“Not great.”

“Coffee?”

“Yes, thank you.”

He poured a cup of French roast and handed it to her, but as she took it, her fingers trembled so badly that it crashed to the floor. Kate looked at the mess at her feet and burst into tears. At the sight of her mother’s agitation, Annabelle began to cry too.

“Oh, sweetheart. It’s all right. Mommy’s all right,” Kate said, hugging Annabelle until she calmed down.

“Kate, you need to eat something,” Simon said, stooping to wipe up the coffee and carefully pick up the pieces of china.

She wiped her cheek with the back of her hand. “I can’t.”

He stood, holding the broken shards in his hand, and gave Harrison a look, but neither man argued with her.

“Will you ask Hilda if she’s ready? And remind her to bring some things to keep Annabelle occupied while we’re at Gordon’s.”

“Are you sure you want to bring Annabelle? Wouldn’t she be better off here?” Simon asked gently. His eyes were pleading, and she wondered if he was trying to seem like a protector again, a husband she would want to stay with after all. In a way, she was touched by his attentiveness. It almost seemed like the way things used to be.

Though she knew that Simon was probably right, that Annabelle would be just as safe, or even safer, at home with all the protection they’d hired, Kate just needed to have her daughter near her for the time being. She walked out of Annabelle’s earshot. “Her grandmother has just died,” she whispered, though the words sounded as if they couldn’t possibly be true. “Annabelle is sad even though she doesn’t completely understand. She sees the police here, the security people. She’s just a child, but she knows that something is not right. I want her with me.”

“I guess I hadn’t thought of it that way,” he said. “I’ll tell Hilda we’re ready to go.”

They got in the car and Kate realized she’d switched purses. She turned to Simon.

“Hold on. I need to go get my EpiPen in case we decide to grab a bite to eat afterward.” Her peanut allergy necessitated that she always have it with her. Once they were on the road, Annabelle’s chatter from the back seat was nonstop. When they pulled into the underground parking lot, Annabelle oohed and giggled at the sudden darkness, and Kate turned and smiled at her innocent joy.

Kate had gotten pregnant by accident in her first year of practice. She and Simon had been on the fence about having children. With two demanding careers, they didn’t think it was fair. When they found out she was pregnant, though, they were both elated. She remembered lying on the exam table for the ultrasound, Simon in a chair at her side, while her doctor smeared the gel onto her belly and moved the probe across her abdomen. “Here’s the heartbeat,” the doctor said, and they’d looked at each other in wonderment. And once Annabelle was born, they couldn’t image their lives without her.

Now Kate looked over at Simon’s profile as he parked, and despite everything that had happened between them, felt a sudden urge to reach out and touch him. She loved Simon, or at least she had until the last few months. She’d met him in a philosophy class senior fall, when she was still in the grips of grief. She’d gone through that first semester after Jake’s death in a fog, and Simon had been a good friend, helping her through her heartbreak. Then one day, he’d become more.