I carefully got down from the chair, set the box on the bed, and raised the lid.
My heart squeezed like a fist at the sight of what was inside—some photographs, a few love letters Dean had written to me, his diploma from flight school, a copy of my student film with his interview, my wedding ring, and leather gloves I had given to him on our last Christmas together. These were cherished items—it was a box full of love—but now two men were sitting in my living room, waiting for me to give them a personal item with Dean’s DNA on it to prove that he wasn’t a killer.
It wasn’t true. There was no possible way. Dean would never hurt anyone. I was certain of that.
I heard the back door open and close, followed by the sound of Gabriel and the children kicking snow off their boots in the mudroom. Quickly, I pulled the cards and letters out to reach the gloves beneath, and I left the box open on the bed.
“Here they are,” I said to Detective Johnson when I returned to the living room.
He stood and took them from me. “Thank you. This will be very helpful.” He reached into his jacket pocket for his card. “If you think of anything else, even if it seems unimportant, please give me a call.”
“I will.”
I walked them to the door.
As soon as they were gone, Gabriel emerged from the kitchen. “Who was that?” he asked with a note of concern.
“Detectives,” I replied, glancing at him only briefly as I handed him the business card.
He read it, and his eyes lifted. “What did they want?”
Rose and Joel emerged from the kitchen as well. Rose wrapped her arms around my hips and looked up at me with a smile. “Daddy says we can have hot chocolate.”
“Sure.” I took her by the hand. “Let’s go make some.”
As I passed Gabriel, I said, “I’ll explain later. Would you and Joel like to watch a movie?” I asked Rose.
“Can we watch George of the Jungle?”
I found the hot chocolate mix in the cupboard. “Of course.”
Gabriel watched me with a frown, and I was so afraid of sliding away from him, down that gradual slope, into the cave where memories lived and breathed. To the place where Dean had once occupied all my thoughts.
Heaven help me. I didn’t want to return to that darkness where unanswered questions could snowball into obsessions. My place was here, in the present, in the light, where happiness lived.
As soon as the children were settled on the sofa with the movie, I climbed the stairs to my bedroom and found Gabriel standing over the cedar box on the bed. The lid was open as I had left it, and the contents were spread all over the down comforter. He was flipping through a stack of photographs.
When he noticed me in the doorway, he set the pictures back inside the box and gestured toward the cards and letters that were scattered about. “I didn’t know you kept all this. Though I’m not surprised. He was your husband. You had a life together. A life I don’t know much about because you don’t talk about that. You only ever talked about how he disappeared. But to see all this . . .”
I approached and stood beside him, and we each looked down at everything. “That box has been at the back corner of my closet since we moved in here,” I explained. “I haven’t opened it since.” I glanced at a bunch of holiday and birthday cards that were tied together with a black ribbon. I was relieved that Gabriel hadn’t looked at those, because Dean always wrote something very intimate and adoring. “I just thought I should keep some of these things in case Rose ever wanted to know about her biological father.”
Gabriel reached for my hand and squeezed it, but his mood seemed low. “What did the detectives want? I assume it had something to do with Dean?”
“Yes. Let’s sit down.”
We moved to the two reading chairs near the window, and Gabriel sat on the edge of the cushion with his hands clasped together, his head bowed. It broke my heart to see him like that, looking so defeated.
“It’s not what you’re thinking,” I said. “They didn’t find the wreckage or anything like that.”
His eyes lifted, and I wasn’t sure if he was relieved or disappointed. “What did they want?”
I drew in a deep breath. “You know that Jane Doe they found in the woods in New Jersey recently?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it turns out that she was one of Dean’s clients when he was a therapist.”
Gabriel blinked a few times. “Oh.” He paused. “But what did they want from you? Because you wouldn’t know anything about his former patients. Would you? Isn’t that confidential?”
“It is. And he never shared anything with me.”
“And they know Dean is dead, right?”
“Yes, they know. But this woman has been missing for a while, ever since around the time I started dating Dean. Apparently, they questioned him back then, but whatever he told them didn’t help because they never found her. Not until now. But when they went back to the clinic—to revisit that part of her life, I suppose—they discovered that her patient file had gone missing, and his old boss has no idea what happened to it. Dean just happened to quit his job and leave the practice not long after the woman disappeared. He moved to Miami with me. So I guess that’s why they’re suspicious all of a sudden.”
Gabriel sat back, dumbfounded. “My God. They don’t think that Dean . . .”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. But I can’t blame them for looking into it. The situation does make it look a bit suspect. But I’m sure that Dean had nothing to do with her death. That file probably just got misplaced.”
“Right,” Gabriel replied, not looking entirely convinced. He glanced back at the bed. “So what were they looking for? Was there some piece of evidence that . . . ?”
“They want to do some DNA testing,” I explained. “You know it’s a thing now? They’re solving crimes with it.”
“Yes,” Gabriel said. “I read about that. Apparently, the FBI has a growing database.”
We sat in silence, listening to the faint music from the movie playing downstairs. Then Gabriel sat forward and took both my hands in his. “You don’t actually think . . .”
Tears threatened, but I fought to suppress them and keep my voice steady as I spoke. “Of course not. But there’s something else.” Gabriel’s brow furrowed with concern as he waited for me to continue. “The detectives said the woman was pregnant. That’s why they want Dean’s DNA. For paternity testing, basically.”
“Oh God. That’s horrible.” I could see the wheels turning in Gabriel’s mind. “But if he turns out to be the father, that would give him a motive.”
“What? No!” I shook my head.
Gabriel sat back. “Think about it. If he was just starting to date you at the time, and he got one of his patients pregnant, he wouldn’t want anyone to find out about that. He would know that he could lose you, and you’re . . .”
My whole body tensed. “I’m what?”
“You’re you.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” I asked. “Are you talking about how rich I am? Are you suggesting that he was motivated to kill off an ex-girlfriend because he wanted my money?”