LITMIR.BIZ

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could still make it to the meeting place in time.

      Ignoring the sensible voice that told her to keep moving, she retraced her steps, fear expanding with every one. At the house she slipped back through the cellar, the basement and up the steps to the first floor. She was trembling by the time she reached the downstairs hallway.

      She paused in the entryway, which was adorned with a dozen or more family photographs in gold leaf frames. Rex had arranged the little shrine himself. He had chosen an Oriental carpet made of the finest silk and placed it under a massive mahogany table that displayed the photos. Each photo had its own special place, and he always checked carefully after she dusted to be sure she hadn’t rearranged them.

      Harmony wasn’t in any of the photos, of course, since she had left home without Rex’s permission, and Buddy was only in a few, because this was supposed to be the Rex and Janine Happy Show, visual proof that she had been under her husband’s control for more than two decades. The photos were taunts meant to humiliate and shame, horrifying reminders of the years she had spent in the prison of this house with a man she despised.

      Rex was at fault for everything. Rex was the reason she was sneaking back into her own house, trying to recover memories of the child he had destroyed, trying to save something, anything, meaningful from the twenty-five years of hell her husband had put her through.

      She was not so beaten down that she couldn’t feel anger. Now the attempted escape set it free. She grabbed the most hateful photograph of all, the one taken by the justice of the peace on the day of their wedding. There in the hallway of the Shawnee County Courthouse she was smiling up at Rex as if he had all the answers to life’s mysteries.

      “What a fool.”

      Before she realized what she was doing, she stripped away the cardboard at the back of the frame and pulled out the photo. She tore it into four pieces, then eight, and threw the pieces to the table. In moments she’d dispensed with another frame and mutilated another photo, then another.

      Elation filled her as she shredded each photograph and each frame landed on the floor. But once she was finished, the pile of scraps didn’t make the statement she wanted. She needed something more, something bigger, something for Rex to find when he returned.

      Something that announced Janine was gone forever.

      She strode across the room and grabbed his favorite ashtray and lighter; then she took both to the table and piled the fragments inside the ashtray.

      The surge of joy she felt as she lit the first corner was like blood returning to an unused limb.

      “So goes our life together, Rex.” She watched the photos catch fire, and then she started up the stairs to Buddy’s room.

      The scrapbook was in a box in the closet. She had been the one to pack away all their son’s things, since Rex had wanted nothing to do with that final parting. To her knowledge he had never come into Buddy’s room since his death, so she was hopeful nothing had been disturbed.

      She thought she remembered which box the book was in, but when she began to dig through it, she realized she was mistaken. Minutes passed and her elation vanished, replaced again by fear. She needed to leave now. This time for good. Forever and ever, world without end.

      She was just about to give up when she saw the shiny blue cover at the bottom of the last box. She unearthed the scrapbook, but she knew better than to take the necessary time to make room for it in the backpack. On her way out she stripped a pillowcase off the bed and slipped the scrapbook inside so nothing would fall out. Clutching the pillowcase to her chest, she was ready.

      In the hallway outside Buddy’s bedroom she noted a strange smell, then a noise downstairs. She froze, but from here both the smell and the sound were unfamiliar, not the footsteps of a man returning home, but a crackling that seemed to be gaining steadily in volume.

      She edged along the wall toward the stairs and paused, afraid of what she might see, but she had already recognized the smell. Her eyes began to burn, and smoke tickled her lungs.

      Below her, flames were shooting from the flammable silk carpet under the entry table. A wall of fire separated the two floors.

      As she watched, the flames leaped to the stairs and began to lick their way toward her, feeding on the pine boards that had been recently stained and varnished.

      She was trapped.

      She had done this. For twenty-five years Rex had told her she was worth nothing without him, that her judgment was poor, her abilities second-rate, that every mistake her children had ever made could be lain directly at her feet.

      And now, with this blatant act of defiance, she had proved him right.

      For twenty-five years she had believed she was going to die in this house. Now she knew it was true. But not by her husband’s hands. Not by Rex’s.

      By her own.

       Chapter 3

      Harmony knew how lucky she was. Life hadn’t been easy, but at almost every turn good people had stepped forward to help her. Right now she was sitting in the home office of one of them, Marilla Reynolds, who had given her a job when Harmony was pregnant with Lottie. Marilla, known as Rilla to her friends, had hired Harmony to be the official Reynolds family “Jill-of-all-trades,” and that was a good description for the way the job had played out.

      Rilla, Brad and their two little boys, Cooper and Landon, lived outside Asheville in a lovely old farmhouse they had painstakingly restored and expanded. They had the usual farm animals, including horses and goats, and a kennel where they bred service dogs to be trained, most often to assist people with epilepsy. The organic vegetable garden and orchard totaled nearly an acre, and food was canned, frozen and dried for the winter. In fact, that was how Harmony had spent most of the past week since Davis’s visit. Now that it was early September, harvest was well under way.

      Before bringing Harmony on board, Rilla had managed most of the work on her own, until a car accident changed everything. These days she only needed to use a cane if she was on her feet more than an hour or two, but Rilla would never be able to work as many hours as she had before.

      During Rilla’s recovery Harmony had proved herself to be invaluable. She loved the Reynolds family, and she was pretty sure they loved her back. The variety of work never failed to delight her, and she was looking forward to a new project. She and Rilla were planning an herb garden for spring, a large one to produce organic herbs for some of Asheville’s finer restaurants.

      In preparation the new plot had been spread and tilled with compost and manure, followed by a planting of winter rye that would be mowed and plowed under to further enrich the ground in early spring. They had surveyed the market, and half a dozen chefs had given them wish lists.

      Now, late in the afternoon, Harmony was finishing up an internet search to get wholesale prices for plants, so she and Rilla could gauge start-up costs. In a little while she had plans to go to dinner and a movie with her friend Taylor Martin and Taylor’s daughter, Maddie. They were probably on their way to pick her up.

      Lottie was napping in her Pack ’n Play in the corner, and Rilla was still down at the kennel with her sons. The internet connection in the farmhouse was better than the one in Harmony’s garage apartment, and as Lottie slept on, Harmony completed her research. The house was unusually quiet, as if taking a quick nap itself before the hectic predinner rush.

      Harmony knew what she had to do.

      In the months since she had last spoken to her mother, she had fallen into something of a ritual. Every three or four weeks she checked the Topeka Capital-Journal online to see if there was any mention of her parents. She didn’t expect to find them in descriptions of Topeka’s most coveted social events or as participants in a 5K for charity. This was not casual surfing. She was fairly certain that if she discovered anything it would be in the obituaries or the headlines.

      “Murdered Wife Wasn’t

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