LITMIR.BIZ

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was open now, and Virginia walked to it, ignoring the officers who walked into the room behind her. At least one of them knew her story. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. She’d refused to speak with reporters after the attack. It had taken a while, but eventually they’d lost interest and the story she’d lived through, the horrible nightmare that so many people had wanted the details of, had faded from the spotlight.

      Eight years later, there were very few people who remembered. Those who did, didn’t associate Virginia’s face with the Johnson family tragedy. She’d never been in the limelight anyway. Kevin had preferred to stand there himself.

      The older officer knew. He’d whispered a couple words that he’d probably thought would be comforting—It’s okay. He can’t hurt you anymore.

      Only the words hadn’t been comforting.

      They’d just made her want to cry, because she was that woman. The one who’d met and married a monster. The one who’d almost been killed by the person who was supposed to love her more than he loved anyone else.

      She yanked open one of the desk drawers, staring blindly at its contents.

      Something nudged her leg, and she looked down; the huge German shepherd sat beside her, his tail thumping, his mouth in a facsimile of a smile.

      She couldn’t help herself. She smiled in return. “Are you in a hurry, Samson?” she asked, and the dog cocked his head to the side, nudging her leg again.

      Not a “hurry up” nudge, she didn’t think. More of an “I’m here” nudge. Whatever it was, it made her feel a little more grounded, a little less in the past and a little more in the moment.

      She rifled through the drawer. Laurel kept her spare keys there. House. Car. Attic. She took that one, because she was going to have to check up there. The entire space had been insulated and made into a walk-in storage area filled with centuries’ worth of family heirlooms.

      She opened another drawer. This one had stamps, envelopes, beautiful handmade pens.

      It took ten minutes to go through every drawer, to open every secret compartment. She took out a beautiful mother’s ring that Kevin had presented to Laurel years before he met Virginia. Laurel had worn it every day, and as far as Virginia knew, she’d never taken it off. Not when Kevin had been alive.

      She set the ring on the desktop and took a strand of pearls from another secret compartment. The jewelry piled up. So did the old coins and the cash—nearly a thousand dollars’ worth of that. Laurel had liked to have cash on hand. Just in case.

      “That’s a lot of money, right there,” Officer Forrester said quietly. “I’d think if the guy were here to steal, he’d have left the desk empty.”

      “Maybe he didn’t have time to go through it.” She rolled the desktop down, leaving the jewelry and money right where it was. The words felt hollow, her heart beating a hard harsh rhythm. She wanted to believe the guy had been there looking for easy cash but the sick feeling of dread in her stomach was telling her otherwise.

      “That’s a possibility,” Officer Winters said, her voice sharp. “It’s also possible he found other valuables and took off with them. You said you hadn’t been here in a while. He could have left with thousands of dollars’ worth of stolen property.”

      I don’t really care if he did. I never wanted any of this. I still don’t, she wanted to say, but she didn’t, because there wasn’t a person she knew who wouldn’t have celebrated the windfall Virginia had received. The few friends she’d told had given her dozens of ideas for what she could do with the money, the house, the antiques. Most of the ideas involved quitting her job, going on trips to Europe and Asia, traveling the country, finding Mr. Right.

      She hadn’t told anyone but Cassie that she didn’t want the inheritance. Even Cassie didn’t know the entire reason why.

      Or maybe she did.

      She was her boss, after all. There’d been a background check when Virginia had applied for the job. If the information about Kevin had come up, Cassie had kept it to herself. She’d never questioned Virginia, never brought up the life Virginia had lived before taking the job at All Our Kids.

      That was the way Virginia wanted it.

      No reminders of the past. No questions about why and how she’d ended up married to a monster. No sympathetic looks and whispered comments. She didn’t want to be that woman, that wife, that abused spouse.

      She just wanted to be the person she’d been before she’d fallen for Kevin.

      It had taken years to realize that wasn’t possible. By that time, keeping quiet about what she’d been through had become a habit. One she had no intention of breaking.

      She walked to an old oil painting that hung between two bay windows and pulled it from the wall, revealing the built-in safe that Laurel had shown her a year after she’d moved into the house, a day after Kevin had shoved her for the first time.

      Maybe Laurel had thought seeing all the beautiful jewels that would be hers one day would keep Virginia from going to the police.

      It hadn’t.

      Love had.

      She hadn’t wanted Kevin to be arrested. She hadn’t wanted to ruin his reputation and his career. She’d believed his tearful apology, and she’d believed to the depth of her soul that he would change. She’d been wrong, of course. Sometimes, she thought that she’d always known it. Even then. Even the first time.

      She knew the lock combination by heart, and she opened the safe. It was stuffed full of all the wonderful things that Laurel had collected over the years. Her husband had been generous. He’d showered her with expensive gifts.

      She pulled out a velvet bag and poured six beautiful sapphire rings into her palm. Seeing them made her want to puke, because they were the first things Laurel had pulled out the day she’d opened the safe and shown Virginia everything she would inherit one day.

      She gagged, tossing the rings into the safe and running to the en suite bathroom. She heard someone call her name, but she wasn’t in the mood for listening. She slammed the door, turned the lock, sat on the cold tile floor and dropped her head to her knees.

      If she’d had one tear left for all the lies she’d been told and believed, if she’d had one bit of grief for what she’d longed for and lost, she’d have cried.

      She didn’t, so she just sat where she was, the soft murmur of voices drifting through the door, while she prayed that she could do what she knew she had to—face the past and move on with her life. It was the only way she’d ever find the sweet spot, the lovely place where she was exactly where God wanted her to be, doing exactly what He wanted her doing.

      No more floundering around waiting for other people to call the shots. No more watching as life passed by. She wanted to engage in the process of living again. She wanted to do more than be a housemother to kids. She wanted to mentor them. She wanted to be an example to them. She wanted to be able to tell her story without embarrassment or shame, and she wanted other people to benefit from it.

      That was what she thought about late at night when she couldn’t sleep and all she had were her prayers and the still, soft voice that told her she was wasting time being afraid, wasting her life worrying about making the wrong choices.

      She needed to change that.

      The problem was, she wasn’t sure how.

      Someone knocked on the door, and she pushed to her feet, her bones aching, her muscles tight. She felt a thousand years old, but she managed to walk to the door and open it.

      Officer Forrester was there, Samson beside him. The other two officers were gone.

      “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just—”

      “You don’t have to explain.” He took her elbow, leading her back into the room.

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